We’re too busy for burn out

The Lake Boga Fire Brigade was quick on the scene after a fire broke out on the farm in February.

I feel as though I’ve spent the past month putting out fires-literally and figuratively. Shout out and thanks to all the volunteer firefighters who came to our farm a week ago, it’s pretty incredible how fast they came and how well organised and efficient they were. They had everything under control in half an hour. We were helped when the wind direction took the flames away from our main haystacks; but the fire got within 20m of a house and if they had escaped into our dry pasture paddock, it might have been a challenge to hold it.

In the end only some fences and my ego were damaged.

We have not had the fire brigade out for 30 years and now we have had them twice in three months. In the wash up you have to be grateful for this incredible kind of community support. Within 20 minutes of the fire starting most of the neighbouring farmers were there, some with water carts and 10 fire trucks were on site.

Obviously, while you would much rather that it didn’t happen, it’s really nice to know when you’re in trouble, the locals have your back.

While I was grizzling last month about the can recycling scheme and what it costs, the concept does offer community groups a chance to make some much-needed funds by collecting cans and bottles and cashing them in.

The local sea scouts have a collection point at the Lake Boga scout hall and locals are doing a great job of putting bottles and cans there for recycling-but someone keeps stealing them all. The scouts then put a lock on it to stop it happening. The offender cut the hinges and took them all anyway. I’m sure the alleged thief has a genuine need for the money, but so do our local kids at cubs and scouts, and hopefully this is now resolved and the cans can be used to raise funds for camps and activities for our youth and thanks to the locals who continue to donate.

I spoke too soon last month about our Coles trial. The very next day we received our first feedback from Coles and it wasn’t pretty. Not selling enough and too much wastage. I knew it was coming and actually they were pretty good about it. They could have kicked us to the kerb, but instead they offered to work with us to do a few weeks of promotional pricing to try and improve sales. We need to get more people to try the chocolate milk and in terms of advertising, it’s probably the cheapest way for us to move forward. I have full faith if we can survive the first six months it will make it. In our other major supermarket chain it took six months for orders to reach a sustainable level, but the major jump really came 15 months later when we had a steep change in sales.

I often refer to our first major supermarket outside of Swan Hill, in Albury, where there was no local bias, and in Swan Hill it outsells Coles week in and week out. To me that suggests our product has some legs and a future. We often get random texts and emails from customers, and I’ll share this one (although obviously I never use language like this):

“Paul and Sally, my name in Matthew and I have loved chocolate milk since I was a kid. This Belgian style chocolate milk is life changing! I would say bottle it to the masses. But you already have! F### yeah, Paul and Sally, you’ve nailed it.”

We hope so, we’re certainly working hard to make sure we do.