Millet helps Shorty's post-fire recovery

Such was the ferocity of the fire that it had turned the farming land around Scaddan into something similar to a desert and farmer fears of blowing topsoil meant some innovative approaches had to be taken to protect paddocks for the following year's crop.

After a consultation with his agronomist Theo Oorschot, Esperance Rural Supplies, Shorty decided to seed millet across most of his 1500 hectare cropping property.

Farm Weekly visited Shorty on November 20 last year when he was seeding the first of his crop.

"The blow is going to be a real issue right through the summer and that's why I decided to plant something now to get some germination going," he said then.

"I just can't stand back and see the country blowing like that.

"Hopefully by working up the ground, the combination of ridging from the furrows and some germination of plants will help protect it a bit."

Walking through the millet with Shorty last week, he said he was pleased with the results of the summer crop program.

"We ended up planting 300ha to millet and 100ha to barley, but on the rest of the farm we planted a millet-barley mix," he said.

"I am really happy with the results. We had some timely rainfall after it went in and the millet in particular has done very well.

"The barley was the first to get up and going and I thought the millet wasn't performing that well, but it really took off and surpassed the barley in terms of performance.

"I think it will really help the country where we are planting canola this year.

"Without that cover and holding the soil together, any emerging canola crop could be at risk of being sheared off if a big wind comes through."

With no interest in yields from his summer crop, Shorty was just keen to get a good coverage on the ground to ensure the wind protection method worked.

"I would probably go for more millet next time as the barley started off okay but just didn't have the long-term growth performance of the millet," he said.

Shorty planted Shirohie millet and Hindmarsh barley.

"The problem at the time was that millet seed was hard to get hold of as there were others keen to give it a go and there wasn't a lot of seed in the State, so we had to supplement the program with barley," he said.

"We went with a mix of 15 kilograms of barley and 5kg of millet, which was sown at a depth of 15-20 millimetres and without fertiliser," he said.

"The key to doing this is getting a rain on it after it has gone in.

"I was only looking at putting in 500ha, but when I looked at the 10-day forecast and they were predicting a good rain coming, I decided to increase the program.

"The crop received 8mm a few days after it went in and this, combined with some subsoil moisture that was already there, got it up and going.

"Over the past 10 days we have had about 41mm on the property so that has it looking good."

But the plan was to always spray them out once the new year came.

"With that 41mm and the moisture it put into the ground, we need to conserve it for this year's cropping program, so we started spraying the millet and barley out three days ago," Shorty said.

The spraying program finished up last Sunday, with Shorty taking a break from the farm before starting to plan this year's program.

"In terms of our rotations and the impact the fire had on this year's program, nothing much will change now," he said.

"Some of the paddocks I planned to put into barley will be wheat, because wheat heads that were dropped on the ground germinated in the summer crops and so there would have been a contamination risk for barley crops, so that will be wheat on wheat."

Shorty praised Greg Hard, Esperance Rural Supplies, who offered the millet seed at a discounted price.

"At the full price, seed would have been my biggest expense, so it made a big difference economically in going ahead with it," he said.

WAFarmers was also able to donate 1000kg of millet seed to the area, through its fund-raising efforts.

While Shorty said when planting the crops he wasn't sure how effective it would be, on seeing the results he would definitely do it again.

"I hope no one finds themselves in this situation again, but if they do then I would recommend doing this," he said.

"It has definitely helped minimise the impact of blowing soil and provided that cover we were after."

The rebuild from the fire continues in the Scaddan area, with Shorty saying that once he gets back from a short holiday he will start rebuilding boundary fences with neighbours.

"BlazeAid were awesome in helping out," he said. "They came and pulled out all the burnt fences for us and that was a big help and much appreciated by everyone in the area."