Farmers To Combine Business With Pleasure

Farmers To Combine Business With Pleasure

Dairy farming couples are being encouraged to take a break to focus on both business and pleasure, over the next few months.

DairyNZ is hosting its popular Mark and Measure seminars in two of the biggest holiday hot spots in New Zealand – Queenstown and Taupo. These events are designed to help couples discover their personal and farm business potential.

The two seminars, one which focuses on strategic management and the other on business performance are run over two days in a workshop style which encourages attendees to consider what is important to them.

Past participants say the courses have given them the tools and confidence to make decisions and achieve their goals.

Central Hawkes Bay dairy farmers, Michelle and Carwyn “Monty” Monteith say the two courses, which they completed in 2008 and 2009 in Taupo, helped propel them forward.

“Two days of motivation lasted us a good twelve months,” says Michelle

For them the course came at an ideal time.

“We found that we hadn’t thought about our future at all, where we were going, or how we were going to get there,” she says.

The couple have been working in the dairy industry for four years. Before that Michelle was, and still is, an accountant, and Monty in sales.

Since entering the industry they haven’t looked back. Monty was awarded the Hawkes Bay Wairarapa Farm Manager of the Year title this year for his work as an equity farm manager of an 188ha farm at Takapau where he milks 515 cows.

“Mark and Measure was just a really good focusing tool for us,” says Michelle.

After the Mark and Measure Strategic Management seminar the couple formulated a vision from which many of their goals have come from.

Two of their main aims are to own their own farm and to have a positive influence on the dairy industry. These are goals they feel they are able to achieve thanks to the tools and skills provided by speakers at the Mark and Measure seminars.

The parents of two young children say the opportunity to get away from the farm allowed them to focus and to meet couples in a similar position to themselves.

For the Mark and Measure Strategic Management seminar the couple stayed at the venue.

“We got ten times more out of this first course, when we were totally removed from the farm and the family because we were able to step back and look at where we are and where we were heading,” says Michelle.

Mark and Measure details:

Mark and Measure Business Performance - Wairakei Resort, Taupo, May 25 and 26; Lakefront Copthorne, Queenstown, June 15 and 16.

Mark and Measure Strategic Management – Wairakei Resort, Taupo, May 27 and May 28; Lakefront Copthorne, Queenstown, June 17 and 18.

Registrations are a must. For more details or to register visit www.dairynz.co.nz/markandmeasure or email michelle.greaves@dairynz.co.nz.

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