Korrelocking farmer Avery Maitland takes over earlier than planned

Mr Maitland and his cousin, Reyner Wells, completed their first solo season on their Korrelocking farm last year after Mr Maitland's dad Gill passed away from motor neurone disease 18 months ago.

Admitting it was a daunting task taking over the farm, the concept wasn't foreign to Mr Maitland, who had been working there since he graduated from school - opting out from learning a trade.

A fourth-generation farmer, Mr Maitland's Korrelocking farm has been in the family since the 1940s.

He had looked forward to taking over the farm, but given the circumstances he said he would have liked a couple more years learning from his father.

"But with the disease, I could have got another three years and not learned as much as I did over the seven or eight I did while I was home," Mr Maitland said.

"But that's another three or four years of suffering, it's not fair on him."

The transition was stressful for Mr Maitland, but he said working a few different seasons with his father prior helped shape the farm's future direction.

"It was hard when I first came home from school, but we deal with a couple of farm advisers and the local Nutrien Ag Solutions team is very good to deal with and have a lot of knowledge," he said.

Mr Maitland seems to have taken the challenge in his stride and along with Mr Wells, delivered the best year on record last season.

The current farm size is about 3000 hectares and despite cutting back 200ha last year (leased land), they harvested 600 tonnes more than the year before.

"Last year was our first full year by myself to a certain extent, and it was interesting," Mr Maitland said.

"It was the best year we've ever had on record, but we could have done things a bit differently with a bit more knowledge, but it was very good to see anyway."

Mr Maitland believed the good year was a combination of a few different factors, from rain and timing, to running a smarter farming practice.

"I think the way we go farming nowadays makes it so we can do a lot more with a lot less," he said.

"A good example of that was the last bad year we had was 2019, we only had 180 millimetres of growing season rainfall, and we still averaged 1.8 tonnes (per hectare) of wheat."

That year, the barley averaged 1.9t/ha and Mr Maitland didn't put any canola in - instead producing 800 kilograms of lupins.

Although he only received 180mm of rain, it was at the perfect time, and he said if he had received more rain it would have been a really interesting story.

"I asked my old man if he ever thought it was possible - he didn't think it was going to go that well at the time," he said.

Last year, the duo purchased a new harvester which they received just in time.

However, they didn't have a new front for it due to shipping delays, only receiving it at the start of April.

"That's really the joys of trying to get new gear - it's always been an issue and it sounds like it's going to hang around for quite a while due to COVID," Mr Maitland said.

When Farm Weekly spoke to Mr Maitland, he was busy working on his airseeder, as he had run into some issues, only being 150ha into his canola operation.

He admitted it had been a little slow going, but wasn't too concerned because it was still early in the seeding window.

"We've had about four inches of rain, so it's been very wet down there, we were probably lucky to get through some of it," he said.

While Mr Maitland hadn't bogged any machinery some of his neighbours had.

"Touch wood (we don't get bogged), I know of other people that have had big issues trying to get through paddocks, but we've been pretty lucky at this stage," he said.

This year, Mr Maitland was seeding 300ha of canola, 300ha of lupins with the rest going to wheat and barley.

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The farm received between 65 to 105 millimetres rain by the end of April, which he wasn't expecting given the Bureau of Meteorology's dry forecast.

"But I'm not going to complain about it, it's been a very good start and gave us a bit of confidence going into the season," he said.

The beginning of the season was looking positive, as long as the farm kept receiving some rain.

Mr Maitland had high hopes for the season, but given it was early on he wasn't sure what to expect.

"How long is a piece of string?" he said.

Mr Maitland is trialling new canola variety Emu this season, which he said he already knew was

"very good".

"We've had a lot of farmers around this area grow it and they were very happy with it - so now we're going to do a sizeable chunk of our program," he said.

They grew Calibre wheat for the first time last year which yielded good results and as a result, he is seeding more of it this year.

He hasn't tried any other varieties as he was "pretty happy" with what he had, being Calibre and Rockstar for wheat, Maximus barley, Jurien lupins and Emu and Battalion canola.