I farm at Three Springs, 300 km north of Perth in the mid-west region of WA. The farm is 5,200ha arable with 4,000ha cropped to wheat, barley, canola and lupins, and 1,200ha running 2,500 merino breeders. Soil types range from deep white sand to yellow sand over gravel to river flat loams.
Our annual rainfall is around 450mm, but this year we have received all of 480mm since late March! It got a bit dry from late June to mid July, then it rained and hasn’t really stopped. Consequently, crops and pastures are in terrific condition. The prospects for harvest are very good, perhaps better than 2021.
The sheep are in fine fettle and the lambing percentage was well above average. There is going to be a lot of good dry feed into summer which will make husbandry a little easier than usual.
Our canola was sown in early April after 80mm of rain and mostly into Lupin stubbles. They haven’t looked back. The lupins are still flowering and branching and incredibly clean of disease. The later sown wheat is better than that planted earlier and, with moist soil, is undoubtedly going to yield very well.
I have been able to use the good season to spade and resow some pasture paddocks. It meant green manuring the weeds as well. Spading is usually a wind erosion risk but with wet soil in winter, the risk is low as I can get pastures sown and germinated quickly.
Leading up to harvest will be busy enough. All the harvest gear is ready with just the header to get serviced. I’ve got lambs to wean, farm roads to grade and secure a chaser bin driver. Then there’s a bit more pasture topping and canola desiccation to be done.
I’m the inaugural chair of 3FIN’S, our new grower group in Three Springs. We have 20 members and have conducted a couple of field walks – most notably to the re-engineered soil site run by DPIRD which is remarkable. We hosted a fork lift ticket workshop to ensure we are all legit in that regard. We’re taking growth slowly. We’ll let development evolve as demand requires in the coming year.
My biggest challenge is working out what to plan for 2023. Input costs aren’t going down and grain prices look likely to settle, not rise. Profitability is going to be tight. The only saving grace, just like this year, would be a strong early start to provide yield potential. Otherwise, it might be a quiet cropping year.