Paul Trenorden from Wyalkatchem is pondering the future of farming and his local community.

Paul Trenorden has started seeding for this year, albeit earlier than planned.

As the new program gets underway he has time to consider how the town of Wyalkatchem will survive the continual population decline, which he attributes to the reduction of sheep numbers in the area, as well as the question of when he should sell the farm.

With two daughters deciding not to pursue farming, Mr Trenorden is toying when is the right time to pull the trigger.

He has held off buying new machinery, only purchasing a Ford Ranger ute, but plans to keep farming for a few more years - mainly because he's not sure what to do next.

"You've still got to do something with yourself, I've known people that have got out about my age and then they get a bit lost," Mr Trenorden said.

"I'm not going to go drive someone else's tractor, when I could drive my own tractor."

Mr Trenorden said he was sure a few farmers would be contemplating the trade-off, especially with the rapid increase in land prices over the past five years.

He estimates the value of farmers in the area had tripled in value in that time.

Mr Trenorden knows of a nearby farm going on the market later this year and said it would be interesting to see the market value.

The fourth-generation farmer is seeding about 2300 hectares of mainly wheat and canola this year and he has a small sheep operation that he plans to offload.

"This year has just been really difficult (for sheep) - we're waiting for the price to go up and it hasn't, it's gone down," Mr Trenorden said.

"So I've stuck with last year's lambs, and I'm just going to have to quit them."

He plans on holding them for another three weeks before putting them into the market.

The farm received 150 millimetres of rain at the end of March, kickstarting seeding plans a bit earlier than planned.

The farm is in a basin, storing a large amount of stagnant water which has now become home for many ducklings.

"I've never seen so many ducks in my life, it is just full of baby ducks," Mr Trenorden said.

Some of the roads have corrogated from running water, which Mr Trenorden hasn't had the chance to fix yet.

He started seeding canola on Good Friday on the drier areas and depending on this week's weather, he may do some sheep work before starting the wheat program.

The earlier start to seeding has rushed the preparation and Mr Trenorden said getting canola seed supply was one of the challenges.

He also wasn't a stranger to the dangers of seeding too early, with his low-lying property susceptible to frost.

Mr Trenorden experienced bad frost in 2016, 2021 and 2022, with the 2021 frost being costly.

He had produced some of his best ever wheat crops that year but they were struggling to yield 500 kilograms per hectare and there were big patches not reading on the meter at all.

"I actually had to get off the header, I said I can't do this," Mr Trenordern said.

"The chaser bin was just sitting there."

He has also had years when frost has hit the area later than expected, in October and said farming was all about managing risks.

This year the rain fell at a good time, even if he wasn't expecting it.

"If you get an opportunity to get a crop up out here you've really got to take it," Mr Trenorden said.

"You've got to take it, because if it doesn't rain for another month you'll lose more through the hot spring than you will through frost."

A bigger risk than frost, according to Mr Trenorden, were hot days in September.

He said he had lost more yield over the years from a couple of hot days in September than he had from frost.

"If you go to Dowerin Field Days (in August) in shorts and a singlet, that's not good," Mr Trenorden said.

"The past few years we haven't had to, but for most of my farming career at the Dowerin Field Days, we've been wanting rain."

At the moment he has paddocks that are green from sprouted canola and ryegrass which is an ongoing problem.

To combat the issue, he had decided to use newer and "more expensive" herbicides which he hopes will be more effective.

"It's late enough in the year to get a knock down, but early enough that it's warm for the canola to establish," he said.

"The other reason why we sow wheat so close to what we think is acceptable, is the soil temperature is still high so it grows quickly and establishes itself."

This year's wheat program will be based around Scepter, Calibre and Vixen on the back of Calibre being the highest-yielding variety last year.

Mr Trenorden said Calibre worked well this year with its long coleoptile, so he could plant it deeper into the moisture - if it was still there.

He bulked it up last year and wishes he had kept more as it would have been useful with the early rains.

"It gives you a little bit of variety, you can have it in the moisture or you can put it on top and not lose yield," Mr Trenorden said.

"Whereas if you stick the Scepter in the moisture it doesn't have a long enough coleoptile - it won't work."

Mr Trenorden said a friend of his had just started using automated boomsprayers to combat the labour problem communities are facing.

The movement away from sheep and towards cropping meant less workers were needed year-round, which he said was affecting the community.

"With shearing, there used to be continuous year-round work, now there is seeding and harvest - and if you have full-time workers, you have to find things for them to do," he said.

Mr Trenorden has watched the community slowly decline over the years, which has been reflected in the local footy teams.

READ MORE:

When he returned to the farm from school there were more than than 50 people at football training and if you didn't train, you wouldn't get a game.

"Now we don't have a football side, I think there might be four or five players left," he said.

Players have now started going to other towns to play, and young people aren't returning to the town.

"Just the town itself - Wylie used to be such a vibrant town - now there is no cafe and the butcher shop just closed," Mr Trenorden said.

There has also been a decrease in the town's youth.

"The schools used to have 300 plus people, there used to be great big buses full of people - now they're tiny buses.

"There were eight or nine buses, now I think there's two or three tiny little buses with three or four people."

He said most families now opted to send their children to bigger schools in Northam or Merredin.

"There have been tiny little towns scattered around before this - Balkuling (between York and Quairading) used to be a town - there used to be lots of little towns and they just moved out to bigger towns," Mr Trenorden said.