GUNDAROO grazier Cecil Burgess has not seen such a prosperous NSW spring in more than 40 years.
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He is mulling over where to sell his Dorset lambs, which he expects to fetch between $120 and $150 a head. It will be at either Wagga Wagga saleyards, or to a Yass buyer for a supermarket chain.
Last year his top price for lambs was $156 a head. This year the growing season looks even more promising.
Rain fell throughout winter before the warmer than usual spring arrived, which has left a deep green carpet of feed across the family's farm "Glenfield", at Gundaroo, and two other properties near Boorowa and Rugby.
"Magnificent season, the best one I have seen since 1974. There have been good ones since, 1984 after the big drought in '83," Mr Burgess said during a break from lamb marking.
"The rain [this year] came early and all the pasture got going early in March. It rained all the way through and it just kept growing and growing."
Across the Boorowa district canola crops have turned a brilliant yellow. Black cattle are already disappearing from the bright sunlight into shady patches under gum trees to escape the heat.
Mr Burgess said ideal growing conditions had triggered an explosion of thistles and serrated tussock.
The unseasonal weather could be attributed to global warming, he said. "But I think it is just one of those years. I read temperatures this morning going back to 1946 when [mid-October] it reached 32 degrees."
Maximum and minimum temperatures have been above average across a large part of Australia. Some southern areas recorded between 6 degres and 8 degrees above average for September, according to the Department of Agriculture.
The Bureau of Meteorology says drier months to December are likely.
In the longer term, Mr Burgess remains optimistic. His sons Michael and Wayne are following him on to the land and, at 64, he believes a new generation is needed, because the average age of farmers is 60.
"A lot of people took their sons and made them do other things, apprenticeships and the like. Some young fellas have got to take the land on, otherwise, who is going to do it?"
The Burgess family brought the 809-hectare "Noongah" property near Boorowa to improve for fattening lambs.
They also paid up to $2700 a head for Merino rams at the Demondrille Stud sale at Harden for their 591-hectare fine wool farm at Gundaroo which the family has held since 1892.
At "Noongah" two paddocks have been sown to lucerne.
"We need the rain now because it is all just coming up like that," Mr Burgess said, indicating the first signs of growth.
"I have been on the land all my life, I've grown lucerne before and we always grew it in October.
"Now they grow it earlier, but the paddock wasn't ready."
About 100 tonnes of lime has been spread to improve the soil and the lucerne will be rotated with wheat. The missing ingredient is rain.
"About three weeks ago we had about 15 millimetres of rain. We might fluke a storm or something," Mr Burgess said.
