Posts by Carmen

Do you know what I am seeing a lot of lately? Growing pains in farm businesses. What do I mean by this? Businesses which have potentially dramatically increased in size in a decade, but are still basically using the same tools and systems to make decisions and get the work done. In the worst examples,…

Kids and farms are closely linked. Most farmers will list “bringing up my kids on the farm” as one of their top five reasons to commit to a future in agriculture. Those adults who grew up on farms attribute many of their positive character traits such as being a hard worker and a community mindset…

A few words on Chris-vest – when doesn’t feel like Christmas time and it’s not really supposed to be harvest either. I wrote this for a @GrainGrowers last year, it’s just as relevant this year, perhaps even more for some. To be honest, our worst harvest in 2019 was also our best Christmas. Everything was…

Stuck for farmer present ideas this Christmas – Check these out Yeti drink bottle or stubby holder – they are the bomb. Yeti also do coffee cups but save this for a mid year birthday or mother’s or father’s day. They are online at https://au.yeti.com/collections/rambler but you may have a local retailer. – Kate Burke’s…

Well it’s been a funny old November hasn’t it? A later than expected start to harvest has been followed by some wet weather. Around the country there has been flooding in some regions, drought breaking rain in others and hail in some places. It can be pretty stressful, even if you are feeling reasonably confident…

Mobile phone use at harvest time is a big issue, whilst they can be great, there is a lot of potential for accidents, injury and poor performance related to phone use. There is a lot of talk on social media about it,  and a lot of frustrated bosses and staff. WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY…

Power down your power bills. Saving money on fixed costs is one of the things I like to push in our Farm Budgeting Masterclass. Why? because it often takes just a little time in the office and has no impact on the productive capacity of our farm businesses. Over a decade, the savings can really add…

THE ONE KEY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD INVESTMENT AND A WASTE OF MONEY There is a lot of difference between a great investment in machinery or infrastructure and a bad investment. We can get quite technical and look at measures such as return on investment, labour hours saved and total cost of ownership (the lifetime maintenance…

The on farm off farm work conundrum….It’s an issue for so many farming families, do we work off farm for a ready supply of cash? Or do we work on farm for possibly more job satisfaction, however potentially uncertain and hard to measure financial rewards? It’s not just the ladies facing this issue, we all…