Do you always have to put the farm first?

Season 5

2 May

Written By Sophie Murfitt

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Show Notes

EPISODE SPONSORED BY JOY JOHN WINES

We meet two very successful women in agriculture who are challenging this traditional concept. To do this, they have both come up with unique business models.

Instead of shaping the lives around the farm; they're shaping the farm around their family and other career and business goals.

Hear from:

Chloe Brown - is a dairy farmer in south west Victoria, who has pushed back on the 'get big or get out' mentality of modern dairying to build a business with her husband, that works for their young family. Chloe is also reshaping perceptions of the industry through her podcast, More Than Milk.
Claire Booth - while Claire doesn’t like to call herself a farmer, she plays an integral role in her family’s farming business Booth Ag, which is based in Geurie in central west NSW. She also runs her own law firm in Dubbo.

Both Claire and Chloe discuss how they've managed to define their business roles and manage this alongside with their roles as 'wife' and 'mother'. They talk about how they gained confidence and learnt about the business of farming too, as first time farmers.

Would you like to sponsor an episode? Get in touch via our website.

This podcast is brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co (We can help YOU make a podcast!)

Chloe Brown: 0:07
If you weren't getting big and you weren't getting to 700 to 1000 k hours, you actually weren't achieving anything. And I call bullshit because my profit is probably just the same, except I just don't have the extra zeros in the end of my milk check or on the bills coming in.
Claire Booth: 0:21
It's not hard. We're not rocket scientists. We haven't taken a piece of metal to the moon. We've just bought a farm as a first generation couple.
Kirsten Diprose: 0:32
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Ducks on the Pond brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co. I'm Kirsten Diprose and I'm Jen McCutcheon. Jen, this is so exciting to have you actually hosting an episode. So you might remember, Jen was in our fertility episode at the start of the season and Jen is actually a news reporter who lives on a farm in central west New South Wales and she is now part of the Ducks on the Pond family. So welcome, and how are you Thanks.
Jen McCutcheon: 1:06
It's great to be here again, again and, yeah, I'm going really well. My baby girl, who wasn't born when we last spoke, is now almost seven months old. Can you believe that time is just flying by? But I'm really excited to be here for this episode.
Kirsten Diprose: 1:19
Now this episode is sponsored by Chloe Kelly of Joy John Wines. They're a winery in Victoria and source grapes from the best regions to produce the most amazing wines. You'll hear from Chloe at the end. She's got some great business advice and you'll hear all about their winemaking processes. So this episode is all about women farming differently. Did you know it was only 30 years ago that in 1994, women were officially recognised as farmers on the Australian census?
Kirsten Diprose: 1:48
It's so hard to believe, and I still can't believe that this actually happened in our lifetime Today though I think there's another shift that's happening, with an increasing number of women challenging those traditional stereotypes and roles and actually adopting alternative approaches to farming, particularly around fitting things around family. There's, I think, a greater focus around occupational health and safety because of women, and I think just some of that professionalisation is coming through as well, with women who have had off-farm careers before becoming part of a farm. Jen, you spoke with Claire Booth, who's a lawyer and also runs a farming operation with her husband.
Jen McCutcheon: 2:33
Brendan near Dubbo in New South Wales. That's right, Claire's a Nuffield scholar and has proven that there's still a place for first-generation farmers to succeed in Australia. But even though I think she's one of the best farmers around, she actually doesn't like to call herself a farmer, and you'll hear more about that later on. And, Kirsten, you spoke with Chloe Brown, who's also a first generation dairy farmer, who for the past decade has helped turn her small family dairy into a multi-million dollar business.
Kirsten Diprose: 2:59
Yeah, Chloe is going great guns. You'll love hearing from her and what she's done to make dairy farming, which traditionally is seen as quite rigid in terms of when you have to milk, to make it easier to actually raise a family. And she's also got a very successful podcast called More Than Milk, which I recommend you should listen to. Let's meet Chloe.
Chloe Brown: 3:21
So I grew up on a little sheep and beef property in a little town called Hawkesdale, which is not far from where you are now, but I don't classify myself as a farm kid. I didn't understand what the farm meant, Like we weren't on farm farming. So growing up I was not the farm kid, I was going off to do all the other things. I was actually at uni doing science and fell in love with the dairy farmer who was only 15 minutes away from where I grew up. Coincidentally and yeah, now I'm a dairy farmer we have our own property in Kirkstall. So in southwest Victoria, where we milk 200 jerseys, and I'm heavily involved with an industry. I have my own podcast, More Than Milk, sharing stories about the dairy industry. I'm super connected to ag now, but growing up I had no idea what it actually even meant.
Kirsten Diprose: 4:13
Wow, that's so interesting to hear because you grew up on a farm.
Chloe Brown: 4:19
I had so many farm kids as friends. Ag was all around me. My sister did a dairy farming apprenticeship. I just had no concept of what farming actually meant. What do you mean by that? It was more around. I just didn't understand them as a business. Like they were just farms and there was just animals in the paddock. Like I didn't actually understand what the business looked like. And it was more. That was just what life was Like. That was rural Australia, but I didn't. I didn't see it as a business. I didn't see it as a like a job.
Kirsten Diprose: 4:48
And it's really interesting you say that, because I think from an outsider's perspective, that's what people think farms are. They go oh, you have animals. They don't really see the business behind it. It can be quite a big business for some people.
Chloe Brown: 5:02
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It can be quite a big business for some people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I feel like I was almost skewed, because dad was nine to five well, eight till 5.30 and he'd still come home for lunch and all of those sort of things. You just weren't in the depths of it and no one actually spoke about farming as a business.
Kirsten Diprose: 5:19
Tell me about the business you run now, the dairy in Kirkstall. What does it look like?
