York family, Tammin, on track for a record harvest

Last year the Yorks - Oscar, 31, his father, National Farmers' Federation director and former WAFarmers president Tony and uncle Simon - harvested a record 30,000 tonnes of crop, averaging 2.8t/ha for wheat and 2.6t/ha for barley.

Even though it was an Anameka Farms' record, they lost yield - possibly as much as 1t/ha in their barley - last year due to a widespread and severe frost event, Oscar York pointed out last Friday.

There were no frosts this year on Anameka Farms - spread over several properties north and south of the Great Eastern Highway - and the crops were looking "really good", Mr York said, so a new farm harvest record is a distinct possibility.

Particularly if the early lupins, peas and canola yields so far are anything to go by.

From what he has seen through the windscreen of their remaining John Deere S680 header with 35.7 metre (45 foot) flex front, Mr York is quietly confident of a new record.

"We've started harvest slowly this year, we're limping along with just the one header working around the clock at the moment," he said.

After last year's record harvest the Yorks sold one of their two S680 headers and ordered two new John Deere X9 1000 combine harvesters on dual wheels with the 15.24 metre (50 foot) widest hinged draper fronts, to add to their John Deere fleet.

"The 2020-21 harvest seemed to go on forever," Mr York said.

"We started in October and were still going in January, so it took about 11 weeks instead of the usual eight.

"We put in 600 hours each on our two John Deere S680 headers."

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With dual separator, faster unloading and the wider front to handle additional crop flow, the giant X9s are expected to speed up this year's harvest.

When Farm Weekly spoke to Mr York they were in the yard at the local dealership, AFGRI Equipment Cunderdin, and were expected to be delivered this week.

"Because we've had some showers and no real hot spell, it hasn't really held us up not having the two new big headers working, but once they arrive we'll have three headers going around the clock until it (harvest) is done," Mr York said.

"We haven't started on the barley (3300ha) and we're probably a month off starting on the wheat (4900ha of RockStar, Scepter and short-season Vixen which was planted last in May).

"But the peas, lupins and canola we've done so far have been really good.

"A 200ha paddock of lupins went up to 2.6t/ha, which is the best we've ever done for lupins and the (direct headed) canola went 2.1t/ha which is about 1t/ha better than our record.

"It's been a really good season.

"We had ideal seeding conditions - after a dry summer we had an early break in April and seeding was amazing.

"Everything went smoothly and we had 320 to 400 millimetres of rain across the farm at the right time.

"Since August, we've had more than 100mm over most of the crop which is unusual and provides an ideal finish, so we're really excited for this harvest."

Always looking to improve efficiencies, maximise profit and improve sustainability, Anameka Farms is named after a variety of saltbush used to help restore saline lands as well as provide stock feed.

The Yorks run a self-replacing 4500 head Merino ewe flock and maintain 3500ha of sheep pasture in addition to their 11,500ha cropping program.

"One of the biggest things for us to reduce input costs has been our rotations with peas and lupins and adding sheep in the mix," Mr York said.

"A lot of our pasture is sown with the hard-seeded, deep-rooted annual legume, biserrula, which fixes nitrogen for crop rotations and is suited for use on acid soils.

"So this year we have 600ha sown with biserrula, which will set us up nicely for next year to plant wheat or canola and not need as much fertiliser."

The Yorks also spread Morrell lime, found on their own properties, to manage soil acidity, with regular soil testing helping to identify areas which need to be dressed.

"We used to truck coastal lime in from three hours away, so we've cut out the freight costs by using our own Morrell lime for the past two years and the results are really promising," Mr York said.

"Some of our neighbours are doing it as well after finding some in their own paddocks."