It’s grow time in the Great Southern as seeding season begins

With moisture in the soil and plenty of work ahead, the Stades are one of hundreds of farming families around the Great Southern getting on with seeding this week. David Stade is kicking off the new season on his family’s 3500ha farm, just south of Dumbleyung, after cyclone Seroja brought 42mm of rain to his property earlier this month. In a region which has been crippled by a lack of rain in recent years, he described the conditions as “excellent”. “The available moisture at the moment in our area is very promising,” he said. “There isn’t a rain forecast until early May though, so anything can happen.” Mr Stade said his family were already 21/2 weeks ahead of where they were at this time last year. “This is totally different to last year where we had a dry start and minimum moisture, but we were saved by mild temperatures in spring,” he said. Mr Stade said despite the benefits of recent rainfall for seeding, there were still water deficiency concerns for his livestock. “There was some run-off during the rainfall so most of the dams are still at very low levels, and this is concerning because a third of our farm runs Dorpers,” he said. “We haven’t been able to graze a lot of our paddocks yet due to limited water supply.” Mr Stade is rejigging his cropping program to favour canola, planting 850ha of the crop and reducing his lupins. He said his family might have missed a trick with the timing of seeding as they were only able to get to work after the rain had fallen on his paddocks. “We really should have got the canola in before the rainfall, because now we have scattered seeding, which makes spraying harder, and we would of had a longer seeding if we got it in earlier,” he said. Working on the farm this season is Namibian immigrant Riaan Liebenberg, who is learning how to seed. Mr Liebenberg was separated from his wife for 11 months when he moved to the region last year after the sale of his family farm in Namibia due to drought. His wife joined him in WA in January. “There is no future for a young farmer there,” he said. “I love it here — it’s nice now and it feels like home.”