Chloe Brown: 5:29
So, funnily enough, I stepped into the business when my husband was share farming with his mum and dad, and so it was a 50-50 share arrangement, which essentially meant we owned half the cows and no land. They owned half the cows and the land and we did all of the labour. Then we just split the bills 50-50. And unfortunately, that business model didn't work for us. It worked initially when Rodney's parents were still heavily involved with the business, but when the milk crash happened in 2016, our side of the business was not treated like a business. Our side of the business was treated as just we milk cows and there's money in the bank and we'll just, that's it, never with any real idea about a budget or where it went or how we actually spent money. So we spent four and a half months out of the industry. Rodney sold most of his cows, took time off, he went and farmed elsewhere as a farmhand and I went and worked off farm just working in a milk bar, and it was in that four months we were doing our diploma of ag. So we got that focus back about what we actually wanted in life, and so we then approached Rodney's parents once again, who were still farming. They had taken over the day-to-day farming and we said we want, we want to come back, but we want to do it ourselves. And we now want to take it on as a lease and I want to do all of the business.
Chloe Brown: 6:49
So prior to that I had no connection to the finances or the decision-making. There was no real consideration about strategic planning or where the business was going. It was just very reactionary. And so when I stepped in I said I'm going to do this and we want to give it a really good crack, but we're going to come in and lease the business and I wanted to then take it on as a business rather than just a lifestyle. So that first sort of 12 months I budgeted everything. Every dollar was accounted for, I knew where it was going, what it was going to do and we restructured everything.
Chloe Brown: 7:24
So now we own all of the cows. We still lease the land, but we have a plan in place to purchase and, yeah, we're ticking along nicely and so essentially now 100% of the milk check is ours. I get to control all of the bills and, strategically, where I put my money? Where we're just about to start calving. So it means I've had cows dry for the last little while, a couple of months, which means no income, unlike croppers and beef and sheep where you sell two or three times a year and that's all of your income in one go. Dairy is a drip feed because it's milk every day. We get paid every day. You have to be strategic when you don't have money coming in to them, where you spend it. The business now is my real focus around how I spend money, what I'm strategically putting money towards what's actually a good investment, rather than just, oh, cows need feed today. If I'd thought about that three months ago, when I knew they were going to need feed, I would be in a better position.
Kirsten Diprose: 8:21
Was it tough coming to your husband's parents and saying this is what we'd like to do. We'd like to lease it?
Chloe Brown: 8:30
Yeah, absolutely, the decision was easy, but the actual practicalities of how you make it happen and how you have those conversations and how you actually we're not telling you that you're a bad farmer and we think they're great farmers, but the business that they ran did not work for us and they like they were retired from the actual day to day farming but still liked the idea of having control of what the land was used for and how they farmed. So, yeah, the conversation was not easy, but coincidentally, rodney's dad got really sick as he got back in, so he hadn't milked cows for probably six or seven years and come back in and milked when we got out, and so I think that they planned to transition to beef and once he got sick, it was oh God, we still want it as a dairy farm. How do we actually make this happen so that they come to us with an option and we said, no, that doesn't work, but this works for us. Can we explore this? So then we used external consultants to come and run the figures and do all the numbers, and I had my business plan ready and I had my proposal ready and I sat at the kitchen table and I said this is what I want to do. I think we can give it a crack. And they said, yes, we'll give it five years, we'll see what lease it to start with, and then we'll make a plan going forward. And so we've been there ever since. So five years has passed.
Chloe Brown: 9:55
So we initially to buy the cows because we also didn't have any cashflow. The business we ran with a share farm. We had no cashflow, an outblock that we were paying off that we couldn't afford a. We had no cash flow, an outblock that we were paying off that we couldn't afford. A house that we couldn't afford. Machinery we couldn't afford. We were ridiculously in debt. So we sold most of that and come back in with no money. So we couldn't buy the cows straight out. So we vendor financed the cows over the five years and leased for the five years. So now officially, all of the herd is ours.
Kirsten Diprose: 10:22
And having the courage to ask, I think, is a big thing, and you did your homework before and I noticed you said you've got external consultants as well to look over the figures. Yep, you think that was really important.
Chloe Brown: 10:36
Absolutely, and it's been something we use now. So our external consultants, which is through our milk company, because there's plenty of consultants out there. That is a paid service and that's certainly a great resource as well. But luckily enough for us, it's a part of the company that we supply and so the farm source model allowed me to have four or five different consultants. So professionals. So we had the finance guy, we had the paddock guy, we had the quality guy. Everyone had their role to play to make our business better, and so we still use them now. They know our business, they've been there from the beginning. We almost use them as our permission to start with, like we've got this idea, will it work? And they'll go, yes, no, or here's why it won't or will work. And now we're like we've made this call and they go oh yeah, great. So it's been a learning experience for us as well to get that confidence back. But five heads at the table are much better than just one.
Kirsten Diprose: 11:35
And what do you like to do the most, because I think that's important too, like, what do you like to do as part of your farming business?
Chloe Brown: 11:48
My focus is I love milking cows, I love being with cows Calving is a big thing for me but I also equally love driving the tractor. I don't like paying the accounts, but I do like the strategic planning about where the money's going and what's actually the investment and how to plan that. I strategically know what I need to get tracks repaired, I need to get effluent removed or how am I going to be able to strategically put fertilizer out where it needs to go. So I suppose I'm a bit of an all-rounder. My husband's very grass and cows. We work really well as a team because we're a team, so we actually complement each other. We often have this conversation around who's actually the boss, and I would call myself the business manager and he's probably more the operations manager. So I tell him what's happening and he'll go yeah, but you've got too many things on the list that's not actually going to happen. That's not realistic and I'm like it's going to have to be because I need a calf shed finished by tomorrow.
Kirsten Diprose: 12:43
Thank you, it's going to have to be because I need a calf shed finished by tomorrow. Thank you, Negotiating a relationship and your farm business roles how does that work for you?
