Dairy farmer Graeme Cochrane on how he got into the family business and the challenges of a wet winter. Video by Adam McLean
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00:00I've been here all my life, started here in 1987, left school 3rd of December at 20 past 11,
00:07walked down to Bomonderry High School, came home and started on the farm, but you know,
00:11grew up here on fourth generation here. The farm's been in the family name for 103 years
00:17and hopefully it'll be here for another 103 years. 10 to 3 the alarm goes off, don't get out of bed
00:24quite then or might sneak out just after three o'clock. It's an early start but it's the best
00:29time of the day. Do it without coffee, never had a coffee in my life so just get up and get into it.
00:34I don't consider it a chore, I love milking cows. It's not a job I have to go and do,
00:40it's a job I get to do and I think that's a big difference. Basically our milk's produced every
00:45day, twice a day every day the cows milk and then the milk goes up to Sydney where it's processed
00:50overnight and then hitting the supermarket shelves the next day, providing the people of Sydney with
00:54a beautiful fresh product. The bushfires were coming through here, they were only literally an
00:59hour away of wiping, you know, Kangaroo Valley out but the wind change saved Kangaroo Valley but
01:04sadly affected other areas up on the highlands. With dairy farmers we were able to milk our cows
01:11every day and then they were able to pick out our milk up every day because the mountain roads were
01:16shut through the local RMS services are escorting the milk tankers into the Kangaroo Valley.
01:22Sending one tanker doing this sort of northern side of Kangaroo Valley, one doing the eastern
01:26side of Kangaroo Valley and our milk was able to get out safely. Same when the floods were on and
01:31the mountains were shut then so dairy farmers have worked really well with not only the farmers but
01:36also the government organisations. Through the wet winters they're horrible, there's nothing worse
01:40than a wet winter when you're a dairy farmer or when you're farming of any type. It's so hard,
01:44it's from the moment you wake up in the morning to when you go to bed at night, the mud's there
01:48waiting for you and the mud is a killer for you. The cattle don't like it there, they lie down in
01:54it, they have to stand in it, you do your best to look after them but when you've had 300-400
01:59millimetres of rain at night there's nothing you can do about that so cows are number one when we
02:06come to a tough time with the mud. So over the years we've acquired other farms as we've gone
02:13along and farming practices have certainly changed. We do keep things very basic in what
02:18we do because I think the more complications that you put into a business the more complications
02:23you're going to have. Then you're relying on specialists coming in and fixing things for you
02:28whether it be electronics, whether it's technology, all different things like that, it starts to
02:34cause problems in your business. So keeping things really simple, growing grass, keeping good
02:39green grass for the cows, you know I think over time has proved that we're still here
02:45doing our best and doing a good quality job with the milk that we produce.