“IT’s amazing what a difference 40 millimetres of rain can make on different soils,” said Andrew Coumbe, who is preparing to harvest crops on blocks at Nungarin and Kellerberrin this season.
He estimates the Kellerberrin property will average 2.4 tonnes per hectare at harvest, while his Nungarin property is expected to average 1.6t/ha.
And there is a block 5-10 kilometres east of his Nungarin home that Mr Coumbe said he might not run the header through at all.
The eastern block has received 140mm for the year, in comparison to 187mm closer to the home block, which is significantly low for the 300mm average rainfall area.
When Farm Weekly visited last week Mr Coumbe was keen to show the comparison, saying, “I want to tell the variability story of how fast it can differ from good to bad out here”.
With the first rain of the year, 9mm, falling over the Easter weekend, Mr Coumbe said the dry season was a worrying start but the wet winter helped to bring the season back.
“We didn’t put any canola in this year,” Mr Coumbe said.
“On the light country we usually go a fallow then canola, trying to get a couple of cracks at the ryegrass, but we didn’t put our canola program in this year because it was just too dry.”
Mr Coumbe said when it hadn’t rained by the first week of May, they pulled the pin on the canola program and put their fallow crops to wheat.
“Canola is an opportunistic crop here,” he said.
“If we had summer rain we would have planted it, but because we didn’t we just decided to hold back.”
With minimal light country the Coumbes have trialled chickpeas as a break crop on the heavier country which struggles with rainfall.
Mr Coumbe, who farms with his father Gary, said a lot of the potential was lost mainly from the dry September as the season was looking awesome through winter.
“It’s a mixed bag here for sure,” he said.
In September they were looking at one of their best years but the outlook turned quickly.
Two weeks ago the Coumbes received 18mm on their Nungarin block, on the back of 30mm on the last weekend of September.
“I certainly think the grain that’s there would have benefited from the rain and we shouldn’t have any quality issues,” Mr Coumbe said in reference to the land east of the home property.
“It’s just the plants that didn’t establish themselves further that still won’t produce grain and not all the plants have come out of the boot.
“My pipe dream is that we average 0.8t/ha out there but whether I am being optimistic, I don’t know.”
He said another 3mm of rain last Thursday helped the wheat fill out nicely.
Over the past few weeks the crops have started to go off quickly, especially the barley.
Mr Coumbe said he would be ready to harvest in a few weeks, depending on the weather.
“We never harvested any of our Scepter wheat last year due to hail damage,” he said of the wiped out 730ha.
Across the board last year they averaged 0.8t/ha, with their Kellerberrin crop being the strongest.
“Compared to last year’s disaster, this year we will end up better than average I think, especially with grain prices we will do quite well,” Mr Coumbe said.
“But our biggest trouble is we haven’t been able to string a couple of good harvests together, so we hope next year is just as good.
“Yield, price and return wise this year is definitely above average.”
Barley crops will be harvested first with all the chickpeas to be crop topped this week.
“We have just over 4000ha in this year – 2800ha of wheat, 1000ha of barley, double what we grew last year because of the price, 350ha of chick peas and 100ha of lupins,” Mr Coumbe said.
“The sooner we get into it, the sooner we finish and the sooner we can go fishing.
“All we need to do is hook trailers on trucks, hook the chaser bin up and we are good to go.”
