FEBRUARY, 2019 ISSUE 100
MURRAY REGION
The Stewart family (back) Donnie, Teagan, Meg and (front) Jed and Zoe.
New dairy invests in future SOPHIE BALDWIN
MEG AND Donnie Stewart from Pyramid Hill are hoping the days of spending nine hours in the shed milking cows, will be a distant memory by the end of the financial year. The decision wasn’t taken lightly as the Stewarts considered all their options but, in the end, they kept coming back to the fact their current 25
swing-over dairy limited future expansion. The couple had been planning to build a rotary on the home farm for many years but droughts, floods, parking cows, uncertain water policy, and a rapidly changing northern Victorian dairy industry during the past two decades had prolonged that decision. In the end, it was a meeting with their farm consultant about their future that finally got the ball rolling. “He managed to get out of me what I really
aspired to do, despite the uncertainty of water availability, into the future,” Don said. The couple has an 18-year-old daughter Teagan who recently completed a Certificate III in Agriculture and is showing signs of being interested in the farm, while son Jed is tractor and machinery mad. “We are looking to the future and to the next generation of our family business and even if the kids end up not interested and we are only milking for the next five years, then so be it; we will
still get a return on our investment,” Meg said. She said a new dairy would be an advantage when recruiting staff. Meg and Donnie spent a lot of time considering the options before them, and where they wanted their business to be in the future. They looked at turning the old dairy into a double-up rapid exit but decided against that because essentially, they would still be milking in a 22-yearold shed Continued page 4 >
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