Bumper pay day arrives, but not a cent to spend

 The good news; I just received the biggest pay day I have ever seen.

The bad news; My bank account is still deeply overdrawn with no hope of paying any principal off the mortgage or paying back family members I also owe money to. Never mind – maybe next month (she says again)?

I just hope the current high dairy payout lasts long enough this time to at least put paid to the overdraft part, because to be honest, after nearly a decade of self employment/herd ownership, I might have to start admitting that the constant financial burden is starting to wear me down.

If I showed a townie last month’s dairy cheque, their eyes would pop right out of their head. It is so huge, more than what I earned in a whole year in my last town job. But the wave of excitement that ran though me upon opening the envelope and discovering the riches inside was immediately doused by the cold shower of realisation that after the bills were paid and the bank took the rest there was less than none left for me.

The watershed moment was around 10 years ago when I walked away from a train wreck of a relationship with no real assets and many responsibilities.

The decision to start a career in dairy farming was based more on the fact that a free house came with the job than any desire to make a fortune.

Looking back it seems miraculous even to me that I have survived let alone grown a tiny business into the small business that I run today. And maybe that lack of scale is my problem.

The most my 170 cows have ever produced in a season is 67,000kg/ms and some years they have produced a lot less than that. Production costs have steadily risen over the years but I’ve generally stayed away from systems that call for expensive feed inputs. Of course the weather has taken its toll on some seasons but my policy has always been to concentrate on moaning about the things I can control. You have to take the weather as it comes.

So, 10 years ago I might have had enough deposit to buy a really crappy house and go on the DPB but instead I bought half a herd of cows and half the machinery to run a small sharemilking operation.

Over the course of the years I have borrowed money off the bank and my mum (thanks, Mum) to fully buy the machinery (imagine riding around on half a tractor) and bred the cows to increase my cow ownership from 86 to 160 with another 67 calves coming on. But boy, it’s been tough and slow.

Advisers said to me in the early days, farming is a hard business, do you think you can handle it? Thinking they meant physically I was always mildly offended as I thought they suspected a woman would crumble at the first hurdle.

“I’ll be right, mate, tough as leather, me.” And I was right. Dodgy knees and all, I haven’t had a day off injured or sick in 10 years. But with a decade’s retrospect could they have meant, “Can you handle it mentally?” Can you handle tough physical work with a huge financial burden combined with payout volatility and seasonal variation, , year after year after year?

Situation normal, I’m afraid, and right now I’ve got my eyes on the prize … next month’s milk cheque, which by my calculations will get me within a hen’s tooth of being in credit, then pay some off the mortgage, then pay Mum back … oh God – Christmas!