Breeza Station’s Andrew Pursehouse finished harvesting wheat and canola a week ago, with the headers now amongst the chick peas.

“Hopefully we’ll finish the first week of December,” he said.

“We’re dodging showers each afternoon.”

About 1000 hectares of bread and durum wheat and 200 hectares of canola have been harvested at Breeza Station this month, with mixed results. It was an early harvest.

“Bread wheat was terrific for the season. Durum was very disappointing and I gather from talking to other farmers that it’s been a very poor year for the durum,” Mr Pursehouse said.

“The durum is always sown later and it didn’t take the dry weather very well.”

The farmer said bread wheat was looking like 4-5 tonnes to the hectare, durum wheat around 2-3 tonnes, and canola 1.5-2 tonnes.

“The quality has been very good for all the winter crops,” he said.

“It’s down on yield but up on quality because of the dry finish.”

“Because we got the high quality, the price is not too bad but we’re hoping it might strengthen a bit.”

Over on the other side of the Kamilaroi Highway, “Drayton” is still finishing the wheat harvest. Farmer John Hamparsum said they left the “worst” until last and hoped to knock over the last two durum crops by Thursday lunchtime.

“They were badly affected. They were planted straight behind a summer crop so there was no water there and the plan was to water them but we didn’t have enough water so they had to paddle their own canoe,” he said.

“Because they were planted later, the rain didn’t get to them.”

Related story: Drayton’s saving grace

Mr Hamparsum said the yield for bread wheat was good but the quality is “sort of in the middle”.

“We didn’t think it would do well so we didn’t fertilised and then the rain came and it was too late,” he said.

“It was one of those hard seasons.

“The durum that we irrigated, it was phenomenal. We were very pleased with the yield there – the yield monitor was showing substantial yields in amongst most of the fields.”

The farmer said most of the durum crops were likely to yield 6/6.5 tonnes to the hectare.

“On the dry land country, that yield’s about 2.5/3 tonnes to the hectare, which considering the season been hard, isn’t too bad,” he said.

“The irrigated definitely has allowed us to produce a decent crop and at the wash-up it won’t be as bad as I expected. It was just a tough season.”