Chloe Brown: 12:50
It's been an evolution, absolutely an evolution, and I suppose it's also about me getting the confidence in my own skills, because I come into the relationship with absolutely no knowledge, like I had no idea about the difference for what a steer was to a heifer and Rodney would talk in this language, that I and I suppose I now use the language and I'm very conscious of the fact that we just talk in lingo that people don't understand. And even if you're in agriculture, people don't understand dairy lingo and almost every second farm has a different language and, to be blunt, rodney's a terrible teacher I had to teach myself well and truly. But though it was more about me getting the confidence to say hang on, why are you doing this and what's the reason for that? And I don't like hearing because we've always done it that way. I'm very much, but can't we do it differently or better, or what? Is there a way to make this just slightly better? I don't want to change the whole thing. Just how can I make this slightly better?
Chloe Brown: 13:48
And in the initial days he would go no, and that would be the end of the conversation, and then he'd think about it and he'd come to me in a couple of days and be like what did you actually mean by that? And so now I can very much just go. No, I'm doing it like this and he'll go. Yeah, sure, we spend 24 hours a day together most days and it is not always easy. And recently we've struggled with how we define family life and farm life and trying to figure out where that balance actually is. So if I step into home, that my farm brain's turned off, that doesn't happen. And because we also don't employ any staff, that doesn't happen. Like we, the farming and family is all in one. So it's a balancing act, but we've certainly got better at learning how each other's brain works and when's the right time to actually have a conversation. We actually now have a conversation about what is actually the best way and then we compromise.
Kirsten Diprose: 14:47
That's awesome. It sounds like you've brought a lot of EQ to the whole system as well, like being able to have that conversation initially with your in-laws and then being able to keep evolving that relationship with your own husband, while keeping your actual husband and wife relationship.
Chloe Brown: 15:07
Yeah, and I think I don't know if there's a lot of skills in it. I don't think it's a skill set, but I think it's just if you don't have good communication and that we both respect each other for the role that we play within the business and the farm doesn't work without Rodney and the farm doesn't work without me. It's not as if one of us could just step out and say, nah, catch her. The farm would not work. So we have done our farming plan, which was really great course around setting our structures up and figuring out what we want the business to look like going forward and how that has evolved. For us it's a constant battle, but it really just comes down to figuring out what we want and how that works with each other and then communicating that properly. Great advice.
Kirsten Diprose: 15:56
Now you're an advocate really for dairy just because of all the work you've put in learning the business yourself and then helping others to do dairy in a way that works for them. Why are you so passionate about it?
Chloe Brown: 16:11
So dairy has given me so much and I think it's an incredible way to have a lifestyle that you can balance with farming, with kids, with a multi-million dollar business.
Chloe Brown: 16:24
There is so much that dairy offers personally and professionally and I really just love that people.
Chloe Brown: 16:31
We haven't promoted dairy well enough for my age group and I suppose that 30 to 40 bracket and it's not just dairy, it's agriculture in general that it wasn't seen as a career path and I suppose for me I really love the idea that if we can have business people within agriculture, that it becomes a thriving business and we need the industry to thrive and we need the industry to be strong, but with people that are realistic about how the business works but also how the industry works.
Chloe Brown: 17:07
And I suppose I knew nothing, so how do I pass some of that knowledge on? Because I always tried to be the farmer that I assumed I had to be, and so I looked over the fence a lot and I heard how other people were farming and I always tried to find that right way to farm. And there isn't a right way to farm, there is my way to farm and it took me a really long time to figure that out farm, and it took me a really long time to figure that out. So if I can share some of that knowledge and in turn, create thriving businesses and a wonderful network of people, then dairy will be here for a really long time to come. In terms of how you farm.
Kirsten Diprose: 17:48
What's different from some of the conventional methods? And, like you, you said it's different for every business. But do you milk twice a day?
Chloe Brown: 17:57
Yep, so we milk twice a day and I wouldn't say our business is structurally different. We run slightly lower numbers and if you look at national numbers we are probably average herd size. If you look at around Western Victoria, we are not. So 200 cows for a while and I say this in general terms was small farms that weren't going to get anywhere. And if you weren't getting big and you weren't getting to 700 to 1,000 cows, you actually weren't achieving anything. And I call bullshit because my profit is probably just the same, it's, except I just don't have the extra zeros in the end of my milk check or on the bills coming in. We structure it in a way that is, we only have 330 acres, so for me to have a stocking rate of 200 cows, that's it, unless I'm going to go and buy more land next door to increase that and then employ people and then add all the other extra complexities that comes with all of that. So we structure our business how we like it and so we milk 200 cows. We like jerseys, that's just what we do. So we've just converted. We were 50-50 Friesian and jerseys, simply because that's all we could get. That's what Rodney's parents had. We bought cows when we needed cows. But now we're straight Jersey.
Chloe Brown: 19:14
If you drive past the dairy at 6.30 in the morning, we won't be there, unless something major is happening. If you drive past at 6.30 in the evening, we will be there, because I don't like getting up in the morning and neither does Rodney, and we both work best at night, so we don't milk until 7, 7.30. At this time of the year we can get away. We said at 8.30 in the morning. Some mornings it's nine o'clock. I do the school run and then come back to milk cows and it's no different to anyone else getting up at five o'clock in the morning. It's just I milk later at night. So the milking intervals are still the same, it's just I don't start until about five, six o'clock at night and it works for us.
Kirsten Diprose: 19:56
Oh, so you're only starting at 5.30 or six. You're not milking at 9pm.
Chloe Brown: 20:00
When we're all in and at peak time. So if you add calving on and peak cows, some nights we don't get home until 10 o'clock, but that means I can then have tea. We've done the school run, kids are sorted, they're ready for almost bed. We go and milk cows and then we go to bed and then get up and spend time with them before they then disappear again. So we're not milking at midnight, but it works better for us and because our brains work better at nighttime and the lights are still on, it's at the end of the day rather than at the start of the day.
