"OUR whole farming theory is about having as many fallback positions as we can - you can't just have plans A, B and C, you need the entire alphabet."
Those are the words of South Stirlings farmer Derek Curwen and they are proving more important than ever this year with many parts of the Great Southern and South Coast suffering through the worst waterlogging in more than 15 years.
So far this year the Curwens have recorded more than 430 millimetres of rain which is more than the yearly average and they farm in an area where it's not uncommon to still receive 80mm or more in September and October.
The largest single rainfall day so far was on June 21 when 56mm fell, while May was the biggest month with a total of 135.5mm.
"We're probably a bit better off because we are early sowers and a lot of our crops were established quite early," Mr Curwen said.
"But having said that, a lot of our paddocks have been absolutely smashed by rain and waterlogging and there is at least 1000 to 1500 hectares that we will have to reseed and that will likely be a short-season barley.
"The wet years tend to stay wet so I'm not expecting the rain to stop anytime soon and we won't start reseeding until at least the end of July as we can't even get into the paddocks."
Over the past five to seven years, the Curwens have been seeding earlier and earlier in order to utilise grazing crops for livestock - they have about 8000ha of crop and 30,000 adult sheep plus lambs.
This year 1200ha of canola was sown on March 12, a month ahead of when the majority of farmers are starting to get crops into the ground.
"Nobody has ever done that on the South Coast but we're just pushing the boundaries all the time," Mr Curwen said.
"Those paddocks were sown on last year's sheep pasture paddocks which is part of the reason they're doing reasonably well as they have organic nitrogen from the soil.
"I'm not quite sure how it's going to turn out, but it looks a hell of a lot better than all of the stuff that went in in the middle of the wet, so the story is yet to be written."
In 2005, which was the last time the waterlogging was this bad, they reseeded crops in August, mainly to cover up the paddocks so they didn't blow away, and those crops ended up going 3.5 tonnes per hectare.
However it wasn't all like that and the average yield was 1.1t/ha, which is very low considering what it costs to produce a crop in the high rainfall zones.
Mr Curwen - who farms alongside his wife Kim, sons Reece and Guy and their partners Elsa and Peta - works on a philosophy that you can't fight the weather, so it's necessary to have systems in place that work no matter what is thrown your way.
While it takes capital and a lot of effort to set-up a good system, it's critical for success - a lesson that was almost learnt the hard way in 2019 when the Curwens had to feed 600t of lupins to 30,000 sheep.
While it turned out alright in the end, Mr Curwen said it made them realise they needed a better way.
"In that year you just couldn't buy pellets, so we've gone down the silage pathway and once that's setup it's quite a cheap source of feed and that has ensured the operation at another level," he said.
"If you've got nowhere to put your livestock you've got a problem, so we've got feedlots, confined feeding areas and plenty of silage on hand, so we'll never get caught out again.
"Last year we had 14,000 sheep in the feedlot and we had all of the facilities to do that with silage."
Livestock is quite profitable for the Curwens and having a balanced system works really well for them and makes them more sustainable.
When it comes to managing the livestock operation, Mr Curwen said a key element was that they treated all of their sheep hectares as cropping hectares.
"We have paddocks in pasture for two or three years and we'll run our sheep on these," he said.
"But they're mainly legume pastures which are fixing nitrogen, so when they become a cropping paddock, we get a free nitrogen hit for the crops and consequently better yields."
Every paddock that goes out of crop and back into pasture is sown with sour oats and clover.
This year, there was early rain in February and March which meant the pasture paddocks had been looking amazing.
However in the past month the pastures have gone to mush and while it doesn't look like it because they're still green, nothing is growing.
Luckily, the Curwens have a late lambing program - another key element to the systems they have in place - which means they have time for those pastures to recover when it eventually dries up.
"We late lamb because we can graze our crops for longer and we're not trying to move ewes with a small lamb," Mr Curwen said.
"We also try to lamb when there is maximum feed availability which allows us to run more stock per hectare."
When it comes to the cropping program, it's not just rainfall and waterlogging that is causing stress, but also a true worry as to where their staff are going to come from for harvest.
Historically the Curwens had a lot of casual staff from New Zealand but that border could shut at any point in time.
They've also used university students in the past, but suddenly everyone is chasing those students and unfortunately they don't have the best experience when it comes to heavy machinery.
"Our normal procedure is that we get international people here in October - usually from Germany, France or New Zealand - and we keep the ones that aren't going to smash everything," Mr Curwen said.
"We have two French backpackers that were here last year and they're coming back to us in a month.
"However, it's gotten to a point where a lot of those kids have been away from home for three or four years now and they just want to go and see their families, but there is no one else coming in."
Harvest typically finishes up for the Curwens before Christmas, but with the season the way it is, there's no hope that everything will be ready by then, so it will be a very extended harvest period.
While they're lucky to have some very good permanent staff, the fact of the matter is that it just won't be enough to cover the whole operation.
Two weeks ago, the Curwens thought they'd dodged a bullet when it came to the weather, but further heavy rainfall this month has flipped the script and they have no idea where everything is going to finish.
Despite that, they're still not writing the season off due to a firm belief that what they do in the bad years is what sets them up for the good years.
"You just never give up in this game and you have to play the season," Mr Curwen said.
"You can't beat it, so you just have to do your best to get out of it with your ass intact."
