Last but not least – Graham Smith

The last time I wrote calving was the next big thing to happen. Well, it arrived early as usual, but went well. We ended up with 100% live births, that is a first, and only assisted one heifer who had a large calf. Milk fever has been prevalent around the district and quite bad, so I have heard, but in our case, we had two cases that were down and three standing. All were dealt with easily and with no aftereffects. Being once a day certainly helps and having plenty of feed. The last of the silage in the pit was fed out in late August/early September and good grass growth took care of the rest. The cows are milking on par with last year and the payout looks promising!

Calf rearing is a little different this year with the calves kept indoors until weaning. This has gone very well, because my biggest worry was the health of the calves and in particular how we would avoid scours. Well, no scours and happy calves who are much quieter due to constant interaction with me. It has been enjoyable to work with them and on a stormy night been great to know they are secure inside. The first weaners have reached 80 to 85 kilos and eating 2 kg meal. They are now out on grass and have transitioned smoothly without any upsets.

Usually, I sell sapling Paulownias in June, but this year my orders were late, and I was digging and wrapping them during calving and delivering during August. A bit more pressure than usual but with Lance’s help it went smoothly. We did not sell as many as usual and this shows the financial constraints that buyers are facing. Timber sales are well down but just recently there has been more inquiry and I think things will pick up from here.

Many of my younger trees need remedial pruning due to damage from Gabrielle. I have left them until now so that they could recover, but some of them will get major surgery from me. The pruning has to be timely because knotty timber is of no value for resale, plus of course I like to look at well pruned trees!

Succession is not easy, and I am not talking just about the transition of responsibility from father to son. Rather, I’m talking about the immense amount of paperwork that is required in relation to shares and their transfer and the movement from a trust into a company. Still, it is mostly done and now we can move forward.

I mentioned in the last blog about buying a neighbouring land parcel. That is still ongoing 16 months later. I think we are nearing resolution, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Lastly, this will be my final blog which I think is appropriate since I only partially run the farm now. Thanks for following me and I hope I have inspired some of you to give trees a go. I intend to faff about here until I can’t and if I can do that, I will die happy. I hope all of you get to have the same opportunity to do what you want in your retiring but active years.

Thanks to SMASH for giving me this opportunity to talk to you. These last photos are a few of my favourite scenes of the farm.

Thanks to my wife Tess for some great photos to show you.

 

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