Mel Bradley of Onga Onga is determined to make a profit every year on the family’s farm, using GrowFARM systems.

They say women can do anything, and Mel Bradley of Onga Onga in the Hawke’s Bay is doing an awful lot of it at once.

With two children aged two and five, she’s president of the local playcentre, and seemingly involved with every local and regional committee around. In the past she’s achieved an honours degree from Massey University in plant science. She and husband Duncan lease his parents’ 350 hectare drystock farm at Onga Onga on rolling country, while she also is very involved with her parents’ 560ha steep hill country farm at Dannevirke. The latter is running 2800 ewes and about 100 cattle, and at Onga Onga they have about 2000 ewes and run finishing cattle. They’ve been leasing their farm for the last nine years, but didn’t seem to be making sufficient progress or profit, and Mel at least was thinking of doing something else. Sixteen months ago Mel attended a presentation at their accountant’s offices in Dannevirke, met Brendon Walsh and some of his clients, and heard about his GrowFARM systems and what they were doing for other sheep and beef farmers. The idea that these farmers could make profits every year, and were also being given one-on-one coaching and using his ProfitLIVE systems seemed to be what Mel had been looking for.  

These days she’s not only using the systems on their farm, but running them on her parents’ farm and teaching them how to do it themselves. She now acts and thinks like a business owner, which has given her huge confidence in making decisions for herself, and not just doing what the supposed ‘experts’ tell her is best. These days she ‘only worries about what she can control’, and is still amazed at the enormous personal growth she’s experienced in just a year. The systems she’s using are not just about computer records and systems, but she’s found the coaching by Brendon invaluable, particularly in relation to his Six Profit Principles. His habit of asking ‘Why?’ over potential decisions has certainly sharpened her analytic skills, benefiting not only the business but other areas she has involvements in. And even though it’s only been 12 months since she began, it’s working. Like other farmers they had somehow imagined that to make more money they would need more land.  But when, at the GrowFARM regional client sessions, they discovered others with smaller areas of land were making much better profits, they realised it was how you run a farm rather than land area which makes the difference.  Now they are determined to make their 350ha run to maximum efficiency and make profits every year. They can attend the inevitably cheerful regional get-togethers and share their own good stories.