Katie Collins joins guest speakers at 2020 The Next Vintage women in agriculture event
Katie Collins remembers the day the rural financial counsellor delivered the "very blunt" news to herself and husband Brad.
"He basically sat us down and said if you keep going like this (it was March), you won't be here in October," she recalled.
That was about six or seven years ago and now the farm - and their financial position - looks "significantly" different, according to Katie, who spoke at The Next Vintage event at Albury this month.
Katie grew up on a farm near Albury before becoming an occupational therapist, meeting and marrying Brad and renting a a cottage next door to Brad's parents' farm at Big Springs.
At the time Brad worked in real estate but when his father was killed in a farm accident, the family's lives changed direction.
The farm was leased for five years while Brad finished up the family's real estate business and then the couple took over the 1250-acre farm.
"We farmed conventionally - we had a self-replacing sheep flock (merinos and cross-bred) and also did wheat, triticale, oats and canola," Katie said.
"It was high-input farming."
Once their four children were at school, Katie had to reassess what she was going to do - the decision was made to farm full-time.
She attended her first Grazing for Profit course at Dubbo in 2015 - "it was a crash course in everything you need to know about farming" .
The rest is history really.
With some well-applied business coaching on board and the couple connected to a peer mentoring partnership through Executive Link, they found a way forward
GREEN TEAM: Lambs in the Collins' managed grazing system in 2017 - "we try to eat one third, trample one third and leave one third of the feed standing".
"The reality was we had to stop spending money and start generating money," Katie said.
The couple moved to lamb trading with managed grazing.
"We took the wholistic approach," she said.
"We weaned our country off all chemicals and we sold half our stock in one go to let the country recover."
Now they work faithfully to the carrying capacity of the land, moving a large amount of stock regularly through a small area.
The aim, according to Katie, is to have ground cover at all times and paddocks fenced down to 10 hectares.
"We haven't fed stock in five years," she said.
"We measure feed once a month in every paddock (and map on a spreadsheet) and we trade weekly through Auctions Plus and Wagga Saleyards."
They've planted thousands of trees and are involved with landcare work on-farm.
Everyone is happier and healthier - including the bank manager.
THE NEXT VINTAGE: Jo Palmer, Fiona Soulsby, Lyndsey Douglas and Katie Collins spoke at the women in agriculture event. Picture: MARK JESSER
Future of agriculture in good hands
They've been the backbone of farming for generations and now women are proving even more of a force to be reckoned with in the modern agricultural landscape, an event at Albury heard this month.
More than 160 people gathered for the inaugural The Next Vintage event at The Albury Club on February 7, to highlight the wonderfully diverse contribution women make to agriculture and to open the door to vital networking opportunities for farming families and local businesses.
Included in the line-up of speakers was Jo Palmer, from The Rock, who is the current national AgriFutures Rural Women's Award winner
While Jo has cultivated her love of the land with husband Hugh and their children, she has also developed successful and innovative business roles and opportunities while living in a rural region.
Her third business, Pointer Remote Roles, has shone the spotlight on the "can-do" nature of women.
The idea was formed at a backyard barbecue when Jo and a group of talented professional friends discussed the lack of a central place to find work that could be conducted remotely.
Jo began to look at her own network of highly qualified, professional friends who were living in regional areas, many of whom were over qualified and experienced for their current roles and many who were not working at all.
These professionals were being held back from remote employment due to lack of awareness and opportunity.
Pointer, a job-matching platform connecting businesses with talent that work remotely anywhere in Australia, was born in 2017 and is the one-stop shop for candidates to find work and a hub for employers to find the best person for a role, no matter where they live.
The 2020 Next Vintage event was a huge success, according to one of the organisers Steph Clancy.
"Although we don't want to be discriminatory at all ... we do want to celebrate the women doing great things for our industry."