BEING flexible is an all-important essential at "Wilga", an aggregation of some 3240 hectares on eight properties in the Cooks Myalls and Goonumbla districts, a little west of Parkes.
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The mixed farming enterprise of winter cropping, Merino and crossbred sheep and a small herd of Poll Hereford cattle keep Bob and Colleen Orr and family on the move.
They are assisted by their two sons and young families, Tim and Kim, and Spike and Kate.
About one third of the arable country is cropped and this year the family has planned a program of 1200ha to be sown mainly to wheat.
Tim Orr said the 600ha of wheat would consist of three varieties of grain wheat, Spitfire, Livingstone and Gregory, plus a small block of wedgetail grazing variety for the first time.
"We'll sow 180ha of Urambie barley and about the same acreage of canola," he said.
The Orrs have grown Garnet canola for the past three or four seasons but will try "a bit" of herbicide-tolerant (TT) variety this season.
While Mr Orr says this would have to be the best autumn in decades, he's backed by Spike when commenting about risking too much acreage to canola this year.
"We're not growing lupins this year and don't want to put in 300 to 350ha of canola as that is too much of a risk," he said.
The expense of canola and unpredictable rainfall in the future has limited their sowing of canola.
"We had 25 millimetres of rain at Christmas and so far this year a total of 241mm with most (100mm) falling in early March," Tim Orr said.
"The rain has encouraged clovers and other good feed growth, so we hope a predicted 25mm for this week comes off as well."
The family had sprayed out about 400ha in early February in readiness for sowing, but was now using knockdowns in front of the airseeder in as much stubble country they could achieve.
"We were sowing last week and ended with 16ha of oats plus 140ha of barley," Spike Orr said.
"So we have another 65ha of barley to sow which we'll probably get back into next week due to predicted rain throughout this week."
That will be followed by the sowing of 130ha of brassica.
All is hoped to be in the ground by mid-April.
As well this year Tim and Spike plan to sow 200ha of new pasture, being a mix of Aurora lucerne with Mintaro and Urana sub-clovers and frontier balansa clover.
It's all part of an annual pasture-building program.
This works in with their cropping rotation of two wheat crops followed by brassica or canola, then another wheat followed by barley undersown to pasture.
"We used to work on a six year rotation but the decade of drought put that completely out," Spike Orr said.
"I think we are getting back closer to this though, probably in another couple of years."
Mark Griggs
Journalist for The Land at Dubbo.
Journalist for The Land at Dubbo.
