OK, OK, OK, so since last time, I have had a lovely jaunt to Lakes Entrance and back to pull apart some processing equipment Gippsland Jersey has stopped using – its old to them, pre-loved to me, and 10 times faster than we are currently managing.
Shout out to Steve Renyolds and Sallie Jones at Gippsland Jersey for being patient, kind and showing us great hospitality.
The basic premise is, while I think we are making good products, that’s not enough. We have to make them cost effectively and we have reached our limit with our current equipment.
This will allow us to see if we can compete and survive in the long term, which I know we can, although wild, unfounded optimism is a character trait.
In the short term, I need to stop the factory stealing money off the farm because the farm needs developing as well.
So many fun projects to do, so little time.
Like many farmers, my job is many things but boring is not one of them.
While it might sound impressive that I pulled a small factory apart, put it on a B-double and brought it back to Lake Boga, the truth is I took both brains and brawn with me, and I was comfortable in my usual role of general dogsbody and nuisance.
Once the technical level gets much beyond ‘pass me the screwdriver’, I am out of my depth.
But I can hang about and look like I know what I am doing with the best of them and I play the very important role of buying lunches, drinks and dinners.
We have poured the first bit of concrete and hope to be putting up walls in about three weeks.
It will double our working area in the milk enhancement centre, and we will have a designated production room, a designated packing room, a little laboratory, a walk-in incubator for melting chocolate and cooking yoghurt and it will allow us to double the size of the cool room, which is badly undersized at present.
The chiller which came with it gives us the ability to have a designated chiller for the farm and one for the factory, which has always been a weak point for us.
The butter churn will stay in the shed for now until we get things humming.
Our biggest daily batch of chocolate milk ever tomorrow, I think we are melting about 300kg of prime Belgium chocolate overnight to be ready to bottle tomorrow.
A quick farm news update: cows have been back on green grass since the first of April and I think if we conducted a short cow survey, they would tell you it’s a pretty good deal.
We have also welcomed Phillip, our first Kenyan, who arrived this week.
It is very hard in Australia to find people who have genuine cow skills, experience – and then want to milk them.
All I have learnt so far is Phillip likes football, and the cost of his weekly grocery shop here is similar to what he was paying in Kenya.
We are also predrilling fertiliser for our seed canola crop this week, as well as sowing our first paddock of wheat and hopefully getting some vetch in next week.
Finally, we are also on a bit of a rabbit crusade because I have more than I need.
Our 15-year-old Raff tried to cook one and feed it to me the other day – the principle was good, the taste not so.
Maybe I need to wait till after Easter, so the Easter Bunny has plenty of helpers.
