In the beginning our family was no different to most rural families; we were your typical rural grazing family consisting of, Mum Dad 1 sister and 2 brothers, 2 sisters in law and 1 brother in law.
Peter’s father inherited the property from his father at the age of 55 after a very painful and stressful succession planning process which like in many cases unfortunately, did not end in a good way….which is another story.
There were two properties owned by Peter’s father a total of 20,000 acres, with a further two smaller properties purchased during our succession planning process.
Of course as in most families there was the “Home Block”, most would appreciate that this property held the most significance to the family and during our time working together this property became the focus of us all and who would end up one day owning this property!
Peter was the youngest of the three children and for the most part always worked at home after finishing school and attending Ag College, his older brother worked as a diesel fitter after finishing school and had minimal input into the running of the properties. While Peter’s sister who was the oldest child of the three married and moved away from the property.
Peter always had a love for the land and spent most school holidays helping out on the property with his father and grandfather. He always had a dream to work on the property alongside his father and one day take over the management and ownership.
We married in 1993, and moved into a rundown workers cottage on the breeder property as this was the only house available, we worked hard to make this our home. It was a constant battle with management being the family to get work done to the cottage and we were seen to be always wanting too much. We were perceived to be getting it easy living on the farm, getting a free ride! Does this sound familiar?
Communication was very poor within the family with most conversations between the children and their partners being filtered through Mum or Dad and rarely did any of us pick up the phone to chat to each other. We hardly ever went to visit Peter’s sister or brother and they rarely came to our house to visit. It just seemed easier that way; we had no idea the problems we were creating at the time!
Family get togethers were strained as we all knew that we had all been talking about each other behind each other’s backs and Peter and I always felt that everybody knew our business as messages were always relayed back to the off farm children about what Peter and Simone were doing now! These destructive conversations called communication triangles can tear a family apart!
Peter and his father had a very tense working relationship with arguments taking place on an almost daily basis all of which were shared in detail to the other children so it created a lot of tension between everyone.
In 2000 our lives changed forever and it was decided that Peter’s brother and his wife would be coming home to work in the family business. There were mixed emotions, of course Peter’s Father and Mother were pleased to have their eldest son coming home to work alongside them, however for Peter it meant that his dream of one day owning the “Home Block” was now further from his reach as it was decided that Peter’s brother and wife would be allowed to live in the main house on this property and a new cottage built for Peter’s parents.
Now I ask you does this sound familiar. Do you have these same issues occurring or about to occur in your family business? If you do please be rest assured you can solve these problems before they arise? It may sound impossible to you right now as it did to Peter and I at the time we thought we would end up just like everyone else living a life of conflict and misery!
How wrong we were…….