HARVEST is all on track for the Wellstead siblings at Tambellup.
Kyal, 26, Kaitlyn, 24 and Sam, 22 have slowly taken the reins of their family farm.
Kyal moved back to the farm nine years ago and Sam six years ago, after they finished school.
Their sister Kaitlyn has been on and off the farm for four years after completing a Diploma in Finance.
Together, with workers Anton Boye, 30 and Piers Egerton-Warburton Jr, 20, the three siblings manage and operate a successful farming business.
Kyal said that despite an unfortunate start to the year, the season had turned around and was expected to be better than average.
“Everything is going good, we are pretty stoked with the year so far – we missed out on the frost thankfully,” Kyal said.
“It has actually turned out to be one of our better seasons, crops are smaller but still have lots of seed on it, so the timing was good for the rain for grain fill, but as far as biomass, it’s not there – it’s pretty amazing.”
The farm received about 10 millimetres of rain early last week which slowed the operation down for two days.
This year their grain program includes 500 hectares of noodle wheat, just under 2000ha of canola and 400ha of barley.
Their most productive canola crop yielded 2.4 tonnes per hectare and barley reached up to 5t/ha.
Harvest started on November 20 and the boys are hoping their two CLAAS headers will get through the crops by Christmas – a bit smaller than last year’s 4000ha program that included leased land at Borden.
“It makes a massive difference at the end of the year when you want to finish before Christmas,” Kyal said.
Each sibling has a role to play on the farm – Kyal and Sam run the farm itself and Kaitlyn looks after all the book work and administration of the business, as well as keeping the boys in line.
Anton and Piers drive the two chaser bins over the harvest period and act like a part of the family.
“Kaitlyn looks after us all, while Sam and I just drive the headers and do all the fun stuff,” Kyal said.
Although siblings have a tendency to push each other’s buttons, at the end of the day they all come together which has kept this group of young farmers going over a stressful harvest period.