Kirsten Diprose: 20:31
That is almost revolutionary in itself. There's this assumption that you've got to be milking cows at four or five in the morning.
Chloe Brown: 20:37
And if you can't get labor that want to do that like. Maybe it's the structure of the business that needs to change. The cows are still getting milk twice a day. We're still sending milk every day. The quality is still high. They're still getting the same amount of time on pasture. It still getting the same amount of time on pasture, it's just at different intervals. Some people love getting up at three o'clock in the morning because that's when their phone isn't on and it's not running off the hook, so that they can just be quiet and they milk their cows and that's it and they're done by seven and then they start their day. And some people like to structure it so that everyone's at home with their kids by 5.30 in the afternoon. Great, if that works for you, that works for you. That doesn't work for us. So we've structured it how we want to structure it and I can't think of anything worse than getting up before six o'clock in the morning. No, thank you please.
Kirsten Diprose: 21:22
You spoke about labour. So you don't employ anyone. At the moment it's costly to have labour because you've got to pay them a lot of money. From an industry perspective, where do you see this issue?
Chloe Brown: 21:34
Yeah, labor is huge and without labor we don't have cows getting milked, and without labor we don't have businesses getting run effectively and it's a really constant battle for us. Do we need an extra person? Like I can afford an extra person. I know I've done numbers on an extra person but I don't quite have the workload for an extra person. Like I can afford an extra person. I know I've done numbers on an extra person but I don't quite have the workload for an extra person. We're full-time but we both do about 85 hours a week. That would be our minimum in carving. That probably goes up to ridiculous hours.
Kirsten Diprose: 22:06
Yeah, and when you employ someone, you can't expect them to be working 85 to 100 hours.
Chloe Brown: 22:12
Absolutely not. But it's really hard to define what is work and what is not work. But labour is a huge issue for everybody and unfortunately, as our businesses have got bigger and as our cow numbers have got bigger and the workload gets bigger, it's time consuming. So the stuff still has to be done between milkings.
Kirsten Diprose: 22:34
Now you've created your own podcast, the More the Milk Podcast, which is fantastic to listen to. What made you start a podcast?
Chloe Brown: 22:43
Well, funnily enough. So I don't say no very often and have a lot of spare time on my hands between 10pm and midnight, as all busy people do. So I actually created a women in dairy conference called Cream of the Crop, with some local dairy farmers Renata Cumming and Lucy Collins and so we wanted to be able to create an event for women to be able to come and ask silly questions, to network, to grow their knowledge. But the conversations we were all having was I was day to day on farm and a lot of people in that female wife role or daughter-in-law role or sister-in-law, when they can step into the business, they're either just doing books or just doing the run around or just maintaining the house. And that was the just that we kept getting. I don't think I'm good enough to be a dairy farmer, I just do. I'm like no, that's no, you are a dairy farmer. I don't care whether you're just or not you are, because you're important to the business. So we created an event and we had a farmer panel that we had three people speaking on, and so the first year was wonderful and we had a really successful event in Port Campbell, and so we sat down to do the second year and we were like, oh, let's make a list of who we think might be great to get on the farmer panel. And so we had three spots available for the panel and I had a list of 50 without even thinking about it. That was just local women around our region and I went away from that meeting going, but none of them are better or worse, like they're just different.
Chloe Brown: 24:19
And I get so much from the table conversations where you're just having a chat about how you farm. There's no judgment, there's no one saying but what, that's the wrong way. You're just saying that's interesting. I don't do it like that, but I can see your point. Or have you considered? So it's very much just knowledge sharing. But those conversations happen very sporadically because we're all too busy. So I just happened to mention to Lucy Collins I think we should be sharing stories, and she was yes, absolutely.
Chloe Brown: 24:52
And so all of my imposter syndrome stepped in and I was like I'm not the person to do this. I'm happy to find other people. I'll do all the background work, I'll do everything. And she was like no, you're the person, you have to be the person. I was like am I the person? Some days I don't know if I'm qualified enough to be running a multi-billion dollar business. Okay, and I got over that.
Chloe Brown: 25:17
So I spent a lot of nights in my own head just putting cups on cows, thinking how do I do this, how do I make it work? And so then I just Googled how to make a podcast and I bought microphones and I convinced a few of my friends who I knew were diverse enough so that I want to. I really want to focus on the fact that no two businesses are the same. No two farms are the same and they're not meant to be the same. There isn't a cookie cutter. So, yeah, I convinced some people to say yes and 45 episodes later we're kicking goals. I'm not the journalist, I don't have any of the media training. I'm just genuinely curious about how they farm, why they farm and what they do and, in a selfish way, if I can then pull something from that conversation to make my business better win. I'm trying to have the conversations that I would have liked to have had 10 years ago when I was brand new and had no idea.
Kirsten Diprose: 26:11
I guess that's the good thing about farming is that when you do it right for you, you can really reap the benefits in the lifestyle, because then you can actually go. Okay, these are my values, this is what's important to me, and prioritize it like that, rather than when you've got a job for someone you've got to be like physically there sometimes, do what they need to do and you can't balance the kids with your workload, there are benefits.
Chloe Brown: 26:39
Absolutely. We don't sell that enough. What other industry is as flexible as dairy? And I suppose I say that with a very privileged knowledge, knowing that I'm the business owner. I'm not working as a farm worker, but most businesses are very flexible so that if I still get to be able to go to kids sport, I still get to have time off during the day. I'm on way too many boards and way too many community groups because it brings me joy and that's where my that's my off time. They're my hobbies. We get to choose what we do and I've chosen the structure that suits my business. But I also choose how I farm, when I farm, why I farm, and that's the best bit For me. This is what life is meant to be.
