Just days from harvest, the Giles family farm, south of Newdegate in Western Australia's Great Southern, was hit by a powerful hail storm, wiping out the majority of their crops and destroying farming infrastructure.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 6 minutes 19 seconds 6 m Farmer from WA's Great Southern Doug Giles describes the damage caused by last week's hail storm. ( Fiona Pepper ) Download 2.9 MB

Doug and Dani Giles run a joint mixed farming enterprise with Doug's mum Viv and between them they had 2,500 hectares of oats, wheat and barley.

Seventy-five per cent of those crops were wiped out during the hail storm a week ago.

Three sheds were also damaged, a silo was destroyed and feeders, fencing and trees planted by the family were ruined.

While insurance will cover the financial loss of the hail storm, figuring out how the family will continue farming is the biggest challenge.

A destroyed barley crop on the Giles' family farm ( Fiona Pepper )

Doug Giles said he had never seen anything like last weekend's hailstorm.

"The hail storm hit at about nine o'clock [at night] ... it was pretty horrific, the hail came in horizontal and crops were basically chaff," he said.

While crops had obviously been destroyed by the hail, Mr Giles biggest concern was for the welfare of his livestock.

"You can't do anything about a crop, but livestock you've got to find them, you've got to put them back where they belong and get feed into them."

Now that a week has passed since the storm hit, Mr Giles says it is a real struggle to work out what to do with the huge amounts of grain and stubble on the ground, as well as ensuring that the livestock have enough feed since pastures had also been damaged in the storm.

"The other issue that I don't know how to handle is the fact that some of these paddocks were meant to go back into different varieties and so forth," he said.

"So there's 600 tonne of wheat in one paddock that was meant to go back to barley, so now we've got to alter our program.

"My dad passed away nine years ago, so I'm still learning a lot and I didn't really need to learn this issue but that's just something we've got to learn."

A plane stored at the Giles' farm was destroyed during the storm. ( Fiona Pepper )

The storm has taken its emotional toll on the family, with Mr Giles wife, Dani just eight weeks away from giving birth to her first child. Mr Giles says at a recent visit to the doctor, Mrs Giles blood pressure was high and the doctor suggested that she try and relax.

"But you can't put her in cotton wool because she can still hear what's going on, she's got eyes, she can see. So it's pretty hard," he said.

"And then you've got Mum, she's been here fifty years. Her and Dad they built this farm from a bush block. So everything we've got, those two built from nothing and that's probably where Mum's suffering."

When asked how the family will find the strength to continue farming, Mr Giles said he would just keep going.

"We're pretty optimistic sort of people ... we've got some really good neighbours, some of them missed the storm, some of us got it," he said.

"So I dare say there'll be a party somewhere and a headache the next day and we're already looking for the seed for next season, so we're dumb enough to have another crack."