RECEIVING only 130 millimetres of rain for the growing season has meant water use efficiency has been handy for third-generation Cunderdin farmer Ash Teakle this year.
Managing 5000 hectares of owned and leased property with his father, Ross, Mr Teakle said 90mm of rain in February and March had "saved their bacon".
Despite the family's grain and sheep farm's rainfall being well below its yearly average of 330mm, the property's yields were looking average to slightly above average this season.
"It's really amazing what you can do these days with limited rainfall," Mr Teakle said.
"2010 was one of our drier years since the 1980 drought and in that year we averaged one tonne per hectare, but 10 years later we're probably achieving double that with the same amount of rainfall.
"It might be a combination of our grain genetics getting better, our no-till farming systems and, generally speaking, we are sowing earlier than ever before.
"While the crop didn't have a lot of moisture in the grain, it had just enough, so we were very lucky."
Mr Teakle said he had been talking to their agronomist to determine why his farms water use efficiencies had been so high this year compared to a normal, average year.
"It would be good to know what has happened this year - whether it was environmental factors or something we've done that has helped us out," Mr Teakle said.
Starting harvest on October 20, at the time of writing the family was on track to finish last week.
Two rainfall events in November which dropped about 20mm on the property didn't impact the farm's operations, apart from putting a stop to harvest for a few days.
"The first rainfall event came after a block of three solid weeks, so, just quietly, we were actually quite grateful to have a little break," Mr Teakle said.
Half of the family's crop is wheat, while the remaining half is made up of barley, canola and lupins, with one paddock of oats for stock feed.
"Our barley and canola will be at or be slightly above our long-term average, our lupins are going to be well above our long-term average and our wheat, which we were the most concerned about, is probably going to be bang on our long-term average," Mr Teakle said.
When the barley tariffs were announced earlier this year, the Teakles had just finished seeding their final paddock of barley.
"Even if we did have the opportunity to change our cropping rotations I'm not sure we would have anyway," he said.
"The barley prices took a hit early on but they were coming off record highs, so if we're getting $270 a tonne for barley now - it's not bad at all."
With about 1100 self-replacing Merino ewes, the property's cropping-to-livestock ratio has been fairly constant over the years, sitting at about 90:10.
However Mr Teakle said he had been increasing the property's livestock numbers more recently to increase the benefits of having a dual operation.
"For our livestock to become a true risk mitigation tool, they probably need to be at a minimum of about 25 per cent of our operations," Mr Teakle said.
Aiming for a 100pc lambing percentage, most recently the average has sat at about 95pc.
"That's an area we would like to work on," Mr Teakle said.
"We shear the flock in early August, the lambs get shorn in October and our wether lambs drop in April and May.
"We cut about 6.5 kilograms of 20-21 micron wool off the sheep.
"We only stock feed during the lambing season and get another 50mm of wool off the lambs before we sell them at about 12 months of age.
"By the time we sell them they're averaging 23-24 kilograms dressed."
For 10 years the family also ran Poll Dorset rams, however when the father-and-son duo slightly expanded their operations through some leased farms, they found running two different flocks was too much work for just the two of them and a couple of casual workers.
"We decided to keep it simple and just run Merinos, as that's what we've always done so we know what we're doing," Mr Teakle said.
The Teakles initially started farming in South Australia but moved over to Northampton at the turn of the last century.
After attending Western Australian College of Agriculture, Narrogin, Mr Teakle's grandfather Reginald was travelling through Cunderdin when he decided he liked the area, so he set up the family farm there in the 1930s.
The family farm is now run by Ash and his father, Ross who is still actively involved in the day-do-day running of the farm.
"He'd probably tell you he's just the glorified shit kicker these days, but that's not true," Mr Teakle said.
When asked what he loved about farming, Mr Teakle said that no two days were the same.
"Being your own boss is great - you don't have a shop front where you have to open and close at a specific time, so as long as the work gets done there is usually some time off for the family," Mr Teakle said.
"We head down to a caravan park, Mandalay in Busselton for a couple of weeks in January after harvest and we look forward to that break every year.
"Our family's saying during harvest is 'we just have to get through to Mandalay'."
