IF Kojonup farmer Robert Egerton-Warburton could request the perfect season, he would have asked for exactly what 2020 offered - with the right amount of rain falling at the right time, little disease pressure and healthy crops combining to create excellent yields.
In his area, heavy downfalls often create issues with waterlogging which can cause soils to become too wet and boggy, leading to the pruning of roots.
But in 2020 the rainfall was consistent, with about 10 millimetres falling almost every week during the growing season and a rain at the end of October topping the crops up nicely.
Couple that with a warm winter, no frost and a long, cool finish to the season and you get what can only be described as a dream year.
In total, Mr Egerton-Warburton received 460mm for the year, about 420mm of which fell during the growing season.
It's more than what he received last year, when only 380mm fell, but less than what would come down in any normal year.
"In 2016 we had a metre of rain and that was one of our worst cropping years ever because it was just ridiculously wet," he said.
"It really doesn't matter how much you get, it matters more when you get it and this year we've had 10mm pretty much every week, so everything was getting used by the crop, fertiliser efficiency was perfect and it was almost like irrigation farming.
"On the other hand, if you get 400mm, but 150mm of that falls in July, it's not going to be a great year."
Mr Egerton-Warburton runs a mixed system, with about 60 per cent cropping consisting of 3000 hectares and 40pc livestock including almost 20,000 head of Merino sheep.
While the rain had been perfect for cropping, it also didn't cause any issues for the sheep.
The warm winter created good growth and meant the weaners had green feed available up until the beginning of December, only moving onto stubbles within the past few weeks.
"The year started off pretty tough because of the lack of water from last year, but once the green feed came along it was fine and we've got really good water now," Mr Egerton-Warburton said.
"We've invested a lot over the past 10 to 15 years in water, by way of dams and catchments, plus we've got a lot of drains, which most people have been pushing out, but we keep putting them in.
"If we get 40mm of rain, we will fill the dams and that's what we're building our system on - we've got three major water reserves around the property, they're big dams which will hold three years of water and keep us going."
The 3000ha cropping program was largely dominated by 1800ha of canola and the rest made up of wheat, barley, oats and a small amount of lupins.
This year a little bit of what was going to be barley was moved into oats, although not because of the Chinese barley tariffs.
Typically they have a very heavy canola and barley rotation, but the diseases in barley are an issue and spreading the risk is necessary.
With that in mind, Mr Egerton-Warburton plans to go back to planting a little bit more wheat and oats to try and spread the rotation out, with barley only going in a paddock every four years.
"This is such a good canola growing area - if we can get it in early, generally it doesn't get frosted, we always have a really good run with it and it would be our most reliable crop," he said.
"Wheat is traditionally susceptible to frost, we haven't grown a lot of oats because they don't tend to yield that well and lupins haven't been that strong here in the past.
"But the genetics in oats and lupins have come a long way over the past few years, so we're now getting 3.5 tonnes per hectare lupin crops and around 5t/ha oats crops, but barley still out yields all our other cereals by one or two tonnes."
The seeding program began in mid-April, as it tends to every year, with the aim always being to have everything in by May 25.
A precision seeder is used and SE14 Moisture Retention Agent is injected on the seed with UAN across every hectare, with the soil type of the paddock determining the rate, so Mr Egerton-Warburton can be confident that with 5mm of rain, the crop will come up.
"Out of 3000ha, probably only 500ha of that actually went into moisture this year, whereas 15 years ago we would have started around May 15, so we've moved seeding a full month earlier in that time," he said.
"That's due to technology - we've got the equipment to get over the hectares and the precision seeders to be able to make a perfect seedbed, with wetters and the new varieties helping with earlier plantings.
"All of that contributes to the confidence to be able to get the seed in the ground early and get the crop away."
Along with allowing earlier seeding, the new technology and various developments have also helped to push yields in the area far past what they used to be.
Mr Egerton-Warburton believes that with the sort of rainfall area he is in, he should be getting 6t/ha for wheat and 3t/ha for canola.
"It's just taken us 15 years to work out how to do it because we are traditionally a sheep area," he said.
"Ten years ago we would have loved to be getting 2t/ha canola crops, now that's pushing to 3t/ha and there are farmers that are pushing to 4t/ha, so that's the direction that we're all heading in."
In terms of varieties, it's a balancing act between choosing what has yielded well in the past and staying up-to-date with the latest offerings.
With canola, the latest and highest yielding variety that has good black leg resistance is usually selected, with a lot of TT and some GM grown this season.
For barley, Planet is the seed of choice - it is by far the highest yielding variety for the area, which is the aim instead of trying to hit malt grade.
Illabo is grown as a winter wheat which allows the versatility and flexibility to plant from mid-April right until the end of May.
Harvest started in early December, a week later than it usually would, mainly due to the 40mm of rain in November which meant the canola kept hanging on.
"They're big crops and they take a lot of getting through the header, when they were green it was a nightmare so we left it and decided to come back a week later," Mr Egerton-Warburton said.
"We were pulling 300t of canola off a day which is great but does mean we weren't not getting through the hectares quickly, however I'm not going to complain about that.
"It's been a typical harvest weather pattern this harvest with lots of showery cool days slowing us down."
The average for canola this season was 3t/ha, with a few paddocks going well over that.
In general, canola yields were very consistent from paddock to paddock, so it's excellent in comparison to the long-term yield average of 2.2t/ha.
This year, Mr Egerton-Warburton and full-time worker Grant Sermon drove the headers, eldest daughter Lucinda and her friend Toby Miller drove the chaser bins and youngest daughter Zara was in charge of keeping everyone fed and clothed.
