Tragowel dairy farmer, Mick Shepard, Silverholme, has been given an interesting nickname by wife, Cath.
She refers to him as “Mick the Minion farmer” – because he is putting his former trade, as a fitter and turner – to good use by making sculptures from scrap metal.
He has turned out a line of the blue and yellow cartoon creatures, which take pride of place in his garden, and has more on the production line. He says that, and shooting on his property, help to keep his spirits up - particularly in the tight times of recent years.
“I am on the Murray system and the budget is really tight, I know for a fact, if I don’t get that water, for whatever price it is, I am going to fall behind,” Mr Shepard said. “This year has been tougher than the drought, we seem to have got through the drought, but this year seems so much harder.”
He said he would have to pick and chose which paddocks to water.
“I didn’t have enough water to water the whole farm, so I gave the rest a good watering, and for the rest, relied on the rain – the rain didn’t really come, so I got it going and got nothing out of it. It was waste of time.”
He said he was currently milking 250-300 cows, based on Freisian, Australian Red and Swedish Red bloodlines.
Mr Shepard said he had an entitlement and allocation of 600 megalitres, but needed double that to grow sufficient pasture. “The water has been a hard one for us, this year – do we put in the best rye grass, something like Concord (an Italian strain) or a cheap and nasty one ? There’s no water in August, so why not grow cheap ryegrass, stop watering and leave it like that – but others are saying, put the expensive one in and keep watering it.
“It’s changed me on what crops to put in, and on the marginal country – it’s ‘no, you are just not going to get a drink’ – in this Tragowel country, you have to put water on it; it’s very salty around here, but everything you put water on, it improves and improves.”
As a result, he said he had to buy in hay, which was an additional cost. “I bought some temporary water for $245/megalitre, the most I have paid this year was $290, and I have being buying little parcels – I haven’t been able to buy big parcels.”
He said he only paid $50-60/ML for his allocation, so it was a massive jump to have to trade on the temporary market. “All the banks have tightened up, I asked for money and normally they give you money for water, it’s a good investment, but they said you need to do a budget for the year in advance.”
Coupled with tight water supply, he said there were also concerns about the milk price, currently sitting at $5.60kg/ms. “It’s going to be interesting when we start again in July, some are saying it will start at $5.10, some are saying $4.80.”
“That was a big thing for us to buy temporary water, a step up could be anything up to $8000, eight grand would buy us a bit of water and keep us going.” He said he had improved his irrigation practices, installing a pipe and riser system.
“Half the farm is piped and rised, the diesel is expensive, but when you are growing lucerne, the water is on and off quickly,” Mr Shepard said.“I am anti these people that don’t have land but just trade water – I know a lot of people sell a bit of land, living off the water, trading it all the time. But this area is just closing down, in 10 years time, there won’t be a farmer here.
“Every week we talk about selling our permanent water, we don’t want to, but I could come out alright, I could pay my debt off. Most farmers around this area are relying on temporary water and they are really struggling, its so tempting when the price goes high.”
Mr Shepard said he had also bought carryover water, even though there was a five per cent loss while it was in storage.
“It’s a good bit of security and we are using it in six months time, as everyone is predicting we won’t get much of an allocation.”
