SIX years ago I visited Quairading farmer Darryl Richards to talk about his plans to grade out 30 kilometres of contour banks.
The goal was to pull out fences in paddocks earmarked only for cropping and to continue a mixed farming enterprise, which includes more than 2500 head of Merinos and a mob of White Suffolks and 2400 hectares of cropping.
"Was it only six years ago?" asked Mr Richards in reply to my question of visiting him to see what progress he had made.
And when I arrived on the farm recently his first words were, "I can't believe the changes we've made in just six years".
With the help of his son Matt and farm hand Derik, the banks have all been graded, single trees and rock heaps have disappeared and paddocks have been rearranged into longer runs to enhance guidance.
But trees still play a part in Mr Richards' policy of planting 200 trees for every tree he takes out.
While he's not going into controlled traffic farming, he is establishing longer straight lines, up to 2.3km long and employing guidance for up and back workings.
By definition, longer, straighter lines will create more operating efficiencies throughout the year and place less stress on machines - and operators, who will no longer have to negotiate odd shapes and small boundary runs that were created by obstacles.
And it means there's even less need for auto boom shut-off, even though they employ it, because spraying is now along uninterrupted straight lines.
"At the moment power poles are our biggest obstacle, particularly when spraying," Mr Richards said.
"That might change in the future if and when solar grids are set up on this property."
The decision to take out the banks was an easy one given a number of factors but also the desire to crop unproductive country.
"The banks had served their purpose and had become a haven for insects, weeds and weed seeds," Mr Richards said.
"With no-till and gypsum treatments the rain is staying where it falls.
"Right now we're in the process of finding out what's working and what isn't and it will be slow steps, including deep ripping some sandy country."
Ironically Mr Richards said he still had miniature banks, created by his Ausplow DBS precision seeder, "which are far more effective and profitable than contour banks".
"Every single tyne and press wheel on that machine creates a furrow which in effect is like a mini-bank," he said.
"It promotes water harvesting so rain stays where it falls.
"Before we got the DBS, the water would sheet off paddocks."
Combined with the DBS action of deeper working to aerate the soil, treatments of lime sand, gypsum and dolomite, where appropriate, have promoted a healthier soil.
"I think the soil is in far better condition than it was 40 years ago," Mr Richards said.
"We test every paddock every three years and soil pH readings are rising.
"We are now in a position of having a handle on a more balanced approach to fertiliser application with pH readings from 4.7 to 8 on our mainly medium to heavy country.
"The soil structure is slowly improving and we're starting to see earthworms which tells me that our old Sunday soils are a thing of the past."
Interestingly, since Mr Richards purchased his first DBS 12 years ago, his seeding rate for wheat has been 50-60 kilomgrams per hectare.
"We cut back from 80kg/ha which was to help control weeds but now with the way we manage our paddocks and have them clean at seeding, we know every seed planted by the DBS will come up and compete with any weeds, so we're confident of sowing at 50-60kg/ha," he said.
"We've even tried sowing barley at 27kg/ha and it yielded the same as our crops sowed at 40 and 45kg/ha rates.
"The thing about the DBS is that the tyne doesn't move and we can dig as deep as we want without mucking up seeding depth, which is a set-and-forget system."
Of course the cry from opposition camps is that you need a rock picker if you buy a DBS.
"We've brought up a lot of rock but the bigger ones are getting less and less, but more of the football size," Mr Richards said.
"And working in straight lines there is less inclination for that to happen as tynes tend to ride over the rock rather than digging in and pulling it up."
The other aspect of re-arranging paddocks into longer runs is the enhanced guidance.
"Depending on the season we can sow alongside old rows and not disturb the stubble," Mr Richards said.
"We're operating the DBS on 12 inch (30cm) spacings and we're getting virtually zero bar drift on the flat paddocks.
"Now and again you see a wave in a row which tells you the bar has drifted a bit but generally we go as close as possible to the stubble at about one and a half inches (38mm) to try to tap into last year's residual fertiliser and access any moisture for the new plants."
Overall, Mr Richards said the main standout of creating longer runs was spraying.
