WHEN Jeremy Walker returned to his family's Green Range farm in 2012 it was a blank canvas, dotted with blue gum tree stumps.
Some people may have seen it as hard work, but he saw it as an opportunity to - quite literally - build something from the ground up.
"There were a few sheep, a bit of land and a supportive family - that's all we needed to really get a start on something," Mr Walker said.
"It was very much a crawl before you can walk, before you can run situation."
Now Mr Walker and his wife Caitlin run mixed farming enterprise Kilchatten Farm.
And they are very much running, with 20,000 head of sheep at peak of season and a 650 to 1000 hectare cropping program.
Mr Walker's roots trace back to Kojonup, where his grandfather John and father Geoff Walker farmed together in the 1980s.
At the time the Great Southern region was an early settled area, farms were semi-cleared and little was known about sandier soil types.
"My grandfather and father figured out they could sell up, buy down at Green Range and run more sheep," he said.
"They expanded their wool clip by 200 per cent with the same amount of dollars spent on land."
When Mr Walker was 11 years old, life on the land became pretty tough.
Like many others in the 1990s to early 2000s, his family decided to make easy money in blue gum plantations.
The company later went bankrupt and the Walkers were forced out of the scheme after one cycle of trees, which is about 13 years.
That's when Mr Walker returned.
"We took a while to get momentum and money, and to be able to afford clearing costs," he said.
"The combination of our environmental factors and our desire to match our feed curve more closely with the requirement has driven me down a few different avenues.
"Confinement feeding, summer crops, centre pivot to name a few."
Kilchatten Farm sits on very low lying and flat country in a high rainfall area, with a 650mm rainfall average.
This means waterlogging has become the Walkers' biggest constraint.
Mr Walker said - given the farm's location 12 kilometres from the coast - there was significant seasonal variability with a high to low rainfall gap of 570mm.
Lighter soil types also pose challenges in that high inputs are needed to crop, and there is higher disease, fly and worm pressure.
"It's just a high input style of farming down here," he said.
The Walkers run a self-replacing Merino operation, mating about 10,000 ewes - 30 to 40pc to White Suffolk terminals.
They are chasing a well-balanced breeding ewe to match their environment.
"I'm trying not just to target one specific trait," Mr Walker said.
"We need to breed an animal with white free growing wool that can dry out quickly.
"It also has to be fly-tolerant, worm-tolerant and can't run to much colour.
"Low worm egg counts and breech wrinkle are very high on the selection, and obviously a high number of lambs weaned is ideal."
At shearing time, the Walkers could put - on average - anywhere between 15,000 and 20,000 head through the shed.
Numbers depend on what is held over, what is running through to finish and what is selling as stores.
Mr Walker said a big focus of his system had been to spread the feed curve out into summer and ideally finish lambs into an off-peak season.
The softer climate has given him the ability to manipulate the feed curve most years.
"Shoulder crops and perennial pastures have played a role in filling the feed gap," he said.
"As too has crop grazing and taking early pasture sowing opportunities."
Spraying out poorer quality pastures in spring and sowing summer forages - including winter canola, sorghums and sometimes millets - help the Walkers carry younger sheep into the summer months.
Autumn sown pastures are a mix of ryegrass, oats, clovers and balansa for a good bulk and quality balance.
They have found great success in Illabo wheat this year, and are also trying Bennett.
"Grazing wheats are a great option, you probably compromise a touch on weed control," Mr Walker said.
"However, if you get a finish they still seem to yield with fantastic feed quality, and get up and about early to provide masses of feed."
This year, 160ha of winter wheat was sown, with one paddock holding 60 dry sheep equivalent (DSE) for about three weeks.
Ewes were taken out of confinement and moved onto winter wheat, this gave the Walkers the ability to defer pastures for another month.
By the time lambing season hit, ewes were on "really good quality" pastures.
Canola has been another success story.
"There were high costs and management getting the crop right through to harvest," Mr Walker said.
"However, we are very happy with how it all went in the end."
He said dealing with the highs and lows in general was the biggest challenge faced since returning to farming.
"Everyone thinks farming in high rainfall might be all rainbows and sunshine," Mr Walker said.
"It is certainly all rainbows, but a few too many rainbows at times."
In the past seven years, Kilchatten Farm has recorded more than 900mm annual rainfall three times, where canola averaged 300 kilograms per hectare.
Flat country with a small water holding capacity has left Mr Walker's canola and cereal programs vulnerable to prolonged waterlogging.
