COMMITTED farmers, Murray Leach and son Peter have persevered through some tough seasons to continue running their sheep enterprise at Corrigin.
Originally from Tambellup, Murray first moved to Corrigin in 2005.
"Dad retired and my brother was interested in farming so he's farming at Broomehill with his family and we moved here," Murray said.
With Peter returning to the farm, Murray is now gradually handing over the reins.
"Peter and wife Megan are doing a lot of the farm work now," Murray said.
They own 4000 hectares and run a Merino flock of 1200 ewes.
Additionally, they run a cropping enterprise including barley, wheat and canola.
"Barley is our best crop by a mile, half of our program would be barley, with the balance wheat and canola," Murray said.
"We crop about 80 per cent of our paddocks."
Joining is at the start of February, with lambing in late June-early July.
"We try to lamb onto green feed," he said.
"The other reason we lamb at that time is that the two of us are really busy, so it's good just to be able to have them grazing in the paddock."
Shearing is in January to fit in with their other seasonal activities.
"We don't employ anyone so we have a pretty steady workload," Murray said.
When sourcing their rams, the Leachs use the Ledwith family's Kolindale stud, Dudinin.
"We were using East Strathglen bloodlines but when we came up here we changed to Kolindale, and we've been with it for 15 years now," he said.
The Leachs aim to sell their lambs at the beginning of April into the light shipper market.
"We'll shear them and put them on a truck, which takes them to one of our other blocks where they graze the stubbles before we sell them," he said.
When it comes to culling, all of their dry ewes are sold.
They draft at shearing time with their culls going to Katanning and they usually keep the rest.
This year due to a lack of feed, all of their ewe lambs from last year were sold to Eastern States buyers.
"It was tough, but they all went to good homes," Murray said.
In spite of having to sell all of their lambs, the Leachs made the decision to stay in the sheep industry, with Murray saying, "we just have to start again".
A fresh start has given them the opportunity to simplify their enterprise and reduce costs.
Murray said it wasn't a disaster because their oldest ewe was only five-years-old, so they will keep them for another season to rebuild.
"Rather than trying to push our numbers up, we'll just go the opposite way and keep it at a manageable level, that has worked well for us in the past," he said.
Keeping numbers low also means they aren't under as much pressure to source feed and water.
"I've seen people at the moment just buying in so much feed and carting water and when you count the dollars there's not much left," Murray said.
"There can be an immense amount of stress that comes with looking after a large number of sheep."
Murray said the current price of sheep had helped them to stay in the industry.
"It's made the decision to stay a lot easier and I think the high prices will continue because it has to if the industry is going to survive," he said.
Murray said he was astonished by the prices Eastern States buyers were willing to pay for sheep compared to the local markets.
He didn't understand how buyers could put sheep on a truck to the east and get more money than if they sold them locally.
The Leachs like the dual purpose ability of the Merino breed.
"They're just a good sheep," he said.
"In the past couple of years wool has made up for any difference in carcase weight but now it might be going the other way."
In previous years the Leachs have experimented with crossbreds.
"We did try some Dorpers over the top of some old Merino ewes and they did very well but that was when wool started to take off again so you had to keep them in separate paddocks and it got too hard," Murray said.
Another issue that they found with the crossbreds was that they struggled to sell them into a market.
"We couldn't get rid of them when they needed to go so in the end Merinos were just easier to handle," he said.
With cropping being their main source of income, choosing Merinos meant they were able to concentrate more on that side of the business.
The past few seasons and in particular 2019 have been very trying.
"The past three years have certainly been testing the friendship as far as seasons go because any money you make you're feeding it straight back into the business," Murray said.
Despite a short season due to a lack of rainfall, their cropping program did well.
"Basically it stopped raining at the end of August, but I was pleasantly surprised with how the crops went," he said.
The current season is showing some promise but they were still waiting for a big rain event.
"We really need a good rain to grow any feed because a lot of it has shot up and died," Murray said.
"We've put in probably 200ha of Serradella and that's looking OK, so we are hoping that will help to fill in the feed gap."