Behind the scenes of Shepherdess

King Family

Life if a journey made up of millions of little steps.  It sometimes feels like others are more purposeful with their steps, whereas I’ve always felt like mine have lots of random little skips, side steps, pirouettes, backwards steps…. Isn’t it funny how us kiwis are so harsh on ourselves?

This weekend I snuck away from Mr 10’s cricket and went to a café with two of my favourite people (my daughters), to read an article about myself in a wonderful magazine called Shepherdess.

Although reading about yourself is kind of weird, reading how Carly had beautifully captured my pirouettes and skips and turned them into story on page 112 of the Autumn edition of Shepherdess Magazine actually made me super proud of that journey.

I started Cloud Farmer almost 9 years ago after a good friend created a system for their farm.  She used a type of interