Always embracing the art of learning

I often shock people when they hear me talking and singing to myself. But hey, of course I talk to myself. Where else could I get such expert advice for free?

I had another birthday a few weeks ago, and obviously I’m fitter, faster and wiser than I was at the previous one.  As you get older it’s easy to stay at home, work and get stuck in a rut. But here’s another free piece of expert advice I have on hand (this lot I gave to myself when I turned 50) and it is this simple: get out and about more. And on turning 51 I am giving myself a big tick on that one.

Last week I spent a couple of days in Numurkah looking at different designs for feedlots as I am thinking I am pretty sure that will be our next major project. I went to a dairy where they are intending to milk 4000 cows through barns. Two of those barns (1000 cows each and each shed measured a whopping 230 m long) were operational and the next one was under construction. Even more impressive, those cows looked fat, shiny, healthy and happy. Really well-looked after animals always brings me joy.

The week before I ended up in Terang looking at another 100-unit rotary dairy. This farm was also building its own feed pad, but this farm was not in great shape and the cows were not great. It had been bought from a corporate owner and came with a lot of legacy issues. The new owner, an established cropper and grazier looking to diversify, had no dairy experience. Talk about walking into a cauldron of fire, but I always feel like good farmers, given time, find a way through adversity.

A couple of weeks before that I was in the Wimmera on a cropping farm learning about growing grains, growing a business and succession planning. They were about to sow 10,000 ha in 24 days. We couldn’t do a 10th of that in the same time-the scale and skill of their operation simply blew me away. I was also left with a serious case of machine envy.

Visits to all of the above farms usually leave me engaged and motivated, although sometimes they can leave you feeling like a failure when you are seeing all of these farmers doing all of these amazing things and I feel like I’m not trying hard enough, not getting it right and maybe not having a fair dinkum go.

So I am encouraging you, whether you are a farmer or a pharmacist to get out and about and learn some new stuff and meet some new people. It probably won’t make you an expert, but it might give you a new attitude and a new energy- the singing and talking out loud kind’ve stuff. I encourage it, but ultimately it’s optional. Some bearers of limited brains will think you’re weird and you’ve got to be comfortable with that. And I am.