SINCE coming home to farm in late 2005, fourth-generation farmer David Ferrier, and wife De-Anne, have worked to make improvements on the family’s 5000-hectare Jil Jil property.
The duo run the mixed cropping and sheep operation together with Mr Ferrier’s parents, John and Robyn Ferrier.
Mr Ferrier said one of the biggest changes to be implemented has been direct drilling.
“There are many advantages to it, but the main benefits are the water conservation and improvement to soil health,” Mr Ferrier said.
“If you’re cultivating, and you get five millimetres of rain, it sort of doesn’t do much for the soil, whereas when we get that amount of rain now, it runs into the rows, and you get the water harvesting for the crops and just overall better soil health.
“The sandier soils are where we’re seeing the most benefit, there’s been massive improvements from what used to be produced there, and we’re also retaining stubble by not baring out the paddocks.”
He said his dad had trialled direct drilling in the past, but wasn’t overly keen to change things up too drastically.
“Dad had been doing a bit of direct drilling on some certain soil types back in the day, but hadn’t done it on a whole farm scale,” he said.
“I’d been away and worked in Western Australia where they had been doing it, and I thought if they’re doing it over there, why can’t we do it here?
“So we trialled it on a few paddocks to start with, and everyone began doing it, so we decided to upgrade our machinery to make it work.”
He said another change had been transitioning from Merino sheep to running Dohne sheep instead.
“The Dohnes are more of a meat Merino, their wool quality isn’t as good, but they’ve got bigger framed bodies,” he said.
“They’re also well-suited to a drier environment, so if you haven’t got a lot of feed, they seem to do alright.”
Mr Ferrier said during poor grain production years, the sheep have been a nice income stream, and the busy periods of the two commodities haven’t seemed to clash with each other.
“They don’t seem to clash, it just means you’re busy the whole time, if anything, timing of weed control can be compromised for cropping with sheep,” he said.
“We try to finish sowing by the end of May, and then our lambs are just dropping now (in June/July).
“We also have a percentage that lamb down in September, just to spread the workload out a bit.”
He said bailing and then harvesting can begin as early as September and end as late as January.
“If we do hay, that’s baled in late September and early October, and then we get into windrowing in late October, and early November,” he said.
“Then the main part of harvest begins in November and December, and if it’s a year like last year, we’d finish in mid-January.”
He said last year had been the best season he and his dad had ever seen.
“Yield wise it was definitely the best we’ve ever seen, and we were lucky to be able to capitalise on that because the prices were just not where we wanted them to be,” he said.
They stored a lot of their end-product in 800-tonne on-property silos, some of which is still yet to be sold.
“All of the canola was sold straight off the paddocks at a good price, the barley we stored about 1000 tonne on farm and the rest went into the system, and same with the wheat, we probably kept 1000 tonne on farm,” he said.
He said they had an ideal start to the season this year.
“We had summer rain, which even though that meant more work, was a good thing because that stored moisture is pretty much money straight in the bank,” he said.
“We got some vetch and canola in before the first rain, then get the rest of the canola and wheat in before the next 40mm.”
He said despite the dry June, the stored moisture has helped them through it.
“We’re lucky to have had the rain we’ve had previously, so we haven’t had to dig far to find moisture,” he said.
