Doing Things His Way

The good old Daily News can always be counted on for an old boy's story or two. Today's Thursday Farmer has a great article on old boy Tim Barrett and his path to success in farming. The following quote gives you the gist of the article which you can read in full here.

School didn't fit the bill for a young Taranaki man wanting to party and make money.

The man behind Taranaki's Farm Venture, a business that establishes syndicates to buy and operate dairy farms in Taranaki and the King Country, wanted to get on with life.

Tim Barrett was a pupil at Francis Douglas Memorial College in New Plymouth and principal Brother Peter Bray was adamant he wanted the 15-year-old to stay at school so he could go to university.

"But I had stuff I wanted to do," the now 50-year-old millionaire businessman said, "and I needed money to do it."

So Barrett got his way and embarked on a farming career. He managed to fit in some partying but he was more focused on becoming a farmer, so he followed the traditional path of working for wages and as a variable order and 50/50 sharemilker to dairy farm ownership at Te Kiri in South Taranaki. Along the way he also spent a year in Canada working on beef and cropping farms.

Bray eventually got his way too because when Barrett was 32 he decided it was time to start using his brains in a way that would let him use his on-farm experience to help others.