Kirsten Diprose: 27:26
It really is what life's meant to be, and I think that her message about just running your own race and not looking over the fence is so important. Jen.
Jen McCutcheon: 27:35
Yeah, exactly, and the notion that works for some might not work for you, and that's okay, and I think you'll see similar sentiments when we hear from Claire in a moment. Like Chloe, claire is fearlessly challenging traditional farming norms and pushing boundaries to maximise every dollar earned from their family farm. Let's hear from her now.
Claire Booth: 27:56
So Brendan and I got together in a not a very typical manner. I was studying law at uni and he was in his final year as a diesel mechanic fitter in Dubbo. And I remember meeting him and like within the first month or two of dating he was like him and like within the first month or two of dating he was like hey, I have no interest in doing this sort of diesel mechanic work for a long time. I'll do it for maybe 10 years, but after that I want to get back onto the family farm or want to go back to farming, or I'd like to set up my own farm or something like that. And at that stage I didn't really understand. I was the daughter of a farmer, so mum and dad and my uncle and aunt and my grandparents have got a vegetable farm in the Hunter Valley near Maitland, but I was 21. I certainly hadn't run a business by that stage, so I didn't really understand what that meant. But as time marched on and I would drive back to Brendan's family place at Goolma near Mudgee to help with shearing or whatever the case was, I began to understand that this was very much a very big part of who he was and that he was very happy building fences or building dams or just generally being a farmer. And I really enjoyed the landscape out here. I really loved the trees and the gravel roads and the open skies and there was something quite beautiful from an artistic landscape kind of piece. And again, I didn't really understand what that actually meant. And I think at year 21, I was falling in love with a fellow. His father tragically died in an on-farm accident. A forklift crushed him. So even though I'd met Ian, which was Brendan's father, for about four or five months very early on into our relationship, there was this really serious tragedy. And I do believe, 20 years later, reflecting on that, that the grief and loss piece of when you're a 20 year old bloke and your dad is your best friend and you're away working for the weekend and tragically your dad has an accident at home, like I think that kind of changes things. So I feel like Brendan probably had a very defined vision for what he wanted to achieve in his life and that was always surrounded by his image of if he could have children and raise them on a farm in the way to basically get into farming.
Claire Booth: 30:27
For us that was a decision when we were 25 and 26. And that required an awful lot of strategic planning and I was just really fortunate that at the time I was a solicitor a very junior solicitor, mind you, but working for an exceptional law firm in rural Queensland and I had watched the purchases of lots of farms. I'd seen a lot of intergenerational transfers. So in many respects our life just became another client file and I was able to utilise the skills as a junior solicitor and took all of the savings that Brendan and I had from over 10 years of working towards a goal and selling houses, like we'd bought a couple of houses and we'd sold them by the time we were 28. We were primed and we had a very strategic plan that we'd had a million dollars saved up and that was hopefully going to be enough for us to buy in to a turnkey property that was big enough that we could both work off-farm, because we needed to have our off-farm incomes pay off the debt, and that's what we did. So we went shopping, we looked at about five different places I've still got the original spreadsheets and we were really strategic around what it is that we wanted. So we ended up going okay, it has to be within 30 minutes of a major centre and the major centre needs to have a tennis court, a cinema and a swimming pool. And that was how we went about making those decisions. And yeah, so we looked at a farm down the road from here and here I was in Gundawindi doing all the due diligence.
Claire Booth: 32:15
And I still remember chatting to Craig Chandler at Team Irrigation in Dubbo. I was doing all my spreadsheet due diligence, my cash flows. I was a very diligent young lady and I called him and said, hey, we're doing the due diligence on a place down in Geary. I would like to know about solar powered center pivots and what's the price for pulling up some of the bores just to see if they work or not. And he's just like, number one, there's no such thing as a solar power. Look, I appreciate it, but it's amusing that you've even thought of that. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm looking at them in the United States and I can see that the company that you sell for, or the brands that you sell, like this, is part of their inventory. And he's like, yeah, yeah, look, they probably are up there, but they're such a huge that technology could be 10 or 20 years away. And I was like, yeah, but I'm going to need that technology for this to actually work, otherwise the gross margins won't work. And he was like so you're actually serious? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like we're very serious. And he's like yes, it'll cost you about 50 grand to pull up all those pumps and get them redone.
Claire Booth: 33:17
And it was a really interesting conversation because me just doing my homework to fill in a spreadsheet so that I could try and see if it was going to be profitable to pay off the debt, to be a first-generation farmer meant that I ended up talking to lots of lovely people and it was through that process that Craig contacted Mr Robert Ellicott and he was known as Bob Ellicott to some people, but he was also known as Mr Robert Ellicott. And Mr Robert Ellicott was the owner, alongside his wife Colleen, of this little place in Geurie called the Cedars. And anyway, all that Craig told me was that Mr Ellicott was Mr Super League. And I'm like I don't understand who that is. And he's like if you don't know, then you should probably find out, given you're in the legal game. So I went in next door to my boss and said do you know who Mr Ellicott is?
Claire Booth: 34:03
And he's like yeah he's the old attorney general, so off I went and did some reading on who he was, and so he was 83 when we were negotiating with him and he was still an active practicing barrister and sharp as a tack.
Claire Booth: 34:17
But the most ethical and wonderfully kind, didn't give any discounts at all, and nor should he. We weren't looking for a bargain, we wanted to buy quality. But that's how we got into farming the courage just to sit down on the weekends or after work and just contact different kinds of companies. And what ended up happening through that process of asking questions was that it must have therefore become apparent to the people on the other end of the phone that this person was not wanting a favour and they were trying to do their homework. And then that meant that they spoke to their existing customers, and then the farm that wasn't listed for sale, that was never going to be listed for sale because Mr Ellicott was super private that that opportunity came about. And I just think it's such a wonderful thing and I've since really reflected on that process when I get people coming in saying, hey, this is what we want to do and I'm like great, anything's achievable with time and patience and vision and a really good spreadsheet.
