The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Thursday, the 28th of September 2023

By Dwain Duxson

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

What’s your morning routine?

We've all got our morning routines, and for what it's worth, I am going to outline mine. I usually get up at about 4, sometimes a bit before, sometimes a bit after. I like a good drink of water first thing. Then I grab the computer and attend to the Farm Tender listings, editing those to make them read and look better. I do the same with all the members sign-ups from the day before. Then I put together our "daily numbers", a list of about 25 KPIs from the day before, which then get sent to the staff. Then I start on this newsletter, which is my side hustle. Then grab the first of 3 homemade Coffees and start on the papers. I read the digital versions of the Herald Sun, Financial Review, The Australian, The Age, Farm Online, The Weekly Times, and Sheep/Beef/Grain Central. After that, it's a little bit of exercise, a shower, and then into it for the day. I would love to hear what your morning routine is? Reply to [email protected]

Getting shit out of your head

I got some gems from the Weekly Times podcast with Nigel Kerin yesterday, and one was this. Like alot of Farmers, big Nigel has a bit of a pain in the guts over the interest rate rises, so they took out a Cap and collar loan, which they took for 5 years. And once he did that, that particular issue wasn't a pain in the guts anymore. Because he dealt with it, the weight off the shoulders lifted. Another story was when newly assigned Richmond AFL Football coach Adem Yze was a player and was approaching his old teammate Jimmy Stynes record for the number of consecutive games. He was on 226 chasing Stynes 244 but wasn't playing well, and then coach Neale Daniher could see this record was messing with his head, leading to his form drop-off. So Daniher dropped him for a week, which made the milestone out of reach, and Yze then started playing decent footy again. Yze was not bitter and described it as a stroke of genius from the coach. He read the play. Don't bottle up shit, clear it from your head. Reply to [email protected]

Like concrete

Many Farmers I have spoken to over the last couple of weeks cannot believe how hard the ground has got. A couple of wet years and then a dry patch has set alot of country like concrete. I was speaking to Tom, who Farms in the Victoria Valley in the Southern Grampians area of Victoria, and he was trying to work a bit of country with his International 770 28 plate Disc, which weighs 4.5 tonnes and alot of the time, it was skimming across the top. That same paddock was wet two weeks ago. Reply to [email protected]

He's a one-man band

We live in Central Victoria and took our Zero Turn Mower into the local Shop in Kyneton to fix a couple of things and get a bit of a service. We dropped it off, and they said it might be a week before we could pick it up. So yesterday, about ten days in, I rang to ask how it was going. The guy in the service department went to check and said it would be a few more days as they only have one mechanic working right now. Now, this is a pretty big operation, and I counted ten people working on the floor in the Shop. So old mate out the back would be under the pump. That was fine, I understood the situation, and it was only a bit of grass for us. It got me thinking further about how this is the same thing happening at the Machinery Dealer level, and Farmers Crop are a little bit more important than our grass. There is a fair bit of frustration out there. Reply to [email protected]

End of message.

Dwain Duxson

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