Soil preservation in successive low rainfall seasons with Chris Hunt - Transcript

Soil Preservation with Chris Hunt Tanja Morgan: Hello and welcome to the MSF Farm Talk podcast. For this episode, we take a trip to the MSF Millewa region in Victoria where consultant Chris McDonough catches up with farmer Chris Hunt as part of the GRDCfunded project, "Practical tactics to improve ground cover and ensure soil preservation following successive, low rainfall seasons".

If you're listening to this podcast at the end of the 2022 harvest season, you may think, why are we talking about drought when so many have experienced flood this year? But this podcast is focused on the reflections of one of our farmer members and how they managed successive years of drought in 2018 and 2019.

For the farmer, Chris Hunt, it was really important to manage ground cover and maintain productive country, so when the next good rainfall year hit, he was ready to go.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

Chris McDonough: Here we are in the Millewa, we're just talking about wind erosion through drought periods and continuous cropping, how you manage those systems and I'm here with farmer Chris Hunt.

Do you want to just quickly tell us a bit about your farming system, where you are your rainfall and stuff like that?

Chris Hunt: Yeah. So, we're in the Millewa area of Northwest Victoria. We’re on the lower end of the rainfall spectrum. We're in that 270 mm annual rainfall, I think. Yep. Yeah, so we're a farming, we're a mixed farming operation, consisting of grain, hay and livestock, the livestock being breeder sheep run for a crossbred lamb.

Chris McDonough: You've come through a period after a pretty good 2016 and then 17 was here or there, but then 18 and 19 really low rain were pretty horrible. And most of the district bared out. How did you fare through that time?

Chris Hunt: Yeah, look 18 was hard. 19 was a shocker. Yeah. 18, you could hold your own a year like that, but 19 was the train wreck year. Yes. We definitely had more country than we would've liked blow.

And some of it was grazing related. Some of it was just a pure lack of establishment of crops.

Chris McDonough: Yeah. And just having enough cover over your vulnerable ground.

Chris Hunt: Oh, a vulnerable ground, but even stuff like real heavy soil types that sweep.

Chris McDonough: Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we've found is there's some of this marley stuff can really get quite bull dusty and go.

Chris Hunt: It just flours. And just once it starts sweeping, it just keeps going.

Yeah.

Chris McDonough: So, I guess What did you learn from that time that is there are things that, you're now going to put in place, or you're starting to put in place to mean that if you are, faced with a similar situation, that you will have protected your whole farming system a lot better in the future?

Chris Hunt: Yeah, so probably with the livestock side of the operation stock containments got a big place and having them say their convenience so you can use them when required and as required.

Chris McDonough: So, you've got one on each of your farms.

Chris Hunt: We have them on each of our farms. Yeah.

Chris McDonough: Yeah. And so basically you can make a quick decision.

You've got how much feed do you keep on hand, enough to cover your whole flock for a year or so, or what, how does it work?

Chris Hunt: Generally, we aim to come into each year with enough feed on hand that we could have our lambs weaned and start selling.

Chris McDonough: Yep. Okay.

Chris Hunt: So, we don't have to fire sale everything, but so we can have a controlled sell down if we need to.

After, the lambs have beyond the point of being, weanable. So yeah, that is definitely a big, a lot of value in having stuff around a lot, barley straw, just to use in containments can use. It's good for roughage. If you're feeding a lot of grain to sheep, just to help with acidosis, Cetera, it's also good for cold weather, if you got ewes with lambs at the foot to give them some shelter, a bit of a windbreak and bedding. And it's also good if you get in the wet weather and the pens go to mud, you can put them in to dry them up.

Chris McDonough: And you've got a lot of vetch hay on hand as well.

Chris Hunt: We generally have vetch hay on hand. We try and cut vetch hay every year.

Yeah. And vetch is a fair part of the legume in our program. Whether it's vetch for grazing hay or grain or brown manure yep. All the above in one.

Chris McDonough: And so, I guess that preparedness so that you can act, there's nothing worse if you're not prepared with your feed lots and stuff like that.

Yeah. It's going to be hard to really protect your ground as you start to move into those dry seasons, or you've had a dry spring and then a really late break.

So, in terms of the pulses that you're growing or the vet that you're growing.

How do you make sure that the most vulnerable parts of your paddocks are protected, even when you're growing your peas or your chickpeas or your vetch?

