Trish Rankin ponders how she can measure success

MILKING PLATFORM TARANAKI

Having fun: Trish Rankin (centre, right) with fellow strong women during downtime at the Dairy Women’s Network conference in Taupo.

Striving for success

Trish Rankin finds herself wondering how she can measure success in her personal and farming life.

What does success look like for you?

This was a question asked to the participants during the recent Dairy Women’s Network (DWN) conference held in Taupo during April. If you don’t know what your goals are or what your successes are then when do you know when to celebrate the steps you have taken towards them? This was a great reminder to me after having had a messy few months trying to find a new farming position for our family, staff and 450 cows.

The farming season has been great here in Taranaki. Production is where it should be, cows are meeting body condition score (BCS) targets, grass is growing, our staff are awesome, we have plenty of supplements available to be left on the farm for the end of our contract and of course, milk price payout is helping to ensure a successful season.

I’ve found myself caught up in the day to day worry that is trying to keep kids, business, cows, staff and dairy progression on the path to success - without necessarily knowing clearly what success should look like. What are our big hairy audacious goals? Apart from ‘farm ownership’, one

Party time: Trish Rankin (back, right) at the Dairy Women’s Conference in Taupo during April. thing we haven’t done enough of lately is drill into our goals and make a pathway to achieve these.

However, on the plus side, having had the opportunity to get off the farm and re-connect with other women at the DWN conference, it is great to feel refreshed and reinvigorated.

Another keynote speaker was New Zealand hockey representative Gemma McCaw. One key aspect of her presentation included this quote:

“It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.”

- Joyce Maynard

So often we spend day in day out putting kids, family and farm first and forget that our kids are watching us. We often get told to enjoy the journey but some days it doesn’t seem that easy to do that. How can I be the best version of myself more frequently and encourage our kids to do the same?

So as we look to shift soon, happily within Taranaki, where our children can remain at the same schools, rugby clubs and we get to keep our same friends and awesome staff, I will be making sure we take some time out to reset our goals. These goals can include what we need to do to be the best version of ourselves as well as our farming and business goals.

I recently watched a moving documentary on the Sunday TVNZ programme called ‘Mind your Busyness’. A good farmer friend featured and his message was clear - not taking time off the farm is not ok. Not looking after yourself is not ok. We need to focus on being well. Live well and farm well. Being the best version of ourselves, achieving our business and family goals will happen if we sit down and make a plan about what success looks like for us.