Making a positive impact
Super Sally in her element, milking cows!
The most important news of the month is that super Sally has won a Nuffield scholarship! If you have never heard about it, it’s an Australian wide agricultural scholarship where you are given $40,000 and told to go travel the world, learn, then come back and share.
Nuffield are looking for people that are going to make a positive impact on Australian agriculture-Sally does that daily and will continue to do so.
We would average a school group tour the farm once a week for the year, and Sally gives her time freely, willingly and joyfully. She loves dairy farming with a passion, and that would make no sense to your average bear of sound mind.
Whilst this is great for Sally, as always, it’s all about me. How on earth am I going to manage a farm, a factory, do all the irrigating and kid wrangle five wombats for two or three months while she galivants around the globe?
The answer is, I can’t. Something will have to give. I did suggest we consider a beautiful, blonde Scandinavian au pair but this only received lukewarm support, in fact, no support.
Luckily the boys are all handy in the kitchen. The right answer will present itself and if it doesn’t, I will lose what remains of my hair.
Raff, 15 looked up from reading the other day and said: “Dad, have you ever considered that if you had nits, they would be homeless!” and without further comment or even a smile returned to his book.
In other breaking news on a much smaller scale, my pallet wrapper and semi-automatic carton taper should arrive in a few days.
The bottle labeller for the chocolate milk is only three or four weeks away and the gas boiler is on site awaiting installation and commissioning.
The milk separator is in the factory looking for someone with some brains (above my pay grade) to connect it to the system and make it work.
I waited three months for the homogeniser to get rebuilt; the variable speed drive blew up in the first day and then we didn’t know the pressure gauge was faulty and we ran it at too high a pressure and it blew out the brand new seals that came from England, so it’s back on the bench. The chiller unit is working and chilling, it’s just not fully connected to the things I need to chill yet.
I have all these awesome bits of kit staring at me daily and I stare back and say, ‘Hey I’ve paid for you so do the decent thing and start working’, but they are not cooperating thus far-maybe they see right through me and know it was the bank that paid and not me!