Although it may seem like a short time since Queensland's winter crop hit the silos, Darling Downs farmers are already gearing up to make a start on their summer harvest in the coming weeks.
The Barron family at Bell are preparing to harvest around 250 hectares of corn and 80ha of sorghum, as well as other forage crops, in the next two weeks.
Neil Barron said both the corn and sorghum were "looking pretty handy" after they received some decent rain during 2022, setting up a solid moisture profile for the summer crops.
"We got 55 mills early that actually made these summer crops and the rest has just been grown on really good subsoil moisture that we've had," he said.
"You cannot beat that winter subsoil moisture, it just does not run off the ground.
"We're lucky we planted early, traditionally the early plants are usually your better summer crops, and our corn was planted right at the beginning of September
"We had such a cold start and the corn seemed to handle it better than the sorghum.
"It's done well, but it's all about the subsoil, it's like money in the bank when that ground's wet enough."
While some farmers in Western areas have missed out on the summer falls, Mr Barron said they were lucky to get under some patchy storms during the last month, which would ensure they finished in good condition, particularly at their Cedarvale and Cooranga North blocks,
Queensland Country Life recently spoke to GrainCorp regional operations manager Brad Foster who said producers could be looking at back to back record seasons, given the success that many had with their winter crop, including the Barrons.
"When we were harvesting, we were just panicking thinking we are not going to get this off, because it was just raining every week, up until October," " Mr Barron said.
"It was one of best winter crops we've ever had, the most acres we've had and the best yield we've ever had.
"We had a good winter crop in 2021, where the country was all long fallowed, but this year was even better."
Mr Barron said that while the high grain prices seen at the beginning of the harvest period have since slipped for milling grade wheat, the feed grain market was still holding up, something which affected them on both sides of the equation given the family also run a 2500 head feedlot.
"The milling grain has come off, H2 wheat into Brisbane was nearly $560 per tonne when we first started harvesting and I think you'd be flat out getting $440 now, but the feed grain hasn't come back, it's still pretty strong.
"The feedlot job's tough enough at the moment, with feed grain at 400 dollars and then the price of meat coming back, but it's like all these things, you've got to take the good with the bad."
Depending on the weather in the weeks following harvest, Mr Barron said they would decide which country to long fallow for the next round of summer crops and which to turn around for this year's barley.
