Many thanks to McCain Foods, Te Mata Contractors, Apatu Farms and Heinz-Watties for help harvesting our corn crop.

Given the wet week we were pleased to have a break in the weather and fortunate the soil was not excessively wet. Gross weight out was around 20 t/ha which, given we suffered a fair bit from drought stress is pleasing.

Ben Watson and Dan Bloomer took crop samples from both Paddocks (3 & 4) and from drip irrigated, spray irrigated and non-irrigated zones. We’ll be interested to see the results.

Next activity is a full deep ripping to at least 600mm to try and address the deep compaction we have identified. Regional Council soil health sampling, HydroServices data and our own digging shows a legacy from previous land use remains – despite seven years of pasture phase and minimal traffic. We have ripped before, but only to about 300 – 400mm.

After that we’ll be establishing our winter crops – selected from onions, oats and mustard cover crops.