The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Thursday, the 12th of October 2023

By Dwain Duxson

If you can, please get your family, friends and colleagues to sign up. See the website link here.

Not 9 bank accounts but plenty of Rabbit borrows

Yesterday, I relayed how we keep the cash flowing by using many bank accounts to avoid bill shock. I had a good reply from a Farmer, and this is what he said “You run your business much the way we run ours. We can’t get 9 bank accounts. The banks just won’t let us have them. But we have rabbit burrows! Before we buy anything big, we put money aside for 6 months to see if we can do without the money. Sometimes, we find other ways to do without what it’s for. And priorities change too”. There are many ways to skin the cat (Rabbit) when it comes to managing cash flow on the Farm. What’s yours? Reply to [email protected]

Use this idea for a birthday milestone

I had a Farming mate I converse with on a regular basis who just turned 70. He is doing good and still enjoying the Farm life, although it can occasionally get in the road of his golf game. For his 70th birthday, one of his daughters sent me a message asking me to do a short 10-30 second video saying happy birthday and anything else you would like to say. So I did and sent it back. I spoke to him yesterday, and he said his girls contacted all his mates and got them to do the same. They then took him away for the weekend and showed them all, and he said he cried and laughed and was humbled by what people said. But what a great idea from his daughters. I mean, in this day and age where most of us have phones, how easy is it to do? I just thought it was a great initiative. I guess the personal invite is still in the mail…. Reply to [email protected]

Alarmists take centre stage

The first paragraph of RMA’s CEO Chris Howie’s article here is spot on. We have that much media going on these days, and the formula is either, tell a negative story, make up some gossip about a B-grade celebrity or write about a “supercell storm” that is going to cross smack bang over the Farm house and take off the roof. We live in an era of exaggeration, and the media knows it gets clicks, so they keep pursuing it. And it has the desired effect. It scares some people. If you want to see a real storm, tell them to go to the US and chase one of those tornados. They are vicious. Do you also turn a blind eye to this sort of media? Reply to [email protected]

Doing bold things

You look at those old concrete Grain Silos they built alongside the Railway lines right across Australia back in the 1930’s and 40’s when the switch was on from jute bags to bulk. They are huge landmarks on the horizon and would have been a massive undertaking to build back then. They are still commanding today. I’d argue that they are the greatest collective pieces of Ag-related infrastructure built across rural and regional Australia. As an early teenager, I remember climbing up the Bolangum Silo with the old steel ladders that used to wobble. I made it to the top, and it might have been where my fear of heights came from because I surely couldn’t do it now. But getting back to the infrastructure, do we do bold things like this today? Perhaps, we do it in isolation but not on a collective scale like the Silos project. We treat them like oversized canvas now, but I wonder if anyone has thought of what else they could be used for? Got any ideas? See an image of the Bolangum Silo below. Reply to [email protected]

End of message.

Dwain Duxson

Random and associated images.