Fast forward to 2021 she is a part-owner and operator of a large broadacre cropping program in Mullewa which she runs alongside her husband Tim along with his brother Daniel and his wife, Penny. Jen and Tim have three children Bella (Year 11) Angus (Year 8) who are at boarding school in Perth and Maggie (Year 6) who is in her last year of primary school.
As a regional woman now representing the City of Greater Geraldton as a Councilwoman, Jen said, “I love the lifestyle, and I love living out here”. Jen always wanted to live rurally and states that she loves country towns. You can be friends with everyone and that there is a real sense of community. Jen jokingly but very seriously said she often allows for an extra hour onto her trips to town just to chat to people.
On the farm, Jen and her sister-in-law Penny are responsible for the business’s farming enterprises accounts, admin and office side.
Jen said, “It was quite often we would be presented with data and assume that we would know what we were talking about, but we didn’t understand it the way we should”. This led to Jen and Tim enrol in a Planfarm Academy course.
The course was very non-invasive to their weekly work. Watching a webinar one night a week where Jen and Tim would sit down and do the worksheets. Some of the content in the course was advanced. Jen said, “It opened up conversations about our business, and some of the questions in the webinar made us really think about how we run our business”.
“We were previously letting a lot of people do our homework for us, and it didn’t really understand how it all worked.” It spurred Jen and Tim to look further into their business, how their Trusts run as well as their entire operations. Their farming business, having recently gone through succession, has a new company structure and trading name, the course allowed them to understand all the changes and how they worked.
Jen highly recommends this course to all farmers, particularly young farmers as she stated, ‘I wish I knew what questions I needed to ask and how our business was set up when we were younger. The Planfarm academy has given us the tools and information to make changes and plan for the future.’
Jen’s hope for the future of agriculture is that if any of her children want to come back to the farm, they will give them the opportunity. Jen has only recently started writing ‘Farmer’ as her occupation. She says it is exciting to see more women involved with Agriculture and getting involved with every aspect of agriculture and the industry’s future.