"We're saving a lot of chemical with no overlaps and maximising the spraying windows with time efficiencies because we're not going back doing cut-outs," he said.
Since 2014 Mr Richards also has seen crop varieties change with improved breeding in barley, wheat, lupins and canola varieties for higher yielding.
"This year we trialled a Hybrid TT canola and its looking good and appears to have better vigour than the other variety TT Benito," he said.
On the machinery side, he now owns a 10,000 litre capacity Beverley Hydra Boom trailed boomsprayer, with Airmatic nozzles.
The latter technology means he can adjust nozzles from the cab which was pure fantasy thinking 40 years ago.
"Looking back there's no doubt we've experienced the greatest advances in agriculture's history and my son will probably experience even greater," Mr Richards said.
His appreciation for new technology, especially in machinery, is reflected against the backdrop of his first arsenal of machinery.
Memories flood back of a Chamberlain Super 90 tractor, a 22 disc Connor Shea plough, an Inter 5-11 combine seeder, a 1000L capacity Computorspray trailed boomsprayer with a 12.2 metre boom and his first header - a New Holland M 135 (with a cab and a fan).
"It held 15 bags (three tonnes), had no hydraulic auger, no air conditioning, no radio and no guidance and a massive 19 foot (5.75 metres) front," Mr Richards said with a laugh.
Then machinery evolved with a Steiger Bearcat 4WD tractor boasting 164 kiloWatts (220 horsepower) which was used to pull two Inter combines on a twin hitch.
Combine seeders were left by the wayside in the late 1970s with the emergence of broadacre seeding bars, particularly from Australian manufacturers such as Connor Shea, John Shearer, Horwood Bagshaw and Napier Grasslands and later Ausplow, Jenke and Simplicity Australia.
Mr Richards retains the DBS, which he regards as the Rolls Royce of seeding bars but he and wife Cath have engaged in long talks about other machinery requirements.
Since my first visit, he now has a new Nyrex 32 tonne capacity tandem chaser bin and a 270kW (370hp) John Deere tractor that was earmarked for chase and spraying work.
There was a good reason for the Nyrex.
"I was doing the night shift on the header since I was 21 and got tired of unloading into field bins," Mr Richard said.
"Night work generally is not the safest practice so we're working during the day now and it's a faster operation with better synchronisation of trucks coming back from the bin to be re-filled."
The improved timeliness is courtesy of a John Deere S780 header with a 13.6m front in combination with the Nyrex bin, which according to Mr Richards unloads in four to five minutes.
A new Degelman rock picker debuted on the farm this year with the focus on stockpiling rocks for later use for dams and erosion points in roaded catchments.
With his sheep, he has been busy assessing pasture varieties.
Five years ago he grew Bartolo bladder clover on a 123ha paddock.
"The sheep did well getting plenty of bulk and the following barley crop out-yielded other paddocks by 750kg/ha," he said.
"The Bartolo conservatively provides about one and a half times more feed than Santiago medic in heavy country and we'll stick with it.
"On the lighter country we're probably more inclined to go with serradellas because with false starts it's hard to establish the clovers."
Other changes involving livestock include purchasing seven Universal Feeders with mineral supplement attachments and more emphasis on pregnancy testing to eliminate dries.
"If water continues to be a problem for stock in the future, we may have to drop off sheep to cropping paddocks," Mr Richards said.
"Over the years we're not getting the run-off like we used to which has seen us put in roaded catchments.
"The district average annual rainfall is between 250 and 275 millimetres so it's drier now than the old days when we used to get 375mm.
"An indication of this is nearby Lake Meares which was always full when I was younger.
"Now it's more like a one in 11 years event.
"Fortunately we've got two soaks and they supply water to surrounding properties and we've also extended a double dam to 27,000L as a back-up for the soaks.
"With the recent rains it's now quarter full."
Another strategy is to access water from three bores.
"The bores are starting to go salty which is no good for the lambs so we're thinking of using a reverse osmosis process to purify the water," he said.
Welcome to the new world of farming.
