Farm Manager

Geoff.Howell

Geoffrey.Howell@education.wa.edu.au

In contrast to last year, the College has had a good start to the growing season in 2020 receiving 26mm of rain in mid-March and then a welcome 50mm in week 2 of Term 2.  We have had good germination from the first rain and with the pasture surviving until the follow-up rain, we should be in for a reasonable season this year.

Pastures

Late last term we had to proceed with the pasture re-seeding program without the students.  This meant they did miss some opportunity to be involved.  Fortunately, we still have some way to go before completing our program, which is mainly on the Dairy paddocks, at the old Harvey site and at Sheep.  This will still give the students ample opportunity to drive machinery and equipment.

Livestock

The Beef cattle have all but finished calving. Our Merino-cross Poll Dorset ewes have commenced lambing and we have approximately 50 Dorper lambs on the ground at the moment. The fine wool Merino ewes are due to lamb at the end of May early June.

Intensive

The College has had success with the sows in our small piggery, with 19 piglets born last term.  Thank you to Mr Graeme Moore for conducting a very successful AI program. Recently Ms Warden purchased two new gilts, due to farrow in late May providing the College with an ongoing supply of pork.

We have also had a harvest of honey from our bee hives this term, producing 32 jars of honey. This was also made possible through the generous help of Graeme Moore.

Sheep Section

Mr Adams has been busy up at Sheep section planting some Jarrah trees which will act as wind breaks on the hills. The seedlings were started at horticulture and then planted out.  

Horticulture/Butcher Shop

Horticulture have a new crop of sweet potatoes and the butcher shop continues to supply small goods.

General Farm

The College is having the last trust submission works completed this month with 8ha of land on the southern flats being laser levelled by a local contractor.

We are still awaiting the arrival of our two new Case 135 lease tractors.  Both will be fitted with front end loaders, guidance and auto steer which will certainly enable us to expose students to this technology.

Looking forward to the rest of the term, students will be involved in the following activities whilst on farm

• Calf marking at beef
• Lamb marking
• Citrus harvest
• Beef AI programme
• Pasture spraying as required.
• Murdoch University Visits.

Other Things Happening On Farm

Year 10 students have commenced the Keys for Life programme and a  Farm Safe short course.

As the College has been complying with the COVID 19 restrictions it has enabled us to better utilise platforms such as Webex or Zoom as we have been unable to attend industry field days.  

I have been involved in several industry Webex sessions over the last four weeks and believe we should be utilising them more often with our students.

Hopefully we will be able to return to normal operations soon on the farm.