By ROBERT WHITE

WHEN Ash Barr was helping the people of East Timor re-build their war-torn country, working on a dairy farm was not a priority.
As a carpenter with the Australian Army, he was sent to the small country to Australia’s north as part of a project to help rejuvenate East Timor’s very existence.
He also spent time in small aborginal communities in central Australia where the army was again helping to build houses and infrastructure.
But when he completed his six years of duty, those experiences gave him the background to re-think his future.
He had been brought up on the family dairy farm at Drumborg, about 15 minutes drive west of Heywood in far south western Victoria.
As a teenager, he had helped out when needed but being a dairy farmer was not even on the radar when he considered where his future might lie.
Ash had been keen on the thought of being a carpenter and his father encouraged him to join the army and be trained in the trade.
So at 18, Ash followed his father’s advice and within a short time he was swinging a hammer in some of the most isolated regions of Australia and overseas.
Being in the army did have its unexpected benefits. A more than talented basketballer, he represented the armed forced in a tour of the UK.
But during the last year of in the army he started to think more seriously about his future. He had experienced more of life than he could have anticipated when he first signed up but now the family farm was starting to have more appeal than he could ever have expected.
“I realised that perhaps dairy farming wasn’t all that bad afterall,” Ash said.
So, aged 25, he moved back to Drumborg.
The catalyst was a break up in his parents’ marriage and he returned to help his mother. He started out working for wages, then took on a sharefarming role and only recently, Ash and his wife, Jade, bought the farm.
The couple are now milking 260 cows on 200ha with an additional 52ha leased nearby.
Ash said the time away from the farm was important as it gave him the chance to have other experiences and enabled him to weigh up what he wanted to do with his life.
“I think that’s so important. I had options and in the end I chose to come home to dairy. I now know it is what I want to do.”
Ash, 34, is the third generation Barr on the farm and he and Jade have recently added a fourth generation in three-year-old daughter McKenzie.
Ash said he had been fortunate to take over a farm that had been well set up and managed by his father.
“All the infrastructure is there and that has made it easier to operate,” he said.
On his return to the farm in 2001, Ash used some of the money he had saved while in the army to buy a property directly opposite the home farm. An underpass was then built and the joining of the two farms provided the opportunity for expansion.
A recent change has been the expansion of the dairy. It was never going to be big enough to allow for more cows so it was extended from an 11-unit double-up to a 24-unit swingover with stall gates and cup removers.
It enables Ash to do much of the milking himself with the help of a loyal employee.
Jade helps out on the farm when she can but has a part-time off-farm job with the Bendigo Bank.
Ash said his next project was to get more efficient with the effluent collected on the farm. At present it is spread irregularly over paddocks that are closest to the dairy and the effluent ponds.
But he is now looking to buy a slurry wagon to enable him to spread the effluent over a wider area of the farm and at more regular intervals.
“I really want to knock my fertilizer bills on the head,” he said. “I’ve got two big liquid pits and they are probably only emptied once a year.
“I am hopeful that I can pay for the wagon within about two years with less need to buy in fertilizer and then after that I think I can at least halve my current fertilizer costs.”
Ash has also recently installed a new vacuum pump which he said was 90 per cent quieter than the old one, was far more efficient and uses only half the power.
Ash said he had no doubt that he had made the right decision to take on the family farm.
“I enjoy being my own boss and seeing results from the work that I do. It’s also a good family lifestyle and that’s something we have really appreciated since McKenzie came along.”