Jen McCutcheon: 35:26
I think I need to get in. I'm terrible with Excel.
Claire Booth: 35:30
So you know, it doesn't need to be the complicated stuff, it's literally just the sum auto sum. And that's what I find quite astonishing, if I'm honest, is that it's not hard. We're not rocket scientists. We haven't taken a piece of metal to the moon. We've just bought a farm as a first generation couple and it just took time and massive amounts of sacrifice, but it is possible. You know, that was when we were 28. I'm now 41, so this is 13 years later and I just look back now and go.
Claire Booth: 36:03
I'm so grateful that we both were just workaholics in our 20s that we could actually save that deposit, because there's never a shortcut to getting that first start. Do you know what I mean? And I'm in a couple of WhatsApp chat groups, discussion groups with different farmers across Australia, and this week we've all been having a bit of a chuckle about Warren Buffett, who's still driving his I think it's a 24 year old car at the moment and he got hail damage on it and he probably could have written it off, but he was like no, it's a perfectly fine car, I just need to get the dings banged out of it and it'll be perfectly fine mechanically to keep driving. And one of the other fellows who's in Victoria was able to say look, yeah, my dad just drove a really normal Holden Rodeo dual cab for all of his farming career and when he died having 50,000 acres and he'd started with 200.
Claire Booth: 37:01
And the concept of keeping up with the Joneses and driving flash cars you can't do everything in farming. It can either be one or the other, sadly, if you want to buy or expand or do stuff by yourself, clearly, if you work together, pushing your chips together, and work with family and that works well, like that, it's a different kind of conversation. But, um, yeah, it's certainly been a hard road, though Jen, like I wouldn't suggest that it's been the easy road. There's been a lot of hard work.
Jen McCutcheon: 37:39
And it's not anymore. As you said, 13 years on, you would have maybe needed $3-5 million in savings to buy in now and to be first-generation farmers. It is an amazing achievement. You should pat yourself on the back.
Claire Booth: 37:48
Very much. I think it's really important to be honest about this. We had a 75% debt loan, so we had 25% equity and we had crop failures in our first year. We literally just got married. Brendan's off-farm contracting job had finished because there was a downturn in the mining sector at that time, because he was still working as an off-farm diesel mechanic and we were pregnant and just had a miscarriage and it was a really shit 12 months, those first 12 months of owning a farm.
Claire Booth: 38:22
But I still think it's still possible because there are products out there in the marketplace. So the RIC loan at the moment if you've got a bit of a savings they'll double it. Or NAB have got a product called the Future Farmers Loan where you can have a 5% deposit and borrow 95%, but you must be working off farm, which is similar to what we were doing. So when we bought here in Geurie it was worth 2.45 plus stamp duty, plus the costs of plant and equipment and plus the costs of paying for livestock. So I think it was in the end about 3.3 to 3.5 million, I think, and we've just had everything revalued because we just bought next door and it's now 12 million and that doesn't include the plant and equipment and livestock, and so that would mean you'd have to have a deposit of $3 million. So, yes, there is a significant difference between being able to save $1 million cash and saving $3 million cash, and I think that is the thing that does worry me.
Claire Booth: 39:28
But also, I do see that banks are very comfortable If you have got a long-term plan and you have absolutely sacrificed things to the point where you're driving a shitty old ute.
Claire Booth: 39:44
You haven't been on holidays for a couple of years, you literally have just saved everything possible and you know that this is your sole purpose in life. A bank will pick you up and they will find a way to navigate through the different requirements to give you a go, but there are very few clients that I see that are genuinely prepared to not go on the snow holiday, or like the number of young farmers that have got a Land Cruiser ute and they say it's really hard to buy a farm. I'm like no wonder, why are you driving around in $110,000 ute? But anyway, look, we all have choices to make in life and I think, as women on the land, we are all told that you can have everything in life. You just can't have it all at once and I think after 40, go your hardest and go and get a Land Cruiser ute, because typically after that point you might've started owning one block or more. But in your early twenties, be humble, eat two minute noodles and it'll be fine. It's only for a couple of years.
Jen McCutcheon: 40:50
And so traditionally in our area you're around wheat and sheep and that kind of thing. Why corn? And you're always pushing the boundaries. So is that something you just found in your research?
Claire Booth: 41:03
The business is now growing to a point where we never, ever expected it to grow. To be honest with you, Jen, I remember you hear people saying that and you just go. What a wanker. No, it's true. Like literally.
Claire Booth: 41:14
The plan at 21 was Brendan wanted to be self-employed in the farming industry, on a farm and raising kids. There was no, at that stage, knowledge. Around 10% of all turnover must be dedicated to interest. We certainly didn't have that level of financial literacy when we were starting out. Why we've had to chase really niche crops and push the business that operates upon the soil is because of increasing land values and increasing water values and the increasing price of inputs and we try, if we can, to have a reasonable return on investment from the value of the asset. Because we are first generation and we've had to grow with debt and bank-funded debt, we have had to ensure that our turnover is as high as it possibly can to dilute our interest costs and, as a result, we've basically said right here what can we grow? And we really loved growing sweet corn with Simplot. Absolutely loved it. It was just one of the best crops and they are just really lovely to work with. But unfortunately their corporate model just meant that they couldn't afford to pay any more per tonne, and so we were forced to look for alternatives. So we got into different types of corn, we got into different types of seed crops and then, because mum and dad are potato growers, with my uncle, steve, and my grandparents, I suppose I always had this romantic concept that I wonder if we could ever grow potatoes. And anytime I would be brave enough to articulate that, most people would genuinely just say I was daft and it was too hot. And the joke was haha, you'd grow roast potatoes out in Dubbo, wouldn't you? And I was just like I don't know. And throughout the Nuffield scholarship we were able to look at potatoes grown around the world in different climates with different soil types, and that was really interesting. There's a lot of potatoes grown in Brazil. When you look at places that they're growing potatoes that are similar to where we are in terms of their in-crop rain and also their soil components, I was like this is actually possible.
