CBH GROUP board deputy chairwoman, Narembeen District High School board chairwoman, Rabobank WA Client Council member, Narembeen Hockey Club senior coach, Bachelor of Commerce degree student, farmer, wife and mother - just a couple of those roles would be enough to make any normal person squirm, but Natalie Browning takes them all on with passion, dedication and grace.
Ms Browning's name has become well-known in the world of Western Australian agriculture since she was elected to the CBH Group board in 2018 and appointed deputy chairwoman earlier this year.
While her various board and community based roles keep her busy, she is first and foremost a farmer.
Ms Browning and her husband Karl run a 7500 hectare grain property at Kondinin and while she is often busy fulfilling her other duties, they very much run the business together.
"My mum and dad live in Kondinin but they're small business owners, so I was a town girl who married into farming," Ms Browning said.
"I think Karl loves that I've got so much passion for it, we're a real team, we both live and breathe the farm business and we really do most of it side-by-side.
"In saying that, the financial side I look after, we always discuss it, but if he wants to buy a bit of machinery, he has to put a quote on the desk and get it past me."
The Browning's program is 100 per cent cropping, with anywhere from 60 to 70pc being sown to barley each year, this season all 4600ha went to Spartacus.
A further 1500ha went to wheat, while about 750ha was sown to lupins as the legume rotation and a further 750ha was kept aside for chemical fallow.
Ms Browning said agronomically, barley suited them well as they've got some really red heavy soil that it just loves.
"Our barley always out-yields our wheat and it has a two degree better frost tolerance than wheat, which is critical because frost is our biggest risk," she said.
"We farm in an area where we normally get some malt each year, but we're dependent on that last finishing rain which we often miss out on.
"Because of that we don't grow barley with the expectation it will go malt, instead we grow for yield and on a few of our paddocks we grow barley on barley on barley and it just keeps performing."
The original home block that the Brownings own is a reliable one that never really suffered a lot of frost, so when they started expanding and bought some land on the other side of town, some of it took a bit of getting used to.
"It's not until you farm it that you get to know it, but it's really open, flat country and if there is a frost around it just spreads across it," Ms Browning said.
"The benefit is that it is really good, strong soil with a lot of nutrients in it, so it only needs a low amount of inputs.
"We can grow a cheap barley crop on it and when it rains and we don't get frost, it really performs and in the years we do get frost, we haven't put as much money into it, so it's all about the gross margin."
If there's one element of farming the duo is most particular about, it is weed control and that is where the chemical fallow comes into play.
No crop is put onto the fallow paddocks, instead every time it rains and there is a weed germination, it gets sprayed.
Ms Browning said they might spray the chemical fallow up to five times in a year.
"When you've got bare ground like that and you spray it, you can get a really good idea of what resistance is there, which is really hard to tell in a crop," she said.
"With chemical fallow, you're putting inputs into it and not driving an income off it, so we've had to build our business to a point where we're financially stable enough to do it.
"I don't pass on compliments easily and I love to give my husband a hard time, but he is very good at what he does, he's a great farmer and if we have a paddock that has weed issues, he'll do what it takes to get on top of it, even if it takes three or four years."
Overall, the Browning's season is looking slightly above average, they've been lucky enough to miss out on the frost and received the right amount of rain at the right time.
"Our long-term average rainfall is about 330 millimetres per year - this year to date we've had 230mm and up to 50mm of that fell in summer, so there hasn't been a lot of winter rainfall," Ms Browning said.
"But we have been under the right clouds at the right time, we might not have got a lot, but we got what we needed when we needed it.
"In September we had some warm weather and some of our later crops were looking a bit sad, but we were able to jag between 10mm and 17mm which was enough to keep them going."
When it comes to seeding, the Brownings space their program out and don't wait for the weather, instead they want to be going by April 15, but won't finish until the end of May or early June.
The reason for that is two-fold - firstly frost is their biggest risk and secondly, they want a bit of rain throughout seeding.
"We were lucky this year, we had a fair bit of crop in early April and we jagged 10mm on it and it came up," Ms Browning said.
"At this end of the season there is normally a really high frost risk, but we've missed that this season, although in other years, we can have great looking crops and they can get hit by frost.
"You see these white tips on the crops at the moment that look like frost, but that's actually because of the dry this year, these dry finishes can do as much damage as frost, but it's just not as well known."
Moving into harvest, the Brownings will likely operate a team of up to eight which includes Natalie, Karl, Brett (a full-time staff member), Deb (Natalie's aunty who is employed full-time to help look after the kids), Brett's son (who is joining the team as a full-time trainee), a header driver (Natalie's brother), chaser bin driver and possibly another truck driver.
"The number of staff we operate with at harvest fluctuates with the season," Ms Browning said.
"We have two of everything - headers, chaser bins - in a bad year we might only run one to try to drive the business as efficiently as possible, but I think this year we'll have everything going.
"I like jumping on the header and keeping that knowledge there, so I will do at least a few days once I finish my university exams in November.
"I've also got my road train licence last year, the payload is 55 tonne and I didn't get to use it last year and I really want to."
On top of everything else she does, Ms Browning's proudest and most important role is mum to her three children - Chloe, 5, Noah, 10, and Jace, 12.
"They're very resilient and confident kids, I spend a lot of time away, so as long as the kids are happy, I'm happy and my aunty Deb lives here on the farm and helps to look after them."
"Jace is his father's son - he has that genetic understanding of farming, he is so switched on and he really loves it.
"Noah is a bit more creative, I have no idea where he gets it from but he's very artistic, while Chloe is a little go-getter and she really loves the farm as well."
