AFTER seeding into moisture, followed by steady rainfall, north Tammin farmer Scott Uppill was feeling positive about the grain growing season ahead.
"This is the most confident that I have been for a few years," Mr Uppill said.
"Normally at this time of year we have been hanging out for a good rain and the past few seasons have been below average.
"We're expecting to at least have an average year as we have reasonable subsoil moisture, but there are still a few things that could go wrong."
All the crops were out of the ground and were looking promising.
Mr Uppill is a fourth generation farmer, who farms with his brother and their wives.
They started seeding on April 8 and finished on May 22.
"We started sowing barley on April 20, which was maybe a little early for Spartacus barley but we had moisture in the soil, so we decided to go ahead," he said.
"We started Scepter wheat on April 28, which also could be said to be a little too early, but it has worked for us."
With minimal breakdowns, getting the crop in was relatively smooth sailing but they did have to stop for nearly a week in early May to wait for ryegrass to germinate.
"Rainfall in May germinated a lot of ryegrass - it was our third germination since March that we needed to kill," Mr Uppill said.
"By stopping seeding and waiting for the weeds to germinate, we were able to get a double knockdown.
"We waited for it to get to at least a leaf so it would get a good hit."
Since May 26 they have almost sprayed half of the farm once and have hit the lupins twice.
He said some crops were looking a little yellow from the cold but it shouldn't affect the yield or quality of the crop too much.
Some annoying weeds have been the trade-off for Mr Uppill having an excellent start to the year and good subsoil moisture meant crops had emerged one week after seeding.
When Farm Weekly visited last week, the farm had received more than 150 millimetres of rain for the year, which was well above the long-term average for this time of year of about 111mm.
May was an especially wet month for the property, with 56mm falling.
"It was one of the wettest Mays that we have had for 15 or so years," he said.
"Just in one day we had 24mm, which was our wettest single day recording for May since 2005."
The family runs a 100 per cent cropping enterprise and this year the crop program consisted of 20pc Spartacus barley, 10pc Barlock lupins, 5pc Bonito canola and 65pc Scepter and Chief wheat.
Keeping things simple and easy to manage is the mantra for a lot of the way Mr Uppill likes to farm.
"We try to keep our varieties minimal and the way we crop blocks is for ease of management and maximum profit per hectare," he said.
"The benefit of having less varieties or movement outweighs the risk of going for another few days.
"We don't change our crop percentages too much, as year-in, year-out wheat and barley have been our most profitable crops."
Sticking to a relatively similar program for the past few years, Mr Uppill said they have focused on greater efficiency, particularly with some recent machinery and equipment purchases.
They invested in a new John Deere 9420R tractor on singles with three metre spacing to suit their 12m line controlled traffic farming (CTF).
Before seeding in 2020 they purchased a triple seed/super bin from Kellerberrin manufacturer Hobbs Engineering.
"It has made filling up times and logistics more efficient, which has been good," he said.
"It has probably halved our fill-up time and at least we get 2-2.5 fills of wheat and barley out of it and we could save half to a full day of seeding a year.
"Hobbs Engineering is a good local business that we like dealing with."
The operation has been total cropping since 2005, which suits Mr Uppill well as he always preferred the cropping side.
"We went out of sheep due to the drier springs," he said.
"Having sheep decreased the workability of our paddocks and we have less erosion now.
"It's also made management much easier with no fence lines and one less thing to think about."
The property is concentrated at north Tammin and there is also a portion at north Kellerberrin, about 20 kilometres away.
The two locations provide risk diversification, particularly for rainfall, with Mr Uppill saying the Kellerberrin location tended to receive better rainfall and produce better yields.
Looking forward into the season, Mr Uppill said their main risk to look out for will be frost.
"It's on the back of our minds every year," he said.
"I've lost count of how much we have been affected by frost over the years."
Although they're off to a great start in terms of rainfall, lack of rain later into the season could also be a concern especially if there is not a soft September/October finish.
