I won't be continuing this blog as we have moved on from the search for a new co-farmer.

There are two other blogs related to my farming journey, one that was created during our time in Dubbo at Oaklands Farm at " Oaklands - A Vertical Learning Curve ".

The other is the new blog of day to day happenings on Highclere " Highclere Diaries ".

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A thumbnail summary of what happened with the search :

* Just as we were looking at hitting the go button on DomaCom, COVID hit and all the proposed investors suddenly got worried about the market and pulled out.

* I had managed to get the mortgage down far enough that with the two rounds of superannuation withdrawals allowed during covid, maxing out the mortgage redraw, a loan from friends and a rollout of Geoff's super into a SMSF I was able to put together the money to pay out the exiting owner.

* The ATO then decided the use of the SMSF was ineligible despite the property being purchased being a rental house and therefore an income earning investment.

* I arranged to sell the 75 acre section to a neighbouring farmer. This required a subdivision that has taken over 18 months due to delays by third party contractors, but we are in the last stages. 

* Once this has finalised the borrowed funds will go back into the SMSF, it will be rolled back into an industry super and finalised. The mortgage will be substantially reduced and a large payment made towards the loan from the friend. With the cottage now rented to a stable and employed tenant we can start paying off credit card debts and the remaining loan and mortgage debts without the potential forced sale of the farm hanging over our heads.

So it has been messy and drawn out and far more complex than necessary, but the end is in sight. 

It felt like a defeat to sell the 75 acre section when I had fought so hard for the farm, but in reality it was the focus of all the work and none of the joy. I can run all the stock I need for my own enjoyment and self sufficiency on the 25 acre section and it is alot easier to work and maintain. All the sheds and houses are on the 25 acres.

I will have to rethink the management of the pastures to allow good rotation and rest for the grass and do some internal fencing and water points. Always a project waiting when you have a farm :-)

Brace Yourself - Winter Is Coming !

Most people consider Tasmania to be cold, snowy and bleak. Some places can be, most places aren't. Scottsdale, in the northeast, rarely gets below 0 and hasn't had snow in living memory.

Winter is, however a real thing. Whether you're in Brisbane, Melbourne or Oberon, it's a colder time of year and the days are shorter.

In the local farming community the dead of winter is known as "the hungry time". If you've had a good autumn break (the rains have come while the ground is still warm enough for grass to grow) you can graze stock through the early part of winter. Eventually, as the frosts set in and the ground cools off, the grass stops growing and the stock catch up and then eat it down.

This is where the psychic ability of farmers starts to struggle. Is there even going to be an autumn break ? How long or cold will spring be ? Is it going to be a wet and windy winter (stock will need more food to keep warm) and what direction will the winds and rains be coming from (westerly rains come and go, easterly rains set in). No-one knows, not the BoM,your uncle's dicky knee or the confused plum tree in the next paddock over tossing out a couple of speculative leaf buds just in case summer isn't really over yet.

So you count your stock and the hay you have on hand and guess how many weeks you'll need to feed and how many bales you'll need for that time. Then you double what you think you'll need and buy in enough hay to cover that. My husband always comments that he wished I looked at him the way I look at a load of good sweet grass hay being unloaded into my shed.

Here on "Highclere" the plants and animals are getting ready for winter. The cattle are growing a fuzzy coat and the sheep have laid down a layer of blubber. Well, that's not technically true about the sheep as blubber is a marine term... but there's not a visible angle on any of them. The chooks have gone through moult and stopped laying and their new feathers have come in, and the trees have turned yellow ready to throw their leaves to the wind.

And this weekend we do have plenty of wind. The dogs are reveling in it, standing tall and sniffing the air while their ears flap. Maremma don't especially love heat but they do enjoy a good clean, cold wind. Their ancestors did come from the Italian Alps. The cats, however, have staked their winter places in the loungeroom and will probably spend the best part of the cold weather comatose there. They value comfort over wild ancestry.

If you have ever considered moving to Tasmania, midwinter is probably the best time to see if it's the place for you. It's prettier in spring and autumn, downright sigh-worthy in summer, but you'll know in winter whether you can stick those short daylight hours.

Chance and Change

Farm life is always interesting. Even on the days where your intentions are nothing but routine, nature indulges herself. Usually at your expense.

For example, we work hard to find all the eggs the chickens lay. Geese are easy, they can't go broody without being very obvious. White birds the size of a wombat that can't climb have limited options for nests even on a farm. Free range chickens, however, can squeeze into cracks and under things and fly up on top of things. Sometimes finding a nest is a matter of waiting around until you see a chicken acting suspiciously and following it back. Discretely. If they notice you they will lead you around for hours.

This year we've been beaten three times. One by a hen who found a spot under an upturned wheelbarrow. She appeared with 14 chicks. The next by a hen who found a place under a clump of grass in the fallow section of the vege garden, and she turned up with 12 chicks.

The best effort so far, however, has been the hen that laid a clutch over the usual course of two weeks and then sat on them for another three ... Her claim to fame is that she made her nest among the grass growing around the base of a sapling orange tree, inside a wire mesh tree ring three feet from the back gate. We passed within reach of her multiple times every day over that 21 day sit and yet the first we knew of her work was the sound of cheeping. She hatched eight and between them the three have doubled the size of the flock in one go. We will chose the best of the pullets to keep and sell the others to people wanting their own eggs.