Claire Booth: 43:34
And you know, the clincher was a lovely client who is now 93. When I first met him when I came to Dubbo, he was 82 and he used to look after a lot of bees out at Burke and I said to him oh look, I've been putting some sweet potatoes in the veggie patch. I'd really like to do some sweet potatoes. I can see that McDonald's is probably going to at some stage want more people to supply sweet potatoes because of the starch components and people are very health conscious in how they have snack food. So I've been really just playing around with sweet potatoes and he said, oh look, oh, sweet potatoes. I don't know anything about sweet potatoes, but they used to grow a lot of white potatoes, out at Bourke. And I was like, turn the clock off in the office. I'm like, okay, let's talk potatoes. And it was just. And he was like are you serious? I was like I'm deadly serious and like this is 10 years ago. And so he came in a week or so later and found the book where they wrote about growing potatoes in in Bourke in the 1960s and 70s.
Claire Booth: 44:39
And back then Bourke was a really vibrant irrigation community and it was very much a very big vegetable growing sector sector which you'd never think about now when you drive through Bourke. So it gave us a bit of confidence to give it a bit of a go, and and then the thing that probably pushed us into it was the succession of my father and his twin brother, steve, who are both 67. Steve decided it was time for him to slow down, so he sold his part of the farm and then the part that my dad has got. My little brother, bram, has purchased that with his wife Sam, and my grandparents have kept their bit, and so they decided. My brother decided not to do potatoes and so they're just doing loose and hay and they do a great job of it, and they've got a plant and equipment fire business for tractors Anyway.
Claire Booth: 45:30
But Brahm just said look, if you guys want to take the potato gear, that'd be great. So none of us were given anything. It went to a clearing sale and we all had to bid. We paid market price for stuff which was really good, and then there was the flotilla of trucks coming back from Maitland with all of the potato gear, of trucks coming back from Maitland with all of the potato gear. It's been a long road. Nothing in agriculture happens overnight, and we probably had the most sleepless nights of anyone over the last three months because I suppose I backed ourselves into it being successful, so much so that I went and asked the neighbor next door if we could buy his farm. And he said yes and we agreed on a price. I was like Brendo, this can't fail, mate, because I've got my neck on the line with buying the farm next door.
Jen McCutcheon: 46:19
So how long until you know if it's going to be a success?
Claire Booth: 46:24
We made the decision that we have to commit to something for five years, jen, because typically your first, second and third year of a brand new crop is always pretty ordinary, and so I've learned to measure success over longer periods of time, especially in business, because, as we were talking about earlier before we turned the recorder on that, when you're doing something for the very first time, it typically is going to be below expectations for a whole range of reasons, and mostly because you've never done it before, and though to get your return on investment, you have to commit to something for a long period of time, otherwise you're never capitalizing on the sweat equity and the time investment, and I'm really grateful for realizing that.
Claire Booth: 47:11
So, literally, we expect two out of five years to probably be ordinary, one to be average and hopefully two to be above average, and then we'll take a five-year average and that will tell us how the crop is progressing. So people are asking us at the moment how it's going. We're like, look, we'll let you know in five years time. At the moment it's way too early to know, but if in five years time you don't hear of potatoes grown in Geurie, you know that it hasn't been successful.
Jen McCutcheon: 47:39
And so, for those people listening, you sound like a farmer. You live and breathe the life, but you don't call yourself a farmer. Why is that?
Claire Booth: 47:56
Oh, I feel really uncomfortable when I'm introduced as a farmer, mostly because I don't sit on the tractor and I like I'm terrible at putting a pdo shaft together and I actually don't know what the price of fertilizer is per ton anymore and all of the operational things. When I jumped over a fence and broke my leg in our first 12 months it became very clear to me that whilst I had the desire and the vision to be a farmer, the reality was that genetically I clearly wasn't meant to be one, because I have a distinct lack of common sense and I am really risk adverse. So what I've done is I have said I think the modern farming family must have such an applied level of financial literacy. That's the job. So I really am behind the scenes, so I'm not involved at all and I feel a bit sad about that because I really like knowing what's going on and I love chatting to the people that are on the farm business.
Claire Booth: 48:57
But for our marriage to be successful, we have realized that Brendan really needs to be on the ground and the sole person that people chat to in the business be on the ground and the sole person that people chat to in the business and that's agronomics, livestock agents, staff, anything of any kind to do with the actual operations of the physical business.
Claire Booth: 49:17
And then I'm the person that typically liaises behind the scenes with the bank and probably joins in every quarter with some strategy meetings with our business coach, and what that's also meant is that I think both Brendan and I have our own little sandpit, so he's fully able to be autonomous in his own sort of world, and me not needing to be fully involved in the farm business has allowed me to set up my own law firm, and I don't think you can run two businesses well. I think you've got to do one well and we've decided that it's important for me to run the law firm well. Just a small side hustle, yeah. So in many respects the farm business has one file. They are just one of my clients, you know.
Jen McCutcheon: 50:00
So where to from here Potatoes? We'll check in with you in five years. If people want to follow your journey, can they follow you?
Claire Booth: 50:10
years. If people want to follow your journey, can they follow you on? Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, much to my husband's horror, we do have a instagram and facebook platform and we're on linkedin as well, under boothag, and yeah, I really hope that if people can, um, take away from our time together and their time invested in this podcast, realize that the common link of success seems to be confidence, jen and I'm trying, wherever I can, to give a plug to a professional development process for women called Core Confidence to women who are both accountants and basically they have realized that there's something where you've got a bloke and a woman who, at the same time, want to apply for the same opportunity, whether it's a job, whether it's a board position, whether they want to try and buy their own farm. The bloke will just push on and go. Yeah, of course, that's a completely logical thing to do.
