WORKING with the land they own - rather than trying to push it - has been a formula for success for the Martin family.
Clever management of their 1800ha property at Rankin Springs has seen a mixed farming operation thrive for more than 60 years.
- KILBURNIE
- RANKIN SPRINGS, VICTORIA
- Property: mixed cropping, grazing
- Size: 1800ha
- Sale: by expressions of interest, closing February 16
- Price: $1.7-$1.8 million
- Agent: Elders, Griffith
- Contact: John Dalton, 0407 549 703
But that long association doesn't mean the operation has been standing still.
Driving around the 1800ha property, it's clear to see the work and thought put into making it a versatile and viable operation.
Peter and Judy Martin are the current custodians of Kilburnie.
The property has been refenced. Much of the fencing has been designed to accommodate check banks, which run through parts of the property.
With help from the Soil Conservation Service, a Victorian Government department, the Martins have established contour banks across much of their gently sloping country.
The banks channel water gently down the slopes and help avoid erosion when heavy rain comes, Mr Martin said. It also ensured stock-water tanks were filled, before the water left the property at the other end. It's one of the ingenious aspects the family has applied to the farm.
Other more simple things just make good sense, such as using one pipeline system to supply bore water to paddocks without dams and direct water back to the house for the garden.
Kilburnie has been a true mixed enterprise, holding out against the trend of moving into pure cropping.
The Martins estimate that 1340ha could be cropped, with about 820ha cropped consistently in the mixed farming program. The balance is ideal for running stock.
They have run up to 1000 Merino breeding ewes, joining a third of these back to One Oak Poll Merino rams and the balance to White Suffolk rams for prime lamb production.
Last spring, the Kilburnie suckers made from $90 to $100. The older lambs, which will be finished in the farm's feedlot, already made $115 before Christmas.
On the cropping side, the Martins have calculated figures for the past 15 years for their wheat and barley crops.
In that time, the average rainfall has been 350mm yet the crops have still yielded 2.3 tonnes/ha for barley and 2 tonnes/ha for wheat.
They have also grown oats over the years, including in the past season, and Mr Martin said they proved to not only be good for the soil but good for the bank balance.
The Martins are fans of minimum tillage, and put the fact that they have always been able to harvest at least something from their paddocks, despite low growing season rainfall totals, down to this.
"We do have some fallow paddocks as we bring them back into our cropping program, but all our stubbles are minimum tillage," Mr Martin said.
Improvements on Kilburnie include a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house set in a garden oasis, a machinery shed, hayshed, shearing shed, cattleyards with crush and a lamb feedlot.
And while the improvements are all in good order, and the farm is clearly well run, they cannot compete with the sheer aesthetics of this Riverina property.
That's something the Martins acknowledge they will miss greatly when they retire.
