Land-locked and hurting from years of drought, Terry and Shannon Blasche knew the writing was on the wall at their far north coast NSW farm.
But how do you pick up and move from an area that you love?
For Terry and Shannon and their three children, selling their Casino farm wasn’t an easy decision but six months after moving to south-west Victoria they’re confident they’ve made the right choice.
As far as relocations go, this was a big one — with more than 1700 kilometres separating the two farms.
Taking over the new property on September 1 last year in the midst of Victoria’s COVID-19 lockdown added to the difficulties.
For Terry, it was an emotional move and naturally all family members found it difficult to say goodbye to family and friends.
“I’d been 35 years on the family farm; I grew up there,” Terry said.
“But it was too small. The main farm was 194 acres (78 ha). We had a run-off block but we couldn’t milk any more cows, and we’d had two-and-a-half years of very severe drought, probably the worst we’d ever seen.
“We were tossing it around on and off for a few years, should we or shouldn’t we go. It’s a fairly big decision when all your family and friends are still up there.”
They calved year-round to fit with the needs of their factory to service the fresh milk market, but peaked around 210 and averaged about 180 milkers.
“We bought the farm off my parents five years ago but we needed to expand the business,” Terry said.
“We started looking around the area but there was nothing suitable and then then we kept getting further away.
“There was nothing in NSW and we didn’t really want to go to Queensland because it’s even worse than NSW, so we decided to look at Victoria — and for value-for-money, the south-west was the best place to go.”
The move south has coincided with a mild and wet summer — conditions most in the region describe as the best in memory, although Terry is well aware that not every season will be this helpful.
Still, it won’t be like Casino where it usually hits 30 degrees in September and doesn’t often dip any lower and the humidity remains much higher.
The new farm is 216 ha and this year the Aussie Reds herd peaked at 260 with hopes of reaching 300.
“We’ve got a lot of heifers coming through and a mate in Nowra let us have some cows for now to pay back at a later date, which has been a massive help to our big move,” Terry said.
“I like the Aussie Reds for their ease of management and they’ve got good protein and fat with reasonable milk volume.”
Terry and Shannon also run Fairy Vale Aussie Red stud, running the farm together with the help of a casual worker.
The big shift south wasn’t easy, with the cows in for a long-haul in B-double trucks.
“The cows were knocked around a bit,” Terry said.
“We didn’t peak like we were in NSW. We probably lost five litres per cow off their peak. We had expected some impact but not that much.”
After being forced to buy a lot of feed during the prolonged drought, Terry was looking forward to greener pastures.
“Up north we ran out of irrigation water lots of times. We had irrigation from the river but we ran out of water a lot over the period of the drought.”
Adapting to non-tropical pastures has been challenging for Terry and the cows.
The new farm had perennials, native grasses and Italians but, for the first time, Terry got to plant summer crops with turnips, rape and millet.
“That was something new because we never did summer corps up north,” he said.
“They weren’t too bad, but it took the cows a little while to get on to the turnips.”
The property is an amalgamation of two farms and the second property in particular needs a lot of work on pasture fertility.
“We’ve done soil tests and put out 240 tonnes of lime because the other farm was quite low on pH,” Terry said.
After dealing with tropical grasses in northern NSW, Terry has also had to adjust to a rye-grass-based system in Victoria.
“We would plant rye-grass in the winter through the tropicals but it’s different here and I think it will be better for the cows.
“The plan is to buy-in grain and make everything else ourselves.”
While the cows had to recover from a long journey and adjust to new feeding options, they were also challenged by a new type of dairy — a 40-stand rotary replacing a 16 double-up.
“The first two days it was really tough to get them to come on to it, we’d have to push them on,” Terry said.
“After a week they’d sit back in the yard but we’d move batches down and lock them in. They got used to it.”
After the initial loss of milk, things are picking up and Terry is confident the better home-grown feed options will lead to improved production.
“A lot of cows were getting dry so they were always going to tail off. Hopefully we’ll pick up 1000 litres per cow once we get it all up and running.”
Now supplying Bulla, they are converting from year-round calving to seasonal.
“We're changing to autumn calving. We’ve started that with two calvings for the next few years until we get them all back to autumn,” Terry said.
While enjoying the new adventure and at the same time missing family and friends, Terry said he had no regrets.
“COVID has made it tough to get out and meet people.
“When we arrived, Victoria was in the harshest lockdown but now I’ve joined some farmer discussion groups and look forward to that.”