As soon as the kids were gone to school this morning I headed out to Richmond to spend the morning with Ross re-learning the ropes.
I have done the accounts for our businesses ever since Tim & I took over the farm about 30 years ago.
I have been part of the evolvement from handwritten ledgers to iCloud and everything in between.
Seems incredible to sit back and think of the speed of the journey spanning the past 25-30 years.
My first account book was a large green specifically lined ledger.
Every detail recorded by hand and painstakingly added and balanced.
Our paperwork for the accountant barely filled one ring binder each year.
We farmed only sheep & cattle – meat & wool.
GST was introduced to us by the NZ government in 1986.
We were all so incredibly thrilled – not!
I dutifully went off to training sessions with our accountant and learnt the new ropes.
During this time we added mussel farming.
Our paperwork increased.
I remember getting our very first computer.
It arrived on Tim’s 40th birthday – 17 September 1989.
It was a very large cumbersome creature which ran the DOS system – a monster to be conquered with some difficulty.
I got it specifically to do our farm accounts.
Michael Cambridge was a local farmer who was quite go ahead for the times and was more of a business man than a farmer.
He wrote the accounting programme and even came down and give me tuition.
What a dinosaur of a mission that proved to be.
But it was a start.
The kids at the time thought it was really cool because we had a game on it called Operation Neptune – even Tim loved to be part of that fun.
It was about the only good thing about that computer although mastering DOS was quite an achievement so a great training ground for the future 😉
Thankfully I was eventually able to upgrade around the time Nathan was born – Nov 1995.
Cant believe I battled with DOS for 6 years!
I did a lot of research and decided to jump from the dark side over to Apple and bought my very first Mac desktop computer.
From that day on I never looked back 🙂
I have never ever doubted the decision to run with Apple.
Even those early models were 100% easier to use than the other sort!
A year later we got connected to the internet.
I remember it distinctly.
Jesika at age 16 had gone traveling in South America with Jan & Talbot the year before and our only communication had been by very slow unreliable snail mail or the occasional fax.
I was so excited to be able to use this new fangled email system to contact her more easily – and then a month later she returned home!
We were connected via dial up over the phone line so could only use one or the other – not both so the time online was very slow and very limited.
Somewhere amongst all of this we changed accountants and began using Banklink.
It was supposed to make my life easier!
It was okay but not the greatest system to use.
I had to save and manually email the gst reports each two monthly period and to do that I had to use a different interface to work in and then convert that over to the Mac side to email out because Backlink was not compatible with Macs at that point.
Down the track bit and I was eventually doing the books for for two Trusts and three companies!
The paper war had magnified immensely and the gst was a nightmare.
The yearly delivery to the accountant had grown from the one small folder to a banana box of folders.
We changed accountants again and were introduced to Xero.
Wow! What a life saver and a life changer.
Still loads to do but it was now all online.
What I did at home could be checked by the accountants wherever they were.
All the while this was developing I was still running our home, producing a total of ten kids and home educating them all, and feeding an army of family, friends and wwoofers.
Plus I always made time for my hobbies – sewing, art, reading, etc
No wonder around 5 years ago I was at breaking point.
I didn’t realise that I was also suffering from PTSD which had resulted from my childhood abuse and had intensified over the years every time I suffered more traumas.
Taking each one individually they don’t seem too major, but I now realise that each one built on the next until I broke – interestingly just a month before Christchurch broke during the February earthquake.
I then had to take a huge step back and reduce my pressure.
I had to make some major changes in my life.
One thing I did that was to hand over the bookkeeping side of life to someone else.
Ross has done this very capably ever since.
But now I am somewhat stronger and also in a position where I need to take back the job and manage the companies myself.
Things have progressed a lot in this time though so I have a lot to learn.
We are now operating most of our business via iCloud being as paperless as possible.
So I have to get my head around a whole new system.
Slightly daunting but I know I can do it.
Just have to jump!
Man!! I’m beginning to sound like my grandmother.
In her years she lived from sailing ships to space ships.
And I haven’t lived anywhere near as long as she did – yet!!
After a couple of hours my brain wouldn’t take in any more so I called it quits and headed back towards home.
After that long spiel of reminiscence I don’t think I need to recount much more of my day.
Actually, I can’t really remember a great deal more anyway 😉
Enjoyed a slightly later dinner with Marion & Florian & the kids outside as it was a lovely evening.
Took Caspian for a walk down to Mary-Anne’s to return some plates and pick up some grapefruit.
Was really tired but it was good to have an evening walk.
Came home and fell into bed.
Had a long phone call with Leita before going to sleep.
Now she’s gone and got herself a job we don’t get to catch up as often as before.
Bummer how work interfere with our social life 😉
Rabbits Nest 