"Music"
Hello my name is John Harding I farm with my wife Sally and my oldest son Wes
and his wife Tina and my youngest son Lewis
We farm 6650 hectares
which is 10 km's east of Ongerup
in a rainfall of about 375 to 400 mm.
We are total croppers and we run control traffic in our system.
So Sally and I came out here in 1995 from Boyup Brook
and we noticed there was tall wheat grass growing in some salty areas on the road
and we harvested some of that
and started to move it around
to improve our salt country.
After discovering the wheat grass we have been able to fit it in our program
as in the middle of paddocks if there's a salt scald
we don't actually have to fence it off anymore
because we're not utilising it for livestock.
So with no sheep involved we are able to plant
in our saline areas
and if it's a pocket in the middle of a paddock
we can just continue over the top of it without
seeding into it to work with our control traffic lines
and for us it remains a
permanent feature in our landscape which has worked well in our system
to utilise the excess ground water
using an annual rainfall from a hay production
and then a possible seed production if we got some summer rain.
So in the early years in Ongerup we joined the Mills Lake group and we were
putting piezometers down to get a reading on the groundwater
and in the beginning
it was sort of a only one metre and a half down
now today, we have just re-dipped them at two meters,
whether it is the dry years of making a difference
or the perennials I don't now but it's a positive anyway.
So at the beginning of cropping in any year I will get the seeder hopefully
before the boys start seeding and patch out the tall wheat grass areas that I want
and will sometimes go back and re-seed areas because we have our own seed
to top up the areas that haven't taken that well.
So that ensures that we've got a really good density of tall wheat grass
which covers bare ground
which we don't have any issues with blowing in our systems now.
So in the beginning we were utilising it
for the saline areas
but we've got an excess amount of crabhole country
on the land that we've bought east of Ongerup.
So where we were seeding
all that country down to wheat grass
now we've come to a situation
now will we feel what we should
try and level the land and so
we've employed scrapers to level the country and go back cropping it
and if it doesn't work because the salinity in the soil,
we will we'll just revert back to wheat grass
but at least it will be level and we'll be at it cut it for hay
and then be able to harvest the seed off it.
Jeremy Lemon from the AG department is doing some trials on the Corackerup road
on our property with heavy grey Moort clay
he will give you a description of
what a crabhole actually is.
The soils of the South Coast are characterised by quite high clay contents
either as shallow duplex soils or by soils that are clay right to the surface.
These soils extend right across the south coast from around about
Mindarabin right through the north of Condingup
most of the clays on the south coast are kaolinite which doesn't have much
shrink-swell but there are patches of different types of clays that have got a
lot more shrink-swell in them and they can lead to the formation of ‘gilgai’ landscapes.
John Harding's place is interesting because he's got a high proportion of shrink-swell clays
in the crabhole country or the ‘gilgai’ country
that's on his property.
The gilgai are formed by clays that have got a
high shrink-swell as they wet and dry, when they're dry material falls down the cracks
when they get wet again the cracks close up as the clays expand
and it's a bit like an expansion joint in concrete
although that's driven by heat
rather than water content
and when the clay gets wet and the cracks close up
then the whole soil surface heaves forming the mounds and depressions
they quite often fill up with water and hence the common name of crabholes.
Crabholes vary in size and shape but the scale of them is usually around the
10-15 m type size, depending on the
amount and type of clay
and how much swelling you get in that clay.
(rattle of vehicle on rough ground)
So with the tall wheat grass we can utilise it in hay production in September.
Which promotes it to grow more and then if we get summer rains
we tend to get a good seed production and we can harvest it for the end of April
into May we will go and harvest it.
(whirring motor of Harvester)
In the harvest process we used to use one of our standard harvesters
there's not anything flash about that
and we tend to get a fair bit but
it's got a lot of short straws in it
so you know so we have to use a grading process we've done ourselves
to eliminate them now that that takes about five times through the system to
make it work but at the end of the day you've got a good product you can
actually put through an air-seeder without blockages.
(gentle rain of falling seed)
With the hay production that's actually being working very well because we cut a lot of the
rye grass seed out of our areas of tall wheat grass because being a perennial
grass it grows all year round and utilises all the water and potentially
doesn't give the ryegrass anything to grow off at the beginning of the season.
So just in recent times we've purchased a slasher to slash all of our wheat grass
at this time of the year down, so we can make it actively grow before we cut it for hay.
So with the EM (Electro Magnetometer) machine that's we've been using with the AG department
it seems to be a very positive result with freshly grown tall wheat grass
seems to be reducing the levels of salt below the root zones.
So the economic benefits we've found from tall wheat grass is fairly obvious.
We actually utilising land that was going saline so the hay production has worked
for us and then mostly the seed production is probably the more positive out of it.
Some of our work in the earlier years was done under planting of trees.
So we'd seed the wheat grass first and then plant trees onto it and that we have outstanding results
where if the trees don't take at least you've got wheat grass utilising the ground water.
We've done a lot of tree planting over the years and that has worked for us but
now we're seeing it more of an economical benefit with wheat grass
but it's probably not all about profitability it's probably more about
the aesthetically pleasing look of the farm when you drive around it.
(soft acoustic guitar strumming)
So our farming systems has changed since we come in the early days,
to try and improve it and make it
sustainable for future generations
and we hope that they can
continue on the work that we've tried to set up
and keep pushing forward
to improve more.
(soft acoustic guitar strumming)