Claire Booth: 51:07
I should definitely go and do that and then they put themselves in it and it's very well known that women just don't have the confidence in themselves or the self-esteem to actually think that they're worthy, or they really worry about what other people think if they fail. So please go and invest, if you can, in your self-confidence. It's not to become that conceited person with your collar up and thinking that you're far better than anyone else. It's not about that kind of showy confidence. It's actually that deep-seated belief that you are enough and that your marriage is going to be great. It may not be pretty, but it's going to be great. Far farming is an unrelenting game and it can suck the soul out of you if you let it. But I think, as women, if we truly focus on the fact that we are worthy and that we're allowed to achieve things, then life is going to be filled with those small moments of joy.
Kirsten Diprose: 52:05
What a powerful note to finish on, because that's it from Ducks on the Pond. Thank you for listening and thanks again to Chloe Brown and Claire Booth for sharing their farming stories with us.
Jen McCutcheon: 52:17
If you'd like to hear more from Chloe, you can, of course, listen to her amazing podcast More Than Milk, and you can also follow Claire's foray into potatoes by following her at Booth Ag.
Kirsten Diprose: 52:29
So cool. Hey, thanks, Jen for being part of the Ducks on the Pond team. You've been working behind the scenes a little bit, but it's so awesome to have you as well. Jackie is still part of our team and this episode is actually the last of our season, but we will be back again in a few months and, as you know, I do like to pop out a few bonus episodes in between, because I can't keep away.
Jen McCutcheon: 52:51
But will you, Jen, please come back. I would love to. It's great to be a part of the fam.
Kirsten Diprose: 52:57
Awesome. This podcast is brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co, and I'd like to thank our episode sponsor, chloe Kelly, from Joy John Wines. Let's meet Chloe now.
Chloe Kelly: 53:09
So I am a female founder of Joy John Wines, which is a small boutique winery based in the Mallee, Victoria, on the Murray River. My husband, ryan, and my girls and myself we create the wine package. It deliver. I buy the fruit in from regions that I like, so the King Valley and Heathcote, and then I also get the rosé from Nyah from here in the Mallee.
Kirsten Diprose: 53:41
So what kind of facility do you have then at the winery? So I just rent a space.
Chloe Kelly: 53:46
I've got a small crush because I'm only 16,000 litres, which is quite tiny for majority of the wineries in Australia, so all my equipment and stuff is I just hire it out of a local winery that's just a bit bigger than mine. Wow, that's really cool. How long have you been doing it? So I've been in the wine industry probably for seven years, which it was a bit rough the first year. So that's yeah. When I decided to create Joy John Wines, I was probably a year in and just thought how I can make this work, being a female and being a mother who was also studying. I wanted to stay in the industry, but there was challenges there. So I created Joy John Wines so I could work and have that balance as well.
Kirsten Diprose: 54:38
Where does the name Joy John Wines come from?
Chloe Kelly: 54:41
So Joy is my father's mother, Joy Kelly, and then John is my mum's father. Who is John
Kirsten Diprose: 54:52
You're talking about balance before. I would imagine running a winery would be like just around the clock kind of a work.
Chloe Kelly: 55:00
Yeah, especially during vintage, which is our harvest, commonly known as but that's, yeah February and can run up until May, commonly known as but that's February, and can run up until May, which is where it's really tricky for females in the industry who decide to have children. As much as you've got daycare and things like that, you can still be working 18 hours a day. I think there's positives and negatives, especially in ag. Whichever sector you go in, but I think when you're born into it and you're raised amongst it, you live and breathe it, and it's quite a privilege to show your own kids the sacrifices you make and there's always sacrifice made for the positive things that you get from your hard work and showing them how to work themselves and how to achieve things in life through hard work.
Kirsten Diprose: 55:50
Do you have any business advice?
Chloe Kelly: 55:52
I love to ask this question, yeah, so it took me a while to figure this out, six years down the track. If you don't love what you do, if you don't have passion for what you're deciding to venture on, there's no point doing it because it won't succeed, no matter what you put into it. If there's no passion and love and full effort from not only you but your people around you, like the people pushing you to do it partners and kids and, yeah, if you're not fully into it, I would recommend not starting it if you're not obsessed with it.
Kirsten Diprose: 56:31
I think it would fizzle, yeah, and there's probably going to be hard times and that's when you really got to love it. Yeah, exactly. So where can people find Joy John Wines? And have a look at what you do.
Chloe Kelly: 56:43
So I only occasionally open up for open days in Nyah Victoria, so I'll just advertise that through email marketing and social media and just flyers around our region, but other than that it's just online. So, joyjohnwinescomau, and yeah, you can read a little bit up on our story and purchase away if you'd like.
Kirsten Diprose: 57:08
Great. What kind of varieties do you have?
Chloe Kelly: 57:10
and read a little bit up on our story and purchase away if you'd like. Great, what kind of varieties do you have? So I do a Prosecco from the King Valley, a Pinot Grigio as well from the King Valley. I do a Heathcote Shiraz from a cooler climate area and then, yeah, the Rosé from up here from a Grenache vine.
Kirsten Diprose: 57:27
Perfect. You mentioned some pretty good regions there King Valley for Prosecco, Heathcote, Shiraz yeah, perfect.
Chloe Kelly: 57:34
Yeah, creating wines that I love to drink which can be dangerous.
Kirsten Diprose: 57:40
Yes, yes, but at least you know what you're talking about. Chloe, thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sponsoring Ducks in the Pond. We very much appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sponsoring Ducks in the Pond. We very much appreciate it. Thank you very much.