Friday, March 29, 2024

Five dollars to financial freedom

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For 2005 Sharemilkers of the Year, Kathryn and Leo van den Beuken, it was never about “what if?” but “can do” in their journey from arriving back from overseas travels with $5 between them to financial freedom.
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Starting off as a motor mechanic and in banking, they took a 39% sharemilking job with 140 cows on Leo’s father’s Stratford farm in 1990. They now sharemilk 1180 cows for Max and Adrienne Duncan in Mid Canterbury, own their own 580-cow farm and have just bought a nearby 40ha runoff, allowing them to move to their own house.

Kathryn told a business session at the recent Dairy Women’s Network conference that in their first year of 50:50 sharemilking on another farm in Taranaki interest rates went up, 11 cows died and the payout went down.

“We lived off $10,000 a year and asked why were we doing this?”

They formulated their mission statement: Damned if we’re farming just to pay the groceries. They realised they needed to be high achievers so entered the Sharemilker of the Year competition, and Kathryn completed the Diploma in Agribusiness Management.

This allowed them to be robust in their business and work together on it, setting three-year plans and looking at all opportunities.

“It’s OK to fail,” she said.

This was particularly important when it came to taking on board feedback from competition judges and getting the skills not to make the same mistakes. She now works for Primary ITO and listed the couple’s key drivers as revolving around; management, relationships, goals, systems and people.

The couple had no desire to own multiple dairy farms but planned in three to five years to leave their sharemilking job, invest in one more farm and step out of day-to-day dairying.

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