After a bumper harvest, Marshall Bowey is rapidly expanding all aspects of their mixed farming operation in Kojonup

With an infectious enthusiasm for agriculture that flows through the entire family, Mr Bowey has grand plans for the dirt which his great-grandfather first worked on all those years ago.

The mixed farming operation stretches across about 7500 hectares in the Kojonup area and includes oats, hay, wheat, canola and a large livestock operation.

Describing his last year as "spectacular," Mr Bowey's family hit averages they had rarely seen before - with hay averaging seven tonnes per hectare and barley averaging 4.5t/ha.

Taking advantage of high canola prices, the family grew about 1000 hectares of canola, which averaged just below 3t/ha - with multiple areas reaching 4t/ha.

With sugary drinks to keep him going, Mr Bowey's harvest didn't finish until Friday, January 13 - slowed down drastically by the cooler weather and the increase in size of their operation compared to previous years.

The Kojonup operation hasn't had a day above 40 degrees this summer, meaning the moisture in the crops wasn't drawn out like it typically would be during harvest.

"We couldn't push out big hours, it made it even more stressful because we literally could only work 12 hours," Mr Bowey said.

"So that really made our program a little harder."

With such a late finish, the post-harvest jobs have been pushed back, and only now are headers getting cleaned and smashed tractor doors getting fixed.

They still have straw to finish, which is something that would usually be mostly completed by the time February rolls around.

The farm has expanded rapidly in the last few years, with the family taking on neighbouring blocks and lease properties in the area, with plans to continue on this trajectory.

With the rapidly-expanding farm, the family has adapted to new technology, such as the app Agriware.

Instead of Mr Bowey texting his cousins and other members of the family constant numbers, the app instantly updates and makes tracking a fast-growing operation much easier.

"We started using it because our program is getting a bit bigger than it's ever been and spreading out a lot," Mr Bowey said.

"Because there's four of us that work, it's really hard to keep communication up."

It's the livestock that Mr Bowey fell in love with as a child, and his passion for animals is evident when driving around the farm with one of his purebred kelpies, Scratch.

He plans on growing the farm's sheep enterprise from the 7000 lambs they currently feedlot to 50,000 lambs a year minimum - with the plan to double the 7000 lambs every year until that goal is reached.

He would also like to be running 15,000 head of sheep a year.

It's definitely ambitious, but Mr Bowey is confident it's possible.

Currently, the farm has about 2500 head of Kojak sheep, plus lambs, and 3500 head of Merino ewes.

With his past experience as an Elders stock agent, Mr Bowey said lambing percentages were a lot higher with Suffolk rams.

Because of their lower birth weights, he found they were able to push out lambs a lot easier - especially when twinning.

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"It means a slower growth rate, but I look at it as - I can make more money off more sheep, as opposed to making money off less sheep that are bigger earlier," Mr Bowey said.

"It's a numbers game, and you can always make money off a sheep you have, you can't make money off a sheep you don't have."

Mr Bowey believes he's grown a lot with his shedding sheep, and this season the farm also took on a new shearing team, GT Sheering, which he described as "fantastic".

"I cannot recommend them enough as shearers, they have been absolutely amazing and very easy to deal with," Mr Bowey said.

While Mr Bowey doesn't currently breed Merinos, he plans to in the future.

He loves working on the family farm, and feels fortunate to be so close to his entire extended family.

"To be able to see them and pop in for lunch or dinner is just amazing," he said.

"I have friends and their families are all over the world and they have Christmas once every three or four years - it's just a bit sad, really."

With that in mind, Mr Bowey is focused on succession planning and building the farm into something his kids would enjoy working on.

"There's no point in just building an enterprise for our kids if they're not going to be happy doing it," he said.

Mr Bowey wants to ensure the farm is in a position where it could pivot to account for whatever the kids wanted to do, the same way it had for him.

Because of his love for sheep and breeding, he had been able to tackle that side of the farm, while his cousins who enjoyed the cropping side could focus on that area.

"There's no point in coming up to work each day to do something that you don't want to do," he said.