FOR woolgrowers Mal and Alison Ballard, 1970 was a very big year - they produced their first wool clip on their leased Kojonup farm and they got married.
On Wednesday last week they came up to Perth to watch their 50th wool clip sell in the Primaries of WA catalogue at Western Wool Centre live auctions.
In 50 years of producing wool at Kojonup, the Ballards have only ever dealt with three regular wool brokers to sell their annual clips.
They started off with Des Sheedy (who went on to co-found Primaries of WA in 1981) and Simon Joel (who joined Primaries in 1982), who were then with the wool division of Western Livestock Ltd, then went with them to Primaries.
"I haven't sold my wool through anyone else (Western Livestock and Primaries)," Mr Ballard said.
"I do a lot of work on other farms and I've come across all the other brokers, but the thing that impressed me about Primaries and before them Western Livestock, is that they treat everybody the same," he said.
"It didn't matter whether you had five bales or 500 bales, they looked after you the same and a lot of other brokers didn't.
"They were decent people to deal with and I've always had a good relationship with the people I've dealt with, but I must admit I've only ever dealt with three people.
"Simon Joel handled our wool for goodness knows how long, then (former Primaries managing director and now executive general manager global for The Woolmark Company) Matt Pedersen and now Stephen Squire - they're really the three I've dealt with.
"Although one year Tim Chapman looked after us when Simon Joel pranged himself up or something."
Mr Ballard, a spritely 76, grew up on a wool property at Coomandook in South Australia, about 100 kilometres south east of Adelaide and farmed with his father.
"I came over here originally in 1964 to work for three months and worked for 18 instead, then I went back to South Australia and realised the best part of it was the road west," he said,
"I came back over here a few times, then I was offered a lease so I took it up and I've been here ever since.
"I met Alison just before I decided to come west - she came off a fruit block up near Renmark - and she was offered a teaching job over here so she came over too and we were married in 1970."
The Ballards leased a farm at Kojonup and two years later bought their own farm on the next block, about 10km away and drove their sheep from one property to the other across the farms in between.
"It's only a small farm, 700 acres (283 hectares) and we've had a couple of dry years and red clover disease, so our stock numbers are way down," Mr Ballard said.
"It's been a tough year, it was a very, very late start then we had a false break that killed all the clover, so when it did break there was nothing there to germinate.
"Normally, we'd shear another 200-300 more than what we did this year (they shore 900, including lambs, in late January).
"We used to shear early January back in the day when I was young and fit and used to shear all my own.
"But those days are gone, I let the contractor do it now.
"To sell (wool) in February if I was still doing them, I'd have to start shearing on the first of January.
"Back in those days I had four daughters so I could co-opt them as shed hands during the school holidays, whether they liked it or not.
"One of them still came down this year during shearing to help.
"We're on Merinotech bloodlines and have been ever since Merinotech started and I've been very, very pleased with what I get from Merinotech.
"We only have one main line of wool, there's no second line, no tender line, it's just something I try and do.
"I tell the shearers, if they come across a sheep that's hard to shear for whatever reason, for goodness sake mark it, because if you don't you'll be shearing it again next year - I think they marked six this year."
Their shearing produced 19 bales in total, the main line of nine bales averaging 18.2 micron wool with 91 millimetre staple length, 35N/kt staple strength and a yield of 67.3pc.
A top line of four bales averaged 17.5 microns, 94mm, 28N/kt and 68.5pc yield and there were three bales of pieces and three bales of lambs' wool.
The Ballards sold all their wool into a strong market last week with good demand for all lines which returned better-than-expected prices.
Their top line achieved 1188 cents per kilogram greasy.
