Cummins, South Australia
The Stock Journal reported that despite late germination and a dry September, the harvest yields for some of the Eyre Peninsula were expected to be above average in 2021.
Finchy arrived at Cummins to join a team on their family farm for harvesting wheat and other grains and pulses in November and through December.
Four days before he arrived storms ravaged the region and only 60kms away at Murdinga the wild weather and hail snapped crop stalks and grain fell to the ground. Some farmers were expecting some of their best crops grown in years before the storms hit.
The weather delayed the start date by about two weeks but once they were underway, the harvesters kept Finchy busy driving the chaser bin. Considering the challenges for the season it was a good harvest.
PIRSA estimated 1.767 million tonne of wheat for the combined western, lower and eastern Eyre Peninsula districts in its winter crop performance report. The warmer weather enabled growers to get into the full swing of harvest and we saw strong deliveries going into the Cummins silos which after a recent upgrade now have three fully automated weighbridges instead of the previous two for the 2020-2021 harvest season.
The roads all around the town and even the main street had semi-trailers delivering grain continuously. The grain is now all delivered by road haulage as the railway line which went right past the farm ceased operating in May 2019. Due to a poor harvest resulting from drought, the last grain train north of Cummins to Kimba ran on 20 December 2018. This season saw both the Port Lincoln and Thevenard Port Terminals with a busy shipping programme, loading both wheat and barley.
Then only a month after we left Cummins a ferocious storm lashed the Eyre Peninsula and a farmhouse north of Cummins was almost completely destroyed. The Tod Highway near the entrance into Cummins was closed due to flooding which affected a number of streets in the town and left the Cummins Showgrounds underwater.
Join Finchy in the chaser bin and see the wheat harvest from a birds eye perspective in our video below:
