Snobbery – Trevor for driving past Mal near the railway and not acknowledging his wave.

Mal was batching and none of his ‘friends’ offered to help him out with free meals.

Gerry – the big 60 birthday.

Andrea – photo in the paper for the Warrnambool Show – with a massive queue.

Fine to all members who are sitting at the same table as last week.

Alan Bowes - Broken/lost denture plate.

Jen Williams – Welcome to Rotary – First fine.

Sharon Stark – Arrival tax on return from holiday away.

Ian and Michael – SW Credit Golf – Award.

 

 

Hi I’m Cassidy Waller and I’m from Brauer College, on the 24th - 26th of September we went of the ‘Defying the Drift’ camp at Longerenong and we all had the opportunity to view a range of different agricultural businesses and learn about them all. The business that interested me the most was the Green Eggs farm. What I found most interesting was how they donated eggs to charities, how they managed all the chickens on the property and even how they made compost out of deceased chickens.

 

- Get the chickens at 16 weeks old (pullets; 1.4kg)
- Lay eggs week or so later (pullet eggs)
- Continue to lay and get bigger (90% lay rate)
- Sell chickens that are slow laying (70% lay rate)
- If can’t sell them will kill them to use another way
- Uses the killed chickens to make compost (new trial)

 

Donating of Eggs to Charities
- Chickens lay first egg (pullet egg)
- Too small to sell off in market
- Would give to charities (e.g cooks for fires) - Send them off in their delivery truck
- Name Green Eggs became more known

 

Compost with Deceased Chickens
- couldn’t sell chickens (70% lay rate)
- Killed them if they couldn’t sell
- Decided to try using them as compost (trial) - Chicken, Dirt, chicken, dirt and etc
- Seeing if it will work for future use
- If it works will use in gardens on property

 

In this experience we heard from Alan Green and we learnt that you get knocked back but still continue your dream and everything you put in, you get back. Alan Green opened my eyes to new stories and views from his talk.

 

I would like to thank you all for sponsoring me to give me this experience, for me to learn and see how everything works in agriculture. This camp was definitely an extremely good experience for later use/jobs in agricultural businesses.

 

 

Hi, my name is Courtney Wilkinson. During the first week of our September holidays I participated in the Defy the drift program where students throughout Victoria expressing an interest in agriculture were sponsored by rotary clubs to attend. Myself alongside 29 other students all participated in the program which was based at Longerenong Agricultural College. The objectives of the program is to encourage, motivate and enthuse young Australians such as myself to explore options, formulate goals and implement strategies that assist in developing career pathways for them in regional and rural Australia.

 

The program consisted of 3 informative, interesting and at times, nerve racking days. The first day was based around getting to know other participants and feeling comfortable around each other. We were presented with key issues around the globe that all come down to supply and demand within the agricultural community. This had a big impact and opened our eyes to things we never think twice about. At dinner, we were introduced to guest speaker, Rob Pelletier. He expressed his confidence struggles throughout his life and how he grew to overcome them. Networking skills and confidence throughout public speaking turned out to be a key focus throughout the camp and as Rob explained to us, it is key for success within our career.

 

Day two was tour day. We got the opportunity to travel around the Longerenong district to 5 different Agricultural businesses and listen to what the journey has been like for these farmers and how their businesses succeed. I am going to tell you about my 3 favourite businesses.

 

Our first visit for the day was out to Laharum Flowers where we listened to Jo Gardiner. Now I’m sure that everyone here has at least once in their life bought a bouquet of flowers, or at least received one. Well this is exactly what Jos business does, grows and prepares banquets to be sold internationally. With over two thousand acres of land with 250 product lines, Laharum Flowers is the largest flower supplier in Australia. Her business supplies Coles, Woolies and Aldies across the globe with 52 full time staff based just out of Horsham. However separating Jo from other businesses, her employment strategies were very captivating. The highest education level of all her employees was a year 9 finish. And why is this? Because it wasn’t how smart people were that got Jos attention, it was their enthusiasm and love for the job. Instead of employing Australians who didn’t put in the effort and weren’t passionate, Jo employed Koreans. ‘You can teach anyone to make a bouquet’ Jo said, explaining how a language barrier was no concern and that the Koreans worked hard and learnt fast. ‘I love my Korean boys’ Jo says.

 

Sam Eagles 5th generation sheep and crop farm was another location. Sams family bought their three thousand hectare farm back in 1867 as a merino sheep farm. However since then, crops have taken over 75% of the farm with 25% sheep. Sams crops include oaten hay to be exported to Japan, beans, wheat, barley and canola. He has his merino sheep for wool. Sam expresses the increase of technology use on the farm. He says nearly everything is computer based on his farm now because that's just how far technology has come. All machines have computers in it, and most of his business is run by computers and apps on his phone. His whole property is connected to cellular wifi. Sam also explains that with his machinery, no problems are mechanically based anymore, they’re all computer based. He says that yes, technology is growing and making things much easier, but most of the time if something goes wrong its because of technology.

 

Green Eggs is my final farm visit. Alan Green spoke to us and I would say this farm was my favourite. Alan could not stop mentioning the word ‘dream’. He explains how he always had this dream to have a farm. He was told by many people that it would never happen and to ‘stop dreaming’. The area where Alans farm is located went through a drought about 20 years ago, and the property he now owns like many others, went up for sale. He says he saw his opportunity and went for it. Alan bought the farm which didn’t have one sprout of grass and had a very run down shed. However Alan was determined to make things work. If stock couldn’t live there what could? Chooks was Alans solution. Starting out with one thousand chooks and hand collecting the eggs everyday his farm grew to a success. He said there were many other companies that were against him and many troubles arose such as selling the eggs however Alan worked around this, putting himself on the line and then succeeding. Alans farm has now grown to 44 thousand chooks and has large coops containing mats that collect the eggs. Then he has a 50 year old machine that sorts his eggs in weight to be packaged then exported. He also has lights in the coops to make sure the chooks have the correct amount of light and darkness to be laying the most effectively. Alan was very good to listen to because he expresses how much you can push through hard times and make something not so great into something very successful. He says ‘never give up on your dream’.

 

The defying the drift program allowed me to see some of the many different approaches to agriculture that I hadn’t even thought of. I learnt about different issues effecting different businesses and how much technology in agriculture is growing. Something I have definitely taken away from this experience is the world is much bigger then I think, and there are so many opportunities out there to improve and grow. I’d just like to thank, first off for Warrnambool Rotary for sponsoring me to go and attend this program because I have learnt so much from it and really enjoyed it. I’d also like to thank everyone that was involved to organise the program and run it because it was a great opportunity. Finally everyone else outside the program that helped me get there. Thank you.

 

 

Hi, my name is Molly Hocking and I’m in year 10 at Brauer College.

 

During the first week of the September holidays I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the defying the drift youth leadership program located at Longerenong Agricultural College thanks to sponsorship from Warrnambool rotary.  Defying the drift is a 3 day program aimed at developing awareness of the importance of young people within their rural communities and creating a network for young people who want to or are already pursuing a career in Agriculture.

 

During our time at Longerenong College we had the opportunity to visit some farms and agribusinesses in the area. 2 of the farms that really stood out for me where Laharum Flowers and Green Eggs.

 

Laharum Flowers is a company that is owned and run by Joe Gardener it is the second or third biggest flower supplier in Australia and consists of 2000 acres of land which makes it the largest in Australia. Laharum flowers specialises in growing and producing Australian Wildflowers ready to be supplied to Coles, Woolworths, and Aldi. On top of Supplying nationwide throughout Australia Laharum flowers also ships overseas to countries such as Japan and China. I found a lot of methods that Laharum flowers used very interesting such as how they dyed the flowers using 2 different methods, Dip dying and stalk absorption and how they grew the banksia plants having to check each seed every day with tweezers to see if it was ready to be moved into new soil.

 

Although I found these methods very interesting this didn’t make it a stand out business for me it was how Joe treated all of her staff and never gave up even though she had been set back so many times. At the one location we visited there was a total of 52 full time staff and not one of them had completed year 9 and a lot of them could not speak English when the first started out Joe’s approach to this was  “ You can teach anyone to make a bouquet of flowers how hard can it be”. The only employee to have completed year 12 in the whole company was the research scientist. As long as the employees have the right attitude and where willing to give things a go Joe is willing to take them on. This really showed me that yes education is important but a large part of being successful is having the right attitude and never giving up.

 

Greens eggs is a free-range egg company that is a family run Business it was founded by Alan Green in 1999 and is now managed with the help of Alan’s son Lachlan and daughter in Law Shelley. Green eggs has approximately 44,000 chooks.  They buy their chooks in as pullets at 16 weeks, but they do not start laying until about 18 weeks. They will then keep them for about 13 months this is when their laying percentage has decreased from about 90% down to 70%. The chickens are then sold on out into the community and the ones that are not sold are then killed and turned into compost. When Alan first bought the farm there was nothing on the property except a shed and bare dusty ground. This is because he bought the property in time of drought.

 

These where the main things he said that I took away with me “buy when times are tough and when nobody wants to be in the industry”.  “You’re not going to get to where u want to be straight away u need to work hard and not worry about what everyone else is doing if they work 6 days a week then go out and work 7”. “Take every opportunity that arises and never be afraid to Dream big” I found listening to Alan very inspirational as he had a dream and he worked towards it and never gave up.

 

In Both of these businesses one thing that came up a lot was networking and communication. A lot of the time in agriculture it isn’t necessarily what you know it’s who you know. So it’s important to have connections and be good at communicating because there is a lot of work and a lot of people that help to make the final product. For example to produce a carton of eggs. It starts off with the people who sell the pullets to the Green’s, then the employees and family who work on the farm and package the eggs, the egg cartons are made from a company in China. These eggs are then distributed throughout Australia by truck drivers to café owners or markets and supermarkets where they are sold to consumers. I learnt that communication is extremely important in running a successful business.