Other things on the farm are as sure as death and taxes. One of those is that steers will get fat. Apart from the beef industry being built on this premise, it does provide two things for Highclere Farm. One is the best quality beef for our own freezers and the other is a source of income.

The most recent steer to go in our freezers (below) was a dexter x jersey. We like jersey to be part of the mix because the meat marbles beautifully under the jersey influence and the golden fat carries plenty of the beta carotene that the human body can then convert to vitamin D.

The steer below is one of a pair of murray grey x angus, and are the type wanted more by commercial systems. Bigger and heavier than the steers we choose for our own table, they should still be fat and tender. They have had it easy down here, while the mainland struggled for feed they were deep in grass. These two are already spoken for by an old fashioned butcher locally. Their grass fed, chemical free meat will have almost no food miles attached.

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There is a saying that dates back at least as far as ancient Greece, and there are probably versions from all around the world, because it is a simple truth.

"the best fertiliser for the field is the farmer's shadow"

What this means is that a farmer needs to be on the farm, getting about and looking and seeing and thinking. The annual Chick Surprise is a regular lesson in how easy it is to look but not see. And today's surprise is a lesson on what beauty can be hidden in the most mundane of places if you look where you wouldn't normally.

The farmer across the road is irrigating potatoes, approaching the end of the season he's finishing them for harvest. As I filled the goose water this afternoon I lifted my eyes briefly beyond my own boundaries and was gifted a glimpse of nature gilding man's constructions.

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Take a look at our page in DomaCom's

Next Gen Farmer project 

and think about joining us on our journey

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Show Me the Money

One part of the project is working to find our Aspiring Farmer to take the farm to the next stage, the other is to free up the departing farmer to pursue her own future. Wheels are in motion for the first part, in the meantime, how to free up the other 1/3 so the owner can move on ?

Most people would simply start with extending their current mortgage or refinancing with another bank. It wasn't going to be that simple for us; I had left my well paid job of 30 years to work on restoring the farm and my husband is a self employed tradie. Neither of us had the documented regular guaranteed pay required to satisfy bank lending criteria, assets and equity notwithstanding.

I began exploring funding options to pay that share out, time being of the essence for the other owner. I talked to all my friends and relatives, spoke to all the financial institutions I had ever had dealings with, met with accountants, mortgage brokers, finance experts and self managed super fund gurus. I looked at Peer2Peer finance, Solicitor Loans and crowdfunding. I investigated rolling out our super funds, advertised in all sorts of publications, looked at subdividing part of the farm and selling that. I checked out Ori-Coop and ImpactAg and La Trobe Finance. I even explored the compassionate access provisions of our super.

No good. Everyone said "There has to be a way, you've got tons of equity and plenty of super to come, there's got to be some way to leverage all that !" But no-one knew how. Until Sam from Cultivate Farms suggested DomaCom. Yeah, righty-o, lets take a look. "DomaCom is an innovative new fractional investment platform. From as little as $2,500 you can invest in any property - residential, rural or commercial - anywhere in Australia with your friends, family or other investors.".

Oh yeah, land banking, child care centres, green power developments, highrises, subdivisions. Big stuff, why would they be interested in 100 acres in Tassie ? Ah.... The Next Generation Farmers Strategy. That'd be us then.

DomaCom has created the Next Generation Farmers Strategy to syndicate the partial acquisition of quality agricultural properties from retiring farmers to enable the next generation (NextGen) of farmers to become co-farmers in this vital and vibrant industry. DomaCom investors will have an interest in the property which will be leased to the retiring and next generation farmer.

Working with Cultivate Farms the DomaCom investment platform provides a way to share equity among investors and farmers to provide a seamless succession solution which will be a win-win outcome for both retiring farmers and the next generation of farming families.

Cultivate Farms will assist in helping the retiring farmers to retain partial ownership, secure the best next generation farmer, ensure the farming operation is viable and provide ongoing business governance mentoring support to the farming enterprise to ensure the farm and the regional community thrives.

So, we fit with their program, just how would something like that work for us ?

Our requirements were first security of tenure and second to enable a simple transition for an incoming farmer.

DomaCom achieves the first for us by freeing up the funds to pay out both the departing farmer and our current mortgage. We will retain somewhere between 35% and 50% equity (depending on how much of our Self Manged Super Fund we decide to invest) and lease the balance from the investors. These lease payments are actually lower than the equivalent mortgage payments because we are essentially paying "interest only" rather than principal of a loan as well.

Over time we can buy or sell equity as our needs change; for example when we can access the rest of our superannuation, or when we choose to retire from active use of the land.

The second is achieved by the way that DomaCom provides a platform for buying and selling equity in the farm. An Aspiring Farmer can buy as little or as much equity as they want in small increments, and can buy it from either myself or the other investors. If their circumstances change and they need to move on from the farm their purchased equity can be sold to other investors without needing to change the whole structure of the farm holding.

The Aspiring Farmer can end up holding part or all of the equity, either buying the whole farm back or leaving it in the DomaCom platform to help simplify the transition to another Aspiring Farmer when the time comes.

Our hope is that investors enjoy both the return from their investment in Highclere Farm and the journey that the farm will be going on. We hope that you will put in a little money and then read about the adventures knowing that you have "a bit of skin in the game" as they say.

If you'd like to ask anything about Highclere Farm or the way Cultivate Farms and DomaCom will work for us (or would like me to cover any topic in the blog) my contact email is jodydb@dodo.com.au .