In late 2021 - after another deluge of winter rain - he made the decision to purchase and install a 72ha centre pivot irrigation system.
With no creeks or valleys, but a number of large lakes onfarm, Mr Walker hoped to utilise and make money from some of the water, which caused significant loss.
While it was a big jump at the time, it paid off and allowed him to finish lambs on green feed and off paddock.
"I estimate that the amount of water in the lake is sufficient enough to run the irrigation for two to three summers," Mr Walker said.
"The margins over this period would pay off the pivot entirely.
"We've done a few other different things under the irrigation this year as the worm burden through constant grazing rotation was impacting us.
"We have been bulking up seed over summer for early release of an exciting new IMI tolerant barley
variety for InterGrain and have also dabbled in the hemp seed market.
"In the long-term, we hope to secure some markets to finish grassfed lambs, as an all year round type thing."
Historically, Mr Walker has always used hay as a portion of his supplementary feeding.
Since starting confinement feeding, he has constantly been testing what is being fed out.
"Hay isn't testing that much higher than our straw, we just keep getting rained on again and again," he said.
"We are now moving towards more silage, straw, lupins and cereals.
Silage has been easier to fit into a window, while straw has served as an easy and affordable buffer in confinement feeding with most of the protein and energy being acquired from the grain portion of the diet.
The Walkers turned to confinement feeding, after what was labelled a "windy and horrible year" in 2018.
Paddocks were blowing everywhere and feeding became a monstrous job, which involved travelling kilometres around the farm and huge rations well into the winter months.
It shocked Mr Walker into thinking, "alright, I need to do this better".
Confinement feeding was the
solution, and sheep were taken off stubbles before everything was blown out.
This also gave pastures a chance to get away.
"Once we ventured into it, we kept on stepping it up because it made such a huge difference to our yearly capacity and yearly stocking rate," Mr Walker said.
"The other beauty of it is we stock all sheep feed in one place now and we feed it out in the same place - everything is close to the sheds."
Ewe numbers in confinement are expected to reach 10,000 head - up from 6000 head - this year.
This would be achieved by having a number of one to three hectare paddocks, with two separate central pens and feed troughs inside them.
The sheep pens lead into central trough pens, after feed has been rationed, the gate is opened, allowing one of the mobs to run in.
They walk back to their pen once finished, and the same is done with the next mob.
Mr Walker said this helped him manage the volume of sheep at a reasonable installation price point.
"The trough system is made from posts, wire and shade cloth," he said.
"It is very simple and very cheap, but keeps the sheep from eating off the ground and they self clean in the wind nicely.
"The biggest cost in the set-up was the fencing, however all paddocks are sown down and used as small holding paddocks through the season, once the sheep leave confinement."
Electronic identification technology (eID) has been used in the Walker's breeding program for the past five years.
Despite recording a significant amount of data through eID, he believed farmers should be careful the balance of an animal wasn't lost by driving down one particular trait too far.
"I've found myself doing that," he said.
"We have sort of switched to more working from the top and trying to get the genetics right at the top, create balance, looking at different data and visual aspects, and hoping that flows on down.
"When you are trying to do it on a commercial level, you can't record all the trait data cost effectively.
"You have to pick specific things and when you pick specific things you end up driving it up a certain line and losing out on other areas.
"I think eID is good, but I think you have to be careful you don't end up too far down one avenue and losing everything else."
Something that is most important to Mr Walker is staffing, and having people on hand, who he gets along with.
He said having great relationships with all of his workers was probably one of his stronger points.
"We all get on well and seem to have a healthy working environment," Mr Walker said.
"The other staff member is my wife, who does all our bookkeeping.
"I've loved having her and my daughter here on the farm."
Admittedly, Mr Walker was "never one for the classroom" and always more of a hands-on learner.
Joining a number of local farming groups - including Stirlings to Coast Farmers and the AgPro Management stock group - has helped him stay in check and on top of everything, and find new ideas.
"There are so many resources you can pull from if you're willing to put yourself out there," he said.
"That's my main source of knowledge."
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Mr Walker's end goal is to find a sustainable system, which keeps both him and his staff happy.
"I know I get caught up a bit chasing fairies at times, as I always need something that stimulates me," he said.
"However, each time I explore different things I find what works and what doesn't.
"Right through the system there's been some things that have been definite winners - including confinement feeding, shoulder crops and crop grazing - and we've stuck with them.
"I suppose I'd like to think that over time I would find my niche, stick with it a bit more and have a system we can do year-in, year-out that reliably works."
