Friends in the right places

My better half Sally, the half who is supposed to love and cherish, says to me my “lack of adaptation to technology is hurting our business.”

Ouch!

It’s like a dagger through my hard working, Luddite heart. Truth be told, she is correct (although I will deny having ever said that if you try and spread a rumour). No, I don’t know what an app is, let alone how to download one. I don’t do Facebook or Instagram. Then there are all those people who keep sending me important and urgent documents by email, foolishly thinking I read my emails. I don’t even have a clue how to access my bank accounts.

 We just spent an obscene amount of money on a computerised cow monitoring system, and I can’t access it-to top it off, Sally gave me a terry towelling hat as a joke and I like wearing it.

I should have had a warning system set up on our cool room, so it sends me a message when it gets out of temperature specification. Had I done that earlier, we wouldn’t have had to dump a whole week’s worth of production.

I found that the cool room was, in fact, not that cool (a balmy 11 degrees), so we put the products in the fridge truck and took them to Swan Hill Wholesalers. How good is it that at 8 pm, when Jason Collins was supposed to be at his kid’s school concert, he opened especially so we could get everything cold? Big shout-out to Jason! They have been our No 1 supporter from day one.

With the milk temporarily on ice, I wasn’t sure what to do, so opted to do what I do best and sleep on it. And it worked. At about 2 am I snapped awake and thought, “you idiot- you need to chuck the lot!”

I took it home the next morning to dump it, offering it to our hard-working staff (as long as it was used within the week it would be fine). There was about 300 boxes of milk and chocolate milk. I expected 5 or 10 to disappear. When I looked in the next day, all the chocolate milk was gone and only half a pallet of milk remained.

I’m grateful someone had the bright idea to use the rest of the remaining milk to feed the calves- a lot more sustainable than having to tip it down the drain. A young boy who works for us confessed to me later that day that he had already consumed six chocolate milks that day!

Despite all the tears over spoiled milk, there is a good news story- and it’s all about the support we receive. I have a friend, Mike, who knows a lot about milk processing. When I am in a crisis, he’s the guy I call to check I am doing the right thing. He is so generous with his time and his advice, only accepting a “thank you” as payment for his offerings. He’s helping because he wants to see a small Australian family business that is having a go succeed. Just as Swan Hill Wholesalers and the broader Lake Boga and Swan Hill community wants to see us succeed. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a large community to grow a business. People working together and supporting each other, that’s what you get when you live in the Mallee, so thank you for your patience when we make mistakes.

I’m signing off now to try and learn some technological tricks with the alarm system and the cow computer thingy- but I won’t go as far as Facebook or Instagram. Oh, and my terry towelling hat is a keeper.