Winter is a special time at Sandstone Estates

Everything is the same colour – the cattle, the mountains, the grass etc., but that adds a certain charm. At this time of the year we are busy combining maize. Our cattle are not far behind because they spend most of the winter time grazing on maize stubble as one can see from the photos below.

Maize Harvesting – Sandstone Estates – June 2014

Moisture levels have remained a little high this year so we are struggling to find lands where the moisture has dropped below 15% which is the cut-off point. However, so far by moving around we have been able to maintain production.

Update on this year's crops

We have had a very good year so far and we thought we would just share some thoughts with you.

Sunflower Harvest nearly complete

The harvesting of our Sunflowers is nearly complete. We achieved excellent yields this year under conditions which were almost ideal for Sunflowers.

These pictures show the development of the sunflowers on various farms at Sandstone Estates. This year we had an outstanding crop with some flowers really defying the norm.

Our picture gallery below refers.

Poplars in Nursery

We love planting trees at Sandstone.

Our nurseries are currently bristling with young trees ready to be planted
as soon as the rains start.

Wheat

Our wheat is waiting patiently for the raiin...
Secondary roots have now grown, which is a very good sign. 

See the photographs below

Milling cattle feed the old-fashioned way

One of the great advantages of having a Heritage centre at Sandstone Estates is that we never don’t have a machine for the job. Sometimes old is good and in this case this hammer mill which is probably more than 50-years old does the job admirably.

Here we are chopping up soya bean bales and mixing them with various additives to provide a supplementary feed for our cattle for winter.

New John Deere 6930 arrives at Sandstone Estates from overseas

Due to the fact that we use extremely advanced equipment, we require features on our tractors which are not available on locally supplied models. A good example is the John Deere 6000 Series range which comes with a wide variety of very sophisticated operator options, together with quick hydraulically operated trailer hitch etc.

Sandstone's policy of importing State-of-the-art equipment from overseas continues

The 6930 tractor pictured here with an older model 1780 planter is a good example. The technology at Sandstone requires that these tractors have features which are not available on models offered locally. One of the key accessories is the rear hydraulic hitch mechanism which is designed to work with a large fleet of Richard Western trailers.