BEING too wet to seed is an unfamiliar issue for most Wheatbelt farmers, but it's a problem east Hyden farmer Dennis Gittos faced after receiving 75 millimetres of rain over recent weeks.
With most of his canola, lupins, hay and about a third of his barley crop in, Mr Gittos took a few days off in the first week of May to let the soil moisture decrease, before continuing with his seeding program of about 120 hectares per day with an aim to finish by the end of the month.
"We had 23mm in early April and started sowing canola on April 9," Mr Gittos said.
A combination of market conditions and the agronomy of his paddocks determined his cropping ratios with 1800ha barley, 860ha wheat, 340ha export hay, 330ha lupins and 200ha of canola in this year.
"When everything went down with China last year, we did change one of our barley paddocks to wheat, but it all seemed to work itself out anyway," Mr Gittos said.
"You would think if the price of barley was going to plummet it would have been last year and it still held up, so we tend to give a lot of weight to the agronomy of our paddocks when deciding our cropping ratios."
Mr Gittos purchased his 2800ha broadacre cropping farm, Minni Downs, in late 2019 from previous owners Landon and Adriana Bristow, whom he also leases another 1000ha of land from.
"Because it was our first year last year we went pretty hard on wheat and barley and didn't have many break crops - we only had a little bit of lupins in and that was it," he said.
"This year we've put some canola in and did have some fallows in but now, because of the rain, I'd say those fallows will be going into canola.
"Because the hay market is down a bit we've only put in about two thirds of the hay that we were going to initially."
A second generation farmer, Mr Gittos studied agronomy for six years at the Muresk Institute and worked on his parent's, Peter and Lynette's, farms over the years.
His parents purchased their first farm in 1985 in Minnivale and went on to buy a sheep and cropping farm in Koorda in 1993 before moving to a sole cropping operation in Varley in 2005.
"When we left Koorda we sold our sheep because the farm we bought down in Varley didn't have any fences," Mr Gittos said.
"I don't think we missed them much either, they're a lot of work."
When his parents sold the farm in Varley and retired to Busselton at the start of 2019, Mr Gittos and his partner, Sandy, started to look to buy their own farm in the Hyden area.
Due to a limited selection of farms on the market at the time they struggled to find the right fit for them, so Mr Gittos opted to work for another farmer in Hyden during seeding.
Once that job finished, in order to buy some more time, the couple travelled around Australia in a caravan for six months with their three young children.
"We knew once we bought a farm we probably wouldn't get the opportunity to do something like that for a long time, so it was perfect timing for us," Mr Gittos said.
"But by the time we were three quarters of the way around Australia we still hadn't found a farm to buy back home, so we were getting a bit nervous.
"At first we thought we would try to get a farm a bit further west, but then we realised how much we love Hyden and that we wanted to stay out this way if we could.
"Landon rang us up and initially he had planned to farm for another year but changed those plans so that we could take over the farm earlier.
"They were bloody fantastic with us."
Meeting up just at the start of the year, the pair worked out a price for the farm and shook hands on it.
"They moved out of the main house and next door so we could move in to make it easier with the kids - and that was all just on a handshake deal," Mr Gittos said.
"He helped me out with hay last year and they were really good to us with the changeover, so we've been really lucky in that sense."
Despite having studied agronomy himself, Mr Gittos still pays an agronomist to help him out each year because of the ever-evolving nature of agriculture.
"The industry is always changing with new chemicals and things going on - so it's important to keep up to date and also reconfirm what you already know," he said.
Besides some help from his father as he needs him, Mr Gittos only has one worker from Chile who is towing the airseeder and lives on their property.
He said finding workers had been his biggest challenge since buying the farm.
"There have been a lot of Gumtree ads and there are a lot of backpackers who want to be paid a lot of money for these jobs but that have no experience whatsoever," Mr Gittos said.
"We found our worker through a job agency and he worked on a farm last season as a chaser bin driver, so he is doing a really good job and his brother works just up the road too.
"He's looking forward to seeing a bit of Australia after this job though, so I think it's going to become a bit of a problem in the long term as borders open back up and backpackers start to travel again."
Mr Gittos said the risks associated with farming were worth the rewards.
"In buying our own farm it brought my family a bit of security and the fact that every day and every year is a bit different with new challenges," he said.
"And there is always going to be a future in agriculture because everyone needs food."
