Just as people still have to eat through the coronavirus pandemic so too do livestock, and cropping yields at Darryl McCarthy's Silver Downs property on the outskirts of Tenterfield township match the best he's seen in his 30 years of farming there.
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Mr McCarthy had a hunch the rains would come and planted around 40 acres dry with a millet/sorghum mix in December.
"Everyone told me not to, but we got rain on it and it really worked well," he said.
He stuck with the varieties he'd been using for years: Shirohie millet at a rate of 15 kilograms a hectare, together with forage sorghum at 3kg/ha. While it would have been ideal to sow just millet to provide the option of harvesting its seed, sorghum was added to support the millet through its growth and prevent lodging, and to avoid a monoculture growing environment.
Mr McCarthy didn't have any difficulty sourcing seed, although the price had jumped. Sowing was on a base of 100kg/ha of DAP (diammonium phosphate) fertiliser.
This regime produced a bumper yield of 592 large round bales of wrapped silage, each weighing 500-600kg according to the estimates of Rod Dowe, who's been harvesting Mr McCarthy's crops for decades. Mr Dowe said the yield is on par with irrigated crops he's been involved with.
A month later another 12 acres of the same mix was planted. This was harvested just last week, again with excellent yields.
The silage will be kept for internal use, with the conglomerate of properties under the Silver Downs banner going through 500-600 bales over winter to feed its stock.
Normally the operation runs 300-400 cows and calves, although numbers are down since a sell-off during the drought with around 150 breeders sold last year. Now numbers are being built up again through restocking.
The high yields on this summer's crops means there's enough winter feed for the entire operation, which comes as a relief.
"We spent a lot on feed last winter, just to keep the cows happy," Mr McCarthy said.
After "ordinary" yields from last year's cropping efforts Mr Dowe said this year's bumper crop may be due to a good buildup of nitrogen in the soil, although he also thought Mr McCarthy was crazy to dry sow back in December.
"But you take the risk, and it's paid off," Mr Dowe said.
Ironically it was more rain which delayed harvesting the second planting meaning the forage sorghum had just gone to head, but the crop was lush with the sorghum standing three metres high and the millet two metres.
Cropping continues each year over the summers at Silver Downs to make hay, with oats and ryegrass sown in autumn for grazing. Mr McCarthy doesn't have the same premonition now about coming rains and fears it's getting too dry again now for more planting.
He's considering direct drilling oats into fallow ground, to supplement the 30-35 acres of crop already planted.
