IT’S a hectic few weeks for Tenterden farmer Michael Webster, with a baby due, seeding under way, sheep to feed and Sulphate of Ammonia (SoA) to spread.
But Mr Webster is certain that everything will turn out fine once he gets into the seeding routine
He has plenty on his plate with 2000 hectares of arable farm, 3900 mated ewes, 750 wethers and 750 hogget ewes.
Mr Webster married Clare Beech in 2013 and the farm is owned by her parents, Stephen and Carly Beech.
After graduating from the WA College of Agriculture, Denmark, in 2008, he worked on a farm at West Tambellup for three years before working on another property east of Tambellup for another three years.
In 2015 he started working on the farm with Clare and her parents.
“We are still a family partnership, so everybody thinks they do everything, but I am sort of the cropping manager, Clare is the sheep manager and my father-in-law is the one with all the wisdom,” Mr Webster said.
“We equally share responsibility.”
Mr Webster grew up in Albany, a town kid, where he lived since the age of two to when he left school.
He had a farming background on his mum’s side and always wanted to be a farmer.
Mr Webster said he was happy to still have his in-laws active on the property.
“My mother-in-law does some sheep work, the books and helps us cart machinery around,” he said.
The farm consists of three blocks, with the home farm at west Tenterden and another block east of Kendenup.
Two weekends ago between 10 and 25 millimetres of rain was recorded over the three farms which Mr Webster said was enough to get going.
“It was pretty dry to start with, even though it was a really good rain,” he said.
“It won’t hang around for long if we don’t get another one soon.”
They had only 30mm of rain for summer and given their non-wetting soils, they are hoping for more rain over the next few weeks.
For the past three years they have had 100mm or more over summer, but Mr Webster feels that was out of the ordinary, with dryer summers being more the norm.
At harvest time the family decided to drop some canola out of the plan and run more wethers, “because of pricing and because those 750 wethers usually get sold now but we will try and keep them for another year”, he said.
“It was to do with the canola price which was pretty average and we thought we would make more money off running sheep,” Mr Webster said.
“Also because we are predominantly Merinos, our wool prices are one of our biggest incomes.”
Apart from that small change Mr Webster said there wasn’t much deviation in their seeding program of 563ha of canola, 265ha of wheat, 383ha of barley, 48ha of lupins, 64ha of oats and 364ha of pasture paddocks.
“We will fluctuate the sheep numbers to suit the season,” he said.
The farm used to be half sheep and half cropping but has changed to 70 per cent cropping and 30pc sheep.
On an average year the seeding program will be 50pc canola and the rest cereals, with the canola helping with rotation and breaks in disease cycles.
“We do some genetically modified (GM) canola, but most of it’s TT, and we select that on a paddock basis,” Mr Webster said.
“We try not to put too much GM in for the pricing as well, so it’s purely based on weed pressure.”
Since working on the farm Mr Webster said there were many challenges with one of the main ones being non-wetting soils.
“Trying to get the crop up is a bit of a challenge,” he said.
“It’s pretty much across every farm, some of it is non-wetting sand, to non-wetting forest gravels.”
Last year the moisture kept them going through the May/June dry spell and 2016 was another wet year.
“We had a lot of people around us who were extremely wet – we were pretty fortunate that we don’t have a lot of overly-wet country so we got away with it,” he said.
Mr Webster said they family considered themselves lucky they didn’t get too many waterlogging issues.
“We don’t have a lot of low country, but getting it wet is a bit of an issue,” he said.
During seeding they will use wetter to help get the seed established.
The farm usually misses out on major frosts as well.
“We are not too bad with frost and we have paddocks that we can seed early which are up high,” he said.
“But we have a few paddocks that we leave until last which are a bit more prone to frost.”
Another challenge last year was spreading urea when it was dry.
So this year they have focused on spreading Sulphate of Ammonia (SoA) which provides a bit of a nitrogen boost at seeding time.
“We had a paddock last year where we put the SoA out in front and it didn’t show any nitrogen deficiency throughout the growing season,” Mr Webster said.
The SoA is mainly sulphur but does have some units of nitrogen in it, which have helped the crop along.
“Originally we used it to tackle another issue and then we saw such a great response out of it, just the crop not lacking and we had good yield responses out of it too,” Mr Webster said.
“So we have decided to do all our cereal program with it.”
Mr Webster said they would be better off with Flexi-N but they weren’t set up for that.
“This is our second year doing it so we will see how it goes,” he said.
“It’s logistically annoying.
“You can only spread it real short, so it takes forever to spread and you just have 1000 other things on the go.
“It would be nice to just put Flexi-N down with the seed and not worry about it.”
Mr Webster said he got excited with the recent rainfall.
“It’s still a long way to go, but I think I get excited at the start of every season,” he said.
“It does come with its pressures and stresses but we are very fortunate to get some rain.
“It makes the decision to start seeding a bit easier, but then there is also the stress that it comes up and doesn’t get another drink.”
With seeding under way and his wife’s due date fast approaching, Mr Webster said the pending arrival was a priority at the moment.
“There’s just an extra bit of stress in seeding,” he said.
“Usually Clare does all the sheep and helps with the cropping.”