Chris Hunt: Yeah, the really vulnerable sand caps, we generally, that country would be going into vetch sometimes field peas. And we will either spread a bit of cereal rye or sow barley with it just to have some cereal component to establish on them, just the real caps of the light Hills. Yep. You can take it out.

With a grass selective at any time, you have the season goes from being dry at seeding and comes quite wet. You can take it out when you do your first grass

spray or your second grass spray, or you can take it out in spring as a spray top or bomb out. If the ground cover's still an issue.

Chris McDonough: And is there any a time where if things, if you've got no subsoil moisture going into a season, you haven't got much cover from the spring before?

Is there a time where you say, no, I'm not going to plant a pulse or a vetch Chris Hunt: The vetch will always go in. Yep. It may go in with barley.

Yep. So, we've got that cereal component.

Chris McDonough: And how late would you sow that?

Chris Hunt: We dry, so all our vetch, so all our vetch is in, in April.

Chris McDonough: Okay. Yep. Chris Hunt: Hopefully we've kicked off in March if we're organized. So, all our vetch goes in dry regardless. The main legume. We have been growing that can be dictated by weather decisions are chickpeas and lentils and especially chickpeas. Like we carried chickpeas seed for two years in 18, 19, and chemical just, we didn't have the opportunity to establish them and because of their rhizobia, they need to be established relatively wet. Yes. Chris McDonough: Yeah, so you'd pull out maybe what mid-May on that.

Chris Hunt: Yeah. Look, if we, so we, if we abandoned, like in 18 and 19, when we abandoned the plan to grow chickpeas, we then swung it to both times. We swung the areas to field peas. Yes. Because we always sow field peas as our last crops in the tail end of May like around the 20th.

Yes. And we're not phased about rhizobia with field peas. Yeah. Because of the history and backgrounds, et cetera.

Chris McDonough: And you throw a bit of cereal out with it in those vulnerable years. Wheaton. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Now, are there any machinery considerations about what's happening with you the way you're spreading

your straw or the way you use your you got SP sprayer how do you work that so that you don't have wheel tracks blowing out and stuff like that?

Chris Hunt: Yeah. So around machinery considerations, we generally in the summer program we don't use the same wheel tracks time after time. One is to stop the wheel tracks bearing out. And two, we also get any weeds that are dust-covered from the previous pass. With the seeding, we have started seeding quite a lot of stuff at alternate angles from year to year.

This, we believe leaves us with more standing stubble coming. Fodder phase of vetch, barley. Also, we have found that sowing on alternative angles levels country that has become pretty rough either by wind erosion or trafficking you don't get it achieved in the first year, but over a couple of years, it can save you using stuff like tillage to level up a rough paddock if you just bear with it and sew it on AB lines for a couple of years. You soon pull it around.

Chris McDonough: So that's 10 or 15 degrees and might depend on just the angles of where you're starting at; what side of the paddock with your fence lines?

Chris Hunt: Yeah, generally if the paddock's not many of our paddocks are perfectly square, so generally if you work off one side fence line this year and the opposite side the next year and alternate them, you're generally achieving some sort of angle around that, five to 15-degree bracket.

Chris McDonough: And imagine also just for your chaff spread, there's probably hitting more of the paddock as well if you are just making those adjustments from year to year.

Chris Hunt: Yeah, we, and you don't get into the scenario if you have had poor chaff spreading as we have had with previous headers where you can get everything lined up perfectly wrong to have trash flow issues. Yeah. In terms of where the chaff is the thickest lining up with where the points in the seeding machine for trash flow are the worst. You're constantly in and out of the good and bad points with both.

Chris McDonough: So just in summary, it just sounds like, you've adjusted some things to make sure you can keep your paddocks safe from your livestock management and maybe acting a bit earlier while there's still adequate cover in there.

And then you're doing stuff around, particularly the pulse part or the legume part of your rotation to make that safer. And so, are you confident that if you had this run of years again, you'd be in a lot better place?

Chris Hunt: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. You always learn and every year is different.

Probably you come into the years, more prepared in terms of not might physically be on the ground, but just having scenarios in place and plans. If you got to action them.

Chris McDonough: Excellent. Thanks very much for sharing with us a few good ideas there.

Chris Hunt: No worries. Thanks, Chris.