BATTLING unpredictable weather can be a challenge for farmers, but it can also provide an opportunity to gain a fresh mindset and develop new strategies for the future.
After three consecutive dry years, this season is shaping up to be a belter for Cascade farmers Scott Welke, his wife Odile, brother James and sister-in-law Ash.
The Welkes, who run an 80:20 cropping and sheep enterprise across 10,000 hectares, have recorded more than 236 millimetres this year and said it was shaping up to be a "perfect season".
The unfavourable conditions in previous years have taught the couple valuable lessons in better livestock and pasture management.
One of the biggest challenges they faced last year was establishing a crop in high wind and low rainfall.
Mr Welke recalled three days in three weeks where winds reached and remained at 80 kilometres per hour.
He said what made the "horrendous situation" worse was spading and deep ripping in the area, which moved and swept stubble across the top of paddocks.
Stubble was already light on cover, due to similar conditions in 2019.
"The first wind event we handled, the second one took a bit (of cover) off and the third one wasn't nice to watch," Mr Welke said.
"Whereas if we had a big proper stubble we would have been OK.
"Despite that, last year turned out alright, particularly through Esperance's traditional sandplain country.
"Further north probably struggled and never recovered because they did not receive those rains to finish.
"We still got blow, but we hadn't seeded them yet, so we only had to reseed one paddock.
"In saying that, that was all our legume stubble, which had no cover and made it challenging."
Mr Welke said without early rainfall, legumes on the property's heavier soils were more difficult to access.
He said in those parts, crops were not in the ground until they received some rain in mid June.
"We physically could not get there until we had some rain," Mr Welke said.
"Then we needed a spring to get a crop up there and that just didn't happen.
"We were very much below average in that area, with 1.2 to 1.5 (tonnes per hectare) on the cereals, whereas other areas ended up being average."
Mr Welke pushed lambing back by four to six weeks, after he realised he wasn't able to utilise confinement feeding with an April drop.
He labelled not changing the time of lambing last year as a "critical mistake".
"I couldn't utilise confinement feeding well enough because sheep had come out to lamb and were put in fragile paddocks, so they had to come back into confinement.
"It was just an unfortunate accumulation of the three previous years.
"This year we didn't need to because it continued raining in the summer, so with a light stocking rate over all the stubbles away we went."
For Mr Welke another beauty of lambing later was the window it opened up to sell stock - if he needed too.
He said he was caught out last year because he was lambing at a time when he should have destocked.
"It delayed destock by about a month and while it didn't do any long-term damage, it was pretty stressful at the time," he said.
"We ended up sending ewes with lambs at foot away, which wasn't ideal, but fortunately they all travelled fine."
About half of the Welkes' flock was sold to the Eastern States given the high demand and prices.
They run 2500 head of ewes and while it was difficult, Mr Welke said it proved to be a "great economic" decision.
He aims to remain at 80pc crop and 20pc sheep, but will make the sheep work harder.
"The money was great there (out of the Eastern States) and we were very lucky to have that market otherwise I don't know what we would have done," Mr Welke said.
"We can squeeze our ewes up and utilise crop grazing techniques to grow feed.
"We can take that to grain as well, so make the sheep work a bit harder on the area we have and make our cropping work."
Mr Welke said his plan was to also grow crops earlier, including vetch and Illabo wheat, for grazing.
He said he was also not averse to planting oats or other varieties as an early grazing option.
"So we would have sheep out of confinement and onto those early sown crops, while we crop more, have dedicated pasture paddocks and spell at this time of the year," he said.
"That is so when sheep come off the crops, those pastures are already well established."
The earliest crop Mr Welke seeded this season was Illabo wheat in mid-March.
A rainfall event drove his decision to early seed and he was able to use it for six weeks of grazing from early May to mid June.
"I think it was probably a little too early," he said.
"We had a rainfall event and had deep ripped a lot of country, so it was bare and I wanted to get it covered as soon as possible.
"We can sow 8-9 centimetres deep into moisture to make sure it comes up and we know that March isn't usually as windy as it can be when winter fronts come through.
"If we can get it in while the ground temperature is warm then we can get the crop up and the ground covered.
"And then it gives us a bit of early feed that we can use."
Mr Welke said while putting sheep on deep ripped country may seem counter-productive, it worked with his system.
He takes the view that "sheep are only an 80 kilogram compaction animal" and won't compact the soil as much as big machinery.
"I think they are fine, especially on those sandier soils,'' he said.
"We were probably going to have to deep rip these soils every seven to eight years anyway."
Mr Welke said if he could make a crop work both ways then that is what he will do.
"That is because a) we are getting it covered early, b) it is giving me some early feed and c) I can harvest it.
"That's sort of the plan and that's what we will carry on doing, refining in our environment for us and probably even reducing the lay pasture area even more.
"So get that down and increase cropping to be able to then graze crop, have more crop to harvest and at the end still have the same amount of sheep.
"That's the aim."
