User Profile

Paul Bethune

Were too busy to be burnt out yet

I FEEL as though I’ve spent the past month putting out fires – literally and figuratively. Shout out and thanks to all the volunteer firefighters who came to our farm a week ago, it’s pretty incredible how fast they came and how well organised...

22 Feb 2025

Dairy

Proudly a 1973 more-on model

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...

21 Jan 2025

Dairy

Proudly sponsored story about our bottled passion

Typically, I use this platform to write gentle self-deprecating humour, and I try to be reasonably honest with our joys and challenges. Today I am going for shameless self-promotion. Sorry, but we are on a journey to build a legacy business of which...

18 Nov 2024

North West Farmer

It’s always the front yard which is a mess

THERE is a saying that the difference between a good farmer and a bad farmer is about one week. I cannot be in the good farmer category as, very embarrassingly, we still have a couple of paddocks to sow – ouch. In my defence, I am somewhat new to...

17 Aug 2024

Dairy

A legend in my own lunch box

EVERY winter when it gets cold, wet and miserable I think “Why am I doing this?” and I consider my options for a career change. How do you think I would go as a movie star? We went to Melbourne for an overnighter for school holidays and everyone went...

20 Jul 2024

Dairy

Always embrace the art of learning

I often shock people when they hear me talking and singing to myself. But hey, I’m like “of course I talk to myself, where else can I get such expert advice for free?”I also had another birthday a few weeks ago, and obviously I’m fitter...

24 Jun 2024

Opinion

Processing sector feels the squeeze

I have been quietly waiting for about two years for something to go pop in the Australian dairy industry. Milk prices have been high – above market prices due to processors fighting for milk supply among a steadily reducing number of farmers. My...

17 May 2024

News

Peter Coady’s roar talents

GROWING up as a kid on a farm, we didn’t get a lot of visitors, so it was always a red letter day when the stock and station agent stopped in. We were battlers, and Peter Coady was our stock agent, and he always gave us the most important thing...

15 Mar 2024

Dairy

Milking all we can from holiday

EVERY time I go to France I am shocked they don’t really do fresh milk – this is why they are so quirky. They do dairy, lots of dairy, having a wonderful obsession with cheese and yoghurt. But they hardly drink milk, and on...

20 Feb 2024

Dairy

Friends in the right places

MY better half Sally, the half who is supposed to love and cherish, says to me my “lack of adaptation to technology is hurting our business”.Ouch!It’s like a dagger through my hard-working Luddite heart. But the truth is...

15 Dec 2023

North West Farmer

A choc milk toast to 50

There appears to be some weird, even universal, calculation error hovering above me. All because, Sally assures me – and anyone else she can get to listen – it is my 50th birthday in two weeks. In the unlikely event she’s right, that likely...

20 May 2023

Dairy

Mass domination such a sweet dream

Dairy columnIN my early 20s I put myself through a chocolatier’s course. Not just because I loved the stuff. No, I had a plan. A master plan. A master plan of world domination – from Lake Boga. Where my primary weapon of mass marketing would be my...

26 Apr 2023