VICTORIA BROWN
October has snuck up on us so fast, and Harvest 2025 has arrived.
The start of warmer days and the smell of the hay off in the air has arrived at the farm. Swathing is underway as the crops turn from green to gold and the yard is full of the sounds of tinkering tools and engines being maintained and tuned up.
The headers are out of the shed, and the new team of this season’s harvest workers has arrived and are busy making themselves familiar with the machinery and the farm layout.
In the farmhouse office the computer is spitting out links to the team asking them to complete all the farm safety inductions online, and instructions on how to download time sheet apps.
It’s a far cry from back in the day when the workers would roll up to start harvest, give you their name and were promptly handed an Olympic Yearly Time and Pay Book.
I just found one from 2005, on the inside cover of which I have noted by hand their superannuation and bank account details, home address and tax file number. That’s all. Simple.
Now we have a Human Resources and Occupational Health and Safety and Risk Assessment farm portal in which employees and employers must record so many details it makes your head spin.
I’m uneagerly awaiting a software update any day now so that the team can tell me what their dietary requirements are.
Heaven forbid that should ever happen.
We have a great team this year. They eat almost anything.
However one lad says he doesn’t eat mashed potato but he happily eats roast spuds, hot chips and boiled spuds with lots of butter and a sprinkling of parsley or mint.
Hmm … may have to watch this one.
“Well, what’s all that about then?’ I ask.
“Dunno” he replies. “Must have something to do with the texture. I’ve been like that for years. Oh, and I don’t like mushrooms.”
“Are you adverse to picking them out of your meal then? “I ask.
“Not a problem” he cheerfully replies.
Good man. We’ll keep him.
Most people are very obliging, although I do recall one year when a bloke we had working for us bogged a tractor in a salt lake he was explicitly told NOT to drive through, charged us the five hours it took for us to dig it out, and then asked at the end of the evening meal, which was extremely late that night due to our unexpected extracurricular farm activities, if there was any chocolate or port.
He wasn’t joking and the port and chocolates and my bountiful generosity were conspicuous by their absence.
Well, here’s to a great harvest 2025, with no horrendous weather events or time consuming machinery breakdowns, and a good season for the farming fraternity that flows through to the benefit of our town, region and state.
Game on.
