Spud goes with the flow on Corrigin farm

Mr Turner's home farm is 14 kilometres west of Corrigin, where he crops about 6000 hectares, half owned and half leased, that is spread in all directions from the centre of town.

This year, his program was made up of about 2000ha of wheat, 1300ha of barley, 1100ha of lupins, 700ha of export hay and 600ha of canola.

There is no denying that rainfall in the area was down on long-term averages - normally the farm receives 300 millimetres of usable rain, but this year it received 280mm overall.

"We got 20mm in November, during harvest, which wasn't useful, plus 40mm in March which isn't growing season, so that's 60mm in total which takes us to only 220mm of usable rain," Mr Turner said

"With summer rain, if you get a significant amount, it definitely does help as that subsoil moisture is really useful, but most of the time we're seeding dry."

The season started as it usually would, with seeding beginning on April 20, just before the traditional Anzac Day kick-off.

There was not a lot of moisture around, but like a lot of people these days, Mr Turner started early and kept seeding late in order to spread the frost risk.

"This year the earlier crops are definitely the better ones, the later they were sown, the less yield we are getting because of the lack of rainfall," he said.

"We do get a lot of frost through this region, although we haven't had a lot of bad frost in the past five years, but it does happen and that's why I don't put everything in early.

"That's also why we grow hay, because it spreads that frost risk even more - 10 to 15 years ago, with a bad frost, we had some big losses, but we seem to have been able to minimise that now by bringing the hay in and seeding longer."

When it came to choosing what to plant, Mr Turner only reduced his barley by a couple of paddocks as a result of the Chinese tariffs announcement, choosing to change some hectares to hay.

But at the end of the day, it hasn't made much of a difference - he signed some barley up earlier in the year for $270 per tonne before the price dropped, then signed some more up last month for $270 again, so nothing really changed.

In terms of varieties, Scope and Planet were seeded and while it wasn't a great year for the latter due to the lack of rainfall, Scope was the main choice and seems to have yielded well.

The 2000ha of wheat was split almost 50:50 between Australian Premium White (APW) and noodle varieties.

For APW, sowing was predominantly to Scepter with a little bit of Mace that was left over, while the noodle was split between Kinsei and Ninja.

Calingiri had been the noodle of choice for many years and served the Turners well, but the market doesn't want it anymore, causing the change.

Mr Turner said overall the crops were looking exceptional for the rain they've had.

"Barley has ranged from 1.5 tonnes a hectare on the worst, up to 4t/ha, so hopefully that will average above 2.5t/ha, which would be great for the year," he said.

"Wheat is looking similar but we won't know for sure until we get in there because we're down on rainfall.

"The canola did get a little bit frosted, that probably only averaged 700 kilograms a hectare, but ranging from 500kg/ha at the bottom of the hill to 1.4t/ha at the top."

With farmers consistently able to do more with less rain, the big question is how they manage it and for Mr Turner it comes down to three main things - early seeding, no-till farming and lots of lime.

"Using lime means the roots can explore further down and access more stored moisture, while by not working the ground twice and then seeding it, we're conserving moisture that way as well," he said.

"We have done mouldboarding on light sands in the past which worked really well, but it's been five years since we did that.

"I'm hoping to do more in time, but we haven't had enough rain to do so over the past couple of seasons."

The other big change Mr Turner has noticed over the past 30 years of being a farmer, 20 of which has been on his own, is the price of machinery and repairs.

"The sheer dollars that we're dealing with is difficult to get your head around, but once you've done that it's OK and it's alright spending those big dollars if you've got them coming in," he said.

"Very rarely do we buy new machinery, we'll buy second-hand machines that have already depreciated - our headers now are 18 to 20-years-old, but they still do what we need them to do and we use them for four to six weeks of the year.

"I probably wouldn't get $50,000 for one of my headers now and I've got four of them, but I'd rather have $50,000 sitting in the shed for 11 months of the year, than $800,000 sitting in the shed."

While he does believe in changing, evolving and adapting with the times, Mr Turner is also a firm believer that if you focus on the basics and make sure you've got a clean crop, you're already halfway there.

He also doesn't do a lot of the one percenters, seeing it as a potential waste of money, and instead puts in his trace elements (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) and hopes for rain.

"We're not running seed destructors at this stage, but we vary our rotations, use different groups of herbicides, lots of water and at this moment we don't have issues," he said.

"If the climate keeps getting drier we might start to use chemical fallow to retain some moisture for the next year, but I'm hoping every year isn't going to be like the past two.

"In saying that, we're growing pretty great crops for the rain we've had - some years you make a loss, some years you make money, that's just farming, but we've always got something to harvest."

While the rain didn't deliver in the growing season, at least not as much as any farmer in the area would have liked, it did turn up in November with about 20mm falling.

That rain hasn't seemed to have caused any quality issues - mainly because it came in smaller increments of 1.5mm, 7.5mm and 10.5mm - but it did cause delays to harvest.

Mr Turner and his team, which is vastly made up of his family, only managed five days of harvest in two weeks because of the moisture, but he said that sort of weather was common in the Corrigin area at that time of year.

"It's normally not until December that we get a long period of time harvesting without a weather break, in November we always seem to get something," he said.

"Normally we start harvest in the middle of November if it's been a kind season and you can still get a stop then due to the rain, but this year we started towards the end of October.

"I don't look for an end date, it will be when it will be - my boys often say we should be finished by a date and I tell them we're not even a quarter of the way through and we'll finish when we finish."

During harvest, Mr Turner runs four headers, two chaser bins and two trucks and he isn't short of a hand when it comes to workers on the farm.

Whether it be for his own operation or for his contract harvest/spraying business, his wife Glenys and four children all pitch in.

Glenys also owns a cafe in town, while the two oldest sons Jacob and Steven are both back on the farm and committed to staying.

His third child Mitchell is studying at WA College of Agriculture, Narrogin, but has finished for the year and is back on the farm driving a header, while the youngest Maddison is in year 10 at Narrogin Senior High School and is committed to becoming a paramedic.

Mr Turner said Jacob, Steven and Mitchell all seemed to be keen on farming and planned on staying.

"I don't know if there is any right or wrong way to teach them, everybody has to learn and get hands-on experience, it can be trying at times, but I enjoy having them here," he said.

"I still make most decisions, but when we do our farm planning, Jacob and Steven are there to help as it's how they learn - they make suggestions, sometimes we do them and sometimes we don't, if I've been there and it doesn't work I'll let them know.

"We haven't done a lot in the way of succession planning yet but we are starting to talk about it, so if all four of the kids end up wanting to come back, we'll make it work."