Challenges and triumphs for Chloe Davidson

MILKING PLATFORM CANTERBURY

Dealing to the internal struggles

Left: I need a hero: Super-girl and Super-boy at the kindy trike-a-thon. Above: Margot and Angus Davidson with the family’s new Bircher piglets.

Chloe Davidson outlines some of the challenges, and triumphs, she has experienced onfarm recently.

Over the last couple of weeks I have spoken to a few people who have read my past columns and they have mentioned how positive our situation looks from the outside. So, for this column I thought I would share some of the struggles we’ve had so far this year because it’s all about balance, right? So often we are too afraid to talk about our struggles in fear of judgement, but this shouldn’t be the case. I would never want to portray this business as a fairytale because it’s far from it.

Do we still believe in what we’re doing? Definitely! Do we question whether the blood, sweat and tears is worth it on a daily basis? Of course! My dad always says, “nothing worth it in life comes easy” and I live everyday with this in the back of my head because yes it’s hard but it’s definitely worth it! And let’s be honest, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

We began the year stronger than we’ve ever been. We’d had a break off the farm which gave our mental health a much needed boost, we’d reconnected as a family and James had been able to spend days in a row of quality time with the kids and I for the first time in a few years.

We set goals for ourselves around increasing income, decreasing costs and using a budget to guide us where to next. We were hitting the ground running and had a positive outlook for the year, but so far, 2021 feels like a series of curve balls that have come one after the other and have made us constantly question ourselves and our business.

In February, we took on the challenge to do all of the onfarm labour ourselves which was great for our wage bill but our work/life balance went out the window. The importance of grabbing every small opportunity to spend quality time as a family has resurfaced and we’re again reevaluating our next move.

Maintaining a work/life balance when you’re trying to get ahead is always a hard juggle and one that we’re yet to figure out.

We set a few goals early this year and

“In February, we took on the challenge to do all of the onfarm labour ourselves which was great for our wage bill but our work/life balance went out the window.”

one of those goals was to pass on some of our costs to our customers, particularly a portion of the delivery costs. We are confident in the quality of our product and service and know that our customers value the ethics in our calf-at-foot model so we are heading towards a premium priced product.

The retail price increase was well received and didn’t cause any drop in demand which was great and will be something we do bi-annually to keep up with the rising costs.

We chose to do a standard delivery charge which wasn’t dependent on the number of litres a customer bought because we felt this was fair as it doesn’t cost us more to deliver 1L vs 4L. Unfortunately for the 1L delivery customers, it did make their one bottle of milk seem quite expensive so we lost a few of our 1L customers but they will grab their milk from the local stockist so everyone won.

Whether customers are buying directly from us or from their local stockist, they are still supporting our business and as long as we keep our goal in mind then we will be moving forward – decrease costs where possible to make the service viable.

We’ve quickly learnt that operating a small business is like a series of waves, there are high waves and low waves and no matter how hard the low waves hit, there will always be a high wave to follow. Be confident in your products/services’ worth and never compromise based on what someone else thinks it’s worth because if you don’t value your product highly, no one else will.