“The earlier the better” is the over-riding advice from 50:50 sharemilker Kim Fraser, who for the second time in two years with husband Duncan is packing up cows, tractors, house and sheds – this time with a new baby in tow – and shifting provinces to a new sharemilking job.
Kim and Duncan have made the move many times before, and while their processes are pretty slick, they still hanker for the simple, old days.
“Farm assistants can just chuck everything on the ute and drive off and the job’s done,” she laughs. “But as you go up the ranks, you get more equipment and livestock and just stuff. I can’t even imagine shifting as a farm owner.”
Just like Santa at Christmas – “making a list and checking it twice” – there is still the potential for things to go pear-shaped and when you have multiple parties moving in and out of properties at pretty much the same time, Kim says it’s important to keep the communication flowing and civil, no matter how tense the farming relationships might have become.
Cows: the biggest one
When the Frasers arrived at their Taranaki job as variable-order sharemilkers stepping up to 50:50, they co-ordinated cows arriving from five different directions, but when they leave the province this year to travel almost five hours south, the safe and stress-free trucking of the cows is number one priority.
As soon as they signed their new north Wairarapa contract in late February, they cracked open a bottle of wine, then Kim jumped into finding quotes for transport, despite a friend offering to drove the herd for 10 days.
“It was a great offer but I couldn’t face applying for all the consents.
“Ideally we would’ve loved to get a backload job, which would have been cheaper, but we went with a company we had used before and local to the district we were going to.”
The logistics around moving 570 animals were mirrored by the importance of meeting contractual obligations – making sure the cows left one farm and landed on the next at certain body condition scores (BCS) and thrived through the shifting process. Kim and Duncan contacted their vet and involved a DairyNZ animal husbandry specialist to plan the management needed around drying off times and dry periods needed for the best animal health outcomes of shifting.
“Ideally we would’ve had the job sorted earlier – before Christmas would’ve been good – but we managed to have the cows’ shifting date and plan nailed down in early March so we had a couple of months to prepare them.
Tractors and trailers: fill every space
Booking a truck big enough to shift a tractor and bike and trailers means lots of other stuff can be put in and around the big items, Kim says.
“We were advised to fill the tractor cab, fill the calf feeder trailers and fill every nook and cranny.”
TOP TIP: Put your smaller stuff inside your bigger stuff so you can fill every bit of paid-for space when moving.
Once the new job contract is signed, Kim suggests visiting regularly to monitor progress on pasture covers and stock, and these visits are great opportunities to shift a load of stuff.
“Just fill up the trailer every time you go, and find a secure and dry shed you can store it in during the months leading up to the big day.”
Kim also stresses the importance of speaking up and asking any hard questions in the lead-up to the shift.
“If it’s looking like the contracted pasture covers are not going to be there on June 1, you need to be asking in April – what’s the backup plan?”
Packing up the house
When you are going a short distance a medley of helpers with an assortment of trailers might do the job, and cheaply too, but Kim and Duncan decided to bite the bullet and get a truck for household goods. They were lucky to be able to share a backload deal with a farmer heading to Taranaki as they are heading out.
TOP TIP: www.backloadmoving.co.nz allows you to register your load and dates and hopefully a company will match you up for a discounted backload.
Register as early as possible.
Once you start moving loads of household items, you start to get into “the wonderful waltz of people coming and going,” Kim says.
Here’s where she suggests communication is really important – you need to talk to the actual people moving to liaise dates and not rely on the farm owners relaying plans of their outgoing sharemilkers or managers.
“We learned from experience that you can get burned by others changing plans – and it can cost in stress and alternative accommodation costs if you can’t move in when you thought you could.”
Utilities and services:
Shifting a household and business involving livestock is a complicated logistical matter – one complicated detail often leads to five others.
Once belongings and stock are shifted from a farm, insurance covers change and so cover needs to be sorted early. Risk levels and premiums could change in different areas, so it could be a good time to look around for good deals and check levels of cover, Kim says.
She has learned through experience to start the process of shifting phone and internet early – the six-week lead-time she allowed last shift wasn’t long enough for the company to get internet service working on their new farm. That caused huge problems when it came to June 20 trying to pay bills electronically and run a business heavily dependent on internet service. The internet wasn’t turned on until July 20.
This time around she has given the company eight weeks to perform what should be a simple task, in case satellite service needs to be installed.
TOP TIP: Address changes – keep a list of all mail through the box for eight weeks before the shift so you can make a list of those to be notified. The NZ Post address changer website makes it easy to change lots of addresses at one go, but Kim warns to change an address for the firearms licence you need to actually ring the police and let them know. Just changing your address doesn’t cut it.
Power can be problematic and its pays to read all your meters on day 1 of the new job, in case a final reading has been done weeks before. Kim and Duncan were landed with a huge bill in a similar circumstance when the reading had been done when milking finished but the dairy hot water cylinder wasn’t turned off. Fortunately they were able to trace and refute the invoice with their smartmeter.
“It’s just a matter of being aware and being organised to get a few things ticked off when you arrive.”
While they don’t ever want to start a job on a negative note, Kim and Duncan have learned it’s good insurance to take photos of the house when you arrive, so any cleaning or maintenance issues are documented.
Similarly, when they leave it’s a good idea to photograph the house and dairy to prove how they were left.
“Hopefully you can photograph and then just delete them later if there are no issues – but it’s hard to prove innocence if you have no proof.”
TOP TIP: As a new sharemilker or contractor, you have 28 days (depending on the contract) to raise a concern about conditions that haven’t been met on your new farm – tape gates or fences not complete, conditions in the dairy, pasture cover inadequate.
Last cleanup and drive down the drive
Some of the last things to be packed are what Kim calls the “survival items” – the vacuum cleaner and cleaning equipment – and she advises not to be staunch if friends and neighbours offer to come over and help you with the final cleanup, especially if you have small children in the house.
“Having mum come and stay for a week when we are a month out from the big shift means we can motor through a lot of advanced packing and cleaning and take the stress off the last few days.”
Shifting with a baby brings its own set of fresh challenges, Kim says, like how to fit all the baby’s essential bits in the car, and still have room for a driver, and figuring out how many days the couple can go without having access to a washing machine.
Forward planning will enable the immunisation and Plunket visits to still happen in a timely fashion and so baby’s records are available at a new medical practice should they be required.
“I imagine there must be a whole lot more complexity to shifting older children – changing schools in the middle of the year and joining sports teams and settling them in,” Kim says.
She will be hoping not to find out too soon.
TOP TIP: Make lists and then a master list and tick things off. Marshall a support crew and let them help. Keep communication going between where you are leaving and where you are going.
