Burnt out header one day, married the next and back to harvest

The pair had only bought their property at The Gap in February, with this being their first harvest.

Both had been married previously so a wedding was not a priority - they just wanted to be married.

"We thought we would go to the magistrates office at the courthouse and asked if you can get married by signing a piece of paper and they said no they don't do it anymore," Emma said.

After running into a celebrant on the way out of the courthouse they found the quickest way to make being married a reality.

"Everybody we had intended to surprise that we were getting married are self employed so we thought that we would just get married at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon," Emma said.

"We had just told our immediate family [19 guests] that we had organised family photos. All of them fell for that lie and we drove up on this hill at sunset on our farm and got married.

"We just had everything you love about a wedding like good food and champagne and none of the boring bits."

While the wedding was simple, it wasn't without drama with their header written off the day before.

They had about 162 hectares of blazer canola, which had been decimated and pod sealant put on it, to be direct headed and while Emma was out in the paddock disaster struck.

"I just looked over my shoulder and I've just seen this little flutter of ash roll past the window and I thought that's really weird - that's black char," she said.

"I stuck my head out the door and you could smell it was on fire so I thought I'd try and dump the front in case the whole thing went up but I'd lost all the hydraulics so all I could do was spear it out of the crop into a clearing hoping the whole thing didn't erupt into flames."

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Emma said luckily the header did not burst into flames but was a smouldering mess for about five hours.

"The insurance assessor came out about four hours later and he's taken one look at it and said yep, say goodbye to Johnny," she said.

The incident was a topic of many jokes at the wedding and a replacement header was quickly found thanks to the good luck of Tom's father, a builder, having just finished renovations for Intersales workshop.

Emma said they were able to find out who was trading machinery and a Case header in very good condition was found west of Wagga Wagga.

"We had to walk it all the way down the Sturt highway to get it home which was a little bit interesting," she said.

Harvest continued on their canola and about 360ha of Razor wheat.

"All's well that ends well," Emma said.

It had been a wild ride of a year for the pair who bought their property, built a house and, as Emma was from a Thoroughbred background and Tom a livestock background, bought a whole fleet of machinery, all in their first year of farming.

"It's been a big year - I'll be very much looking forward to the end of harvest," Emma said.