The harvest for some of the early crops got underway a month ago, and most of the crops should be finished being harvested by the end of this week.

Although the season was down on rainfall, the rain that did fall, fell at the right times and luckily the local crops had done most of their growing before the real dry spell set in.

Some crops in the Harden Shire also suffered damage from late frosts, but it was nowhere near the same level of damage that occurred in the North and West of Young, which saw many crops destroyed by frost.

The hot winds had also knocked the canola crops around a little and whilst great for drying the windrowed crops, the strong winds had also blown a lot of the windrows about which also means a slight reduction in yields.

Pat O’Connor from Oxton Park said the season for them had been below average but was certainly better than the last three seasons.

“Yields for Canola have been around 1.75tonnes per hectare and the wheat has been ranging between 2.5 and 4 tonnes per hectare”, Pat said.

“The whole season has been quite advanced because of the mild winter followed by August being a dry mild month that saw crop developing well. It was an excellent season right up until the end of October with wheat an inch short of achieving maximum yields.

The crops were just too green for when the big hot spell hit, which saw many crops browning off in just a week”, Pat said.

Over in Currawong, farmer Chris Manchester said that he was reasonably pleased with the final results and will finish harvesting canola this week. Chris also said his yields weren’t too bad averaging around 1.9-2tonnes per hectare. Chris is looking to finish most of his harvest of wheat in the next fortnight.

Tony Good, agronomist with MS&A, said that the season for many farmers had been quite variable, but generally was not too bad.