I WAS at a dairy farm discussion group in Cohuna a few weeks ago evaluating the merits of different feeding systems and facilities when I had an epiphany.
The facilitator was describing two different farm development models.
And the best one is where there is a structured business plan – and capital investment and farm decisions are made towards achieving the big picture in the long-term plan.
The other one is what most of us farmers do, we keeping adding more bits to our businesses haphazardly over time as opportunities or crises dictate, such as “it’s a drought – so let’s buy a mixer wagon”.
Then once we’ve got the mixer we realise we need a bigger tractor to pull it.
A few months later “we could do this so much faster if we had a better loader to load the mixer”.
Next step – obviously – is we could use this feed better if we had troughs to feed the quality feed into.
So yes, we buy some feed troughs.
Which describes most of my adult life as a farmer – I have continually been adding more-on and more-on just on an ad-hoc basis as finances would allow (alright, yes, and sometimes even when finances wouldn’t allow).
At that precise moment I realised, with some joy, that I am proficient in the more-on model of farming.
And really, while I don’t want to talk myself up, in fact I am a gold-star performer.
I think in 1991 we had 140 cows and 200 acres, and since then, at every opportunity, I/we have added more-on.
You all know what the farmer who won TattsLotto wanted to do with his money, he wanted to keep farming until it ran out.
Sometimes I think I was a more-on for starting a milk processing business – many have told me, and continue to tell me, it is stupid.
You’ve probably also heard the one about the farmer who had a small farm that was losing money, so he decided to double the size of the farm and lose a lot of money.
So here’s a little more-on me.
I am just about to compound our problems and double the size of our milk processing business.
My big fat hairy goal for next year is to make the milk enhancement not lose money – it’s ambitious, but is it achievable?
What you need to remember is “it’s not a lie if you believe it”.
That’s the best thing about more-on 101 – wild optimism and more-onism go hand in hand, so of course I think it is achievable.
On a (sightly) different subject altogether, my favourite day of the school holidays so far was last Friday when, because of the Christmas break and freight issues, we had to do a production run of milk – which is most unusual.
I told a white lie to my children and claimed I was short staffed and couldn’t do it without them.
For a short period I had the A Team running Bethune Lane dairy.
The youngest ones got paid $1 per hour for each year of their age, so the twins got $9 per hour each.
Is that child slavery or a family unit working together?
They were all happy, except the eldest, who is a Christmas Grinch. But he was easily blackmailed with a burger from the grill on top of his wages.
Was I mean to refuse to pay the nine-year-olds a minimum three-hour shift because they ran out of puff and started the “can we go home now?” at the 90-minute mark?
I had them filling bottles, packing boxes, stacking pallets, singing songs out of tune (it’s a genetic thing), and telling dad jokes.
Might never ever happen again that I get six Bethune boys working together, so it did bring me great joy.
But then, more-ons are often easily pleased.
