A solid portion of my afternoon was spent in the farm office with Jennifer, the farm manager. Two days ago we established an action plan and over the past 24 hours, Jennifer has started implementing it. My first task was to take out of the farm office all documents and files that concern our private lives. I was not about to have two offices, so everything was in my farm office. It is amazing, that I have more than 20 bankers' boxes of documents to store in the house. Jennifer's new office looks bigger and better for it.
One thing that I noticed is that the amount of printed documents has declined dramatically. 2023 was the first year on the farm where almost everything is digital. Several documents have to be paper-based, but they are fewer and fewer. Even our maintenance log is digital now. Inspection logs are still paper-based for our refrigeration units, although with the various alarm systems the issue there is regulation rather than reality...the department of Health requires that refrigerators be physically checked every four hours.
These 20 boxes will end up in a storeroom somewhere in the house, never to be seen again, until I start burning them in 2028 (seven-year data retentions) and not in my new office!
Jennifer also wanted to remove the punch-in system. It takes time and there is very good software now that can do everything via a mobile application.
We will also attend several cattle markets to see if we can find the stock we need. Jennifer will start the process with the cattle foreman and they will make the initial decisions. That's why I hired them. We also discussed the new farm and how we will incorporate the various fields we have. I know that our ecologist already started doing a full assessment of the farm, he uses a really precise GPS system that works with our Case tractor software, it will map all our fields, and we will therefore be able to judge what needs to be changed. One thing for certain I want to increase the amount of corn sillage for the milk cattle, we can't afford to run short of this primary protein for the cows.
The meat cattle require less energy and therefore most of the winter they are perfectly happy with good quality bailed grasses, but again, and Jennifer agrees, we have been lucky over the past four years with our field output, weather conditions have been excellent with no noticeable dryness. Everything is driven by our need to increase our cattle meat production (a cycle is about 28 months) but also our milk production, so that we have more butter.
Also important is to renew the ecological/bio certification for the new farm.
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