Well, since my last blog things on farm have had a bit of a shake-up. Mainly because my 2IC has resigned and finished work on the 30th March due to family health issues and the distance between our farm and the hospital. We wish him and his family all the best for the future.
So we had to sit down and make some big decisions. Should we replace the outgoing staff, or should Aimee to finish up work and come work full time on the farm, and should we rent out the staff accommodation?
With the low forcasted milk price we decided that Aimee would finish up and come work full time on farm but this won’t be without risk……… the dreaded marital spat….. can we work together day in day out…. and we still have to find time for ourselves and most of all the kids.
We have also decided to rent out the 4 bedroom staff house, and as it happens a local who can work some weekends has approached us, so it all seems to be falling into place.
I’ll let you all know in the middle of calving if this has been a wise decision!
Effluent, effluent, effluent
A month or so ago we received a lovely letter from the Northland Regional Council…….. as you guessed it was not one I wished to receive. As it turns out when we put the two farms together and started milking all the cows through one shed it put a slight overload on the existing ponds and effluent system. But, with a few phone calls and a meeting on farm with the lovely compliance team from the regional council we came up with two options:
Option 1: Pipe the effluent from the existing pond down to the ponds at the old cow shed, the cost involved would be 1000m of 90mm effluent pipe and the trenching. Or there was
Option 2: This is to construct a new pond beside the three existing ponds which can hold at least 1912m3, the cost would be a 12 ton digger for approx 5 days.
So after pricing the two options we decided to go with option 2 and we also decided to future proof things a little and expanded the new pond to 3000m3, now all that’s left to do is re-fence the ponds and carry on with the more important stuff of cows grass and milk!
