Sowing began very early for third-generation broadacre cropper Jason Fulton - a task which was only completed late last month.
On his Tottenham property, Orange Plains, Mr Fulton has sown a 2200 hectare cropping program, one of the stranger seasons of his 18 year career.
The 2200ha program is divided up to include monola, canola, wheat, albus lupins, and barley.
Orange Plains is purely a cropping operation now after Mr Fulton de-stocked in October 2019 during the drought.
Mr Fulton sowed monola, canola and some winter wheat early, while he finished sowing some late cereals on July 22.
He said the crops sown early are doing very well while conditions need to be suitable for the late sown varieties.
"The majority of monola and canola, both sown at a rate of 1.9 kg/ha, is looking very good," Mr Fulton said.
"The albus lupins, sown at 70kg/ha, are unhappy with the excess moisture.
"There is a big gap to the later wheats due to an extremely wet end to April and May.
"We received up to 220mm for that period.
"The late sown cereals look very good albeit they are late.
"We sowed the wheat at 26 to 50kg/ha and the barley at 50kg/ha."
With an extremely wide sowing window comes a wide harvest period.
"Monola harvest could be as early as first week of October, depending on when flowering finishes," Mr Fulton said.
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"The wheat will likely be around mid to late November at best guess.
"There is still a long way to go."
Mr Fulton made very few changes to his fertiliser program from the year before.
"It was the same as usual, with urea added as required, determined by deep nitrogen testing carried out in the early autumn period," he said.
"Fertiliser is one input that should not be skimped on, especially following on from a couple of large biomass seasons."
Weeds can be a problem during wet seasons but Mr Fulton put in the work during the summer.
"Some sowthistle was quite persistent with numerous germinations over the summer fallow period," he said.
"Our weed control program saw two to three summer sprays and some fallow tillage in a number of paddocks due to damage during the 2021 harvest.
"Early crops have had in-crop weed control completed with some preventative fungicide sprays put out on the canola and cereals also.
"Some monola on very wet creek country to the west of town missed out on in-crop grass spray with lontrel applied by air.
"The lupins have had grass weed control completed.
"Overall our weed control has been effective."
Weather has made for a challenging season
It hasn't all been smooth sailing for Jason Fulton with the weather playing its part in making the current season a challenging one.
Mr Fulton lost 20 per cent of his monola to flooding after establishment and the wet is still an issue.
"A challenge has been the extremely wet conditions before, during and after establishment," he said.
"We sowed the monola and canola very early which will have a frost risk later.
"The late sown cereals need a mild spring to mature and hopefully avoid heat stress during flowering and grain fill.
"There may be trafficability issues for spraying, possibly more flooding and a wet harvest for everything.
"Last harvest was good, however we suffered substantial weather damage and downgrading to most of the cereals.
"We mostly store our yield on farm.
"Our local site has received nothing in the way of upgrades or expanded storage even though it is a 'primary' site, so pricing out of there is not competitive with most on-farm pricing.
"It is run extremely well by the local staff, however support from higher management in Graincorp has not been forthcoming and therefore is looked dimly upon by most buyers."
Despite the moisture in the soil, Mr Fulton has no plans for a summer crop.
"We eventually got more than 90% of the program in and it's a very marginal area for summer cropping on average," he said.