Farmer near Rennie Craig Marshall says he's optimistic about season

Mixed crop and sheep farmer Craig Marshall said he'd finished sowing, but not without hiccups.

"We did have too much moisture on some country, so that delayed the finish of sowing by a week," he said.

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"We actually had to stop sowing for approximately a week, before we could get back on the country, but that enabled us to get on with some spraying over our early canola and pulse crops.

"So while it was an inconvenience waiting to finish sowing we used that time quite well to carry on operations."

But Mr Marshall said he was still anticipating a good harvest.

"As far as rainfall and prospects everything is looking very good," he said.

"The crops are slow growing at this time of year but they're in a very good position."

Mr Marshall said he'd been spreading urea this week, and though the cost had jumped in the last 12 months from about $800 - $1000 to $1800, he wasn't put off.

"We are still confident in the season and the commodity price to push on with our urea spreading," he said.

"We're still very optimistic for the season, even though we know our costs are blowing out and that's always a concern, costs come before the income so that's a concern."

Mr Marshall manages about 4000 hectares and is growing barley, wheat, canola and some pulses, plus he runs a couple of thousand ewes.

He said there'd also been a few issues of flystrike and worm in his mob due to all the summer rain and farmers across the district had been busy keeping control of summer weeds popping up.

"It's been a real juggling act to get to the first day of sowing," he said.

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