The Farmers Club Newsletter

The “Club Notes” for Thursday, the 7th of December 2023

By Dwain Duxson

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

Say my name say my name

Farming and Ag in general, is a relationship game; we write about it a lot. At every opportunity, we call people by their names, we shake hands firmly, and we look each other in the eye. This is how Farming people operate. I had an incident with a high-profile tech guy from the States during the week, and I can tell you he doesn't operate like us Farmers. We have been trying to resolve this issue where my newsletter provider hasn't been sending the newsletter to @bigpond users. So, the tech guy who is the CEO of Beehiiv does a daily newsletter like me. I read the odd one, and this particular one, he was bagging out Go Daddy, who is a website domain registry company, about their service and how they couldn't get hold of anyone. I sent a reply, saying hold on buddy, have a look in your own backyard. I have been trying to get this @bigpond thing sorted for a week, and I mostly get automated messages and links to answers to problems. Anyway, he reached out but with a one-liner asking a quick question, which I replied to. But no, Hi Dwain, how are things going? Sorry you have had an issue; how can we resolve it? In the end, it's fixed, and he did reply, and I should be grateful. But give me Ag as an industry any day. Reply to [email protected]

Getting lucky

I heard a great statement the other day, and it went like this, "Stay in the game long enough, and you will get lucky". We bang on about how growth in Ag is incremental and takes time, and all of a sudden, in ten years' time, you look back to see where you have come from and the progress you have made and think, wow. I mean, there have been some dramatic gains Farmers have made in that time. But we never talk about luck, and I'm pretty sure it happens if you spend long enough in the game. They say you make your own luck, and you probably do to a certain extent. Those who make bold decisions need a little bit of luck for those bold initiatives to come off. But should we rely on luck? Probably not, but it's going to happen to us at some point in time, and when it does, we need to celebrate or recognise it. Have you been lucky before? reply to [email protected]

Transition gradual

Those with @bigpond email addresses haven't been getting this TFC newsletter or our Farm Tender Daily newsletter for the last five or six days now. It was a problem at our email newsletter providers (Beehiiv) end. It looks like it's fixed now, so I am bloody hoping you get this one…. We know that Telsta is going to phase out the @bigpond email address in time. It has already sent a letter to some that they were going to phase theirs out by a certain date. We are hearing some are having trouble with @bigpond, and Telstra is not really supporting it anymore with help to solve issues. So, we are recommending you change over to @gmail ASAP. It's a big pain in the arse, I know, but you are going to have to do it at some stage. Also, whilst @bigpond is still working, you can receive emails to both the old and new email addresses, so the transition can be gradual, and that will be much easier to manage. Reply to [email protected]

When the pump goes caput

It takes an incident when you are left without one of your essential services to realise how important some of these things are. Like when the power goes out, or in our case last night when the House pressure pump went caput. No shower, no washing the dishes, etc etc. Was I stressed about it? No. But there was a time in my life when I would have been. As you get older, you realise a little bit of inconvenience is not an issue. But then, how often do you go to the tap and turn it on only to realise the mistake you have made? We have an outside bath, so we filled that with some boar water (which we use throughout the house) from a tap we have on the edge of the garage and got ourselves clean. Before we came up with that idea, my wife Paula was going to bathe in the Sheep Trough, which uses the same house water. Paula said it's just like Camping with the lights on. We really do live a life of luxury compared to the people who preceded us. Do you get stressed about these things? Reply to [email protected]

Farm Tender Hay Report - Check out the latest Hay Report here. Hot off the keyboard today.

End of message.

Dwain Duxson
0427 011 900

Random and associated Ag articles and images.

Circle Work - See above. This is called a Tank Turn, where you can do a 360 turn on the spot. It’s available in the BYD YangWang top-of-the-range Car. They are Chinese-made Electric Cars that are very popular. You can now bring back Circle Work at the B & S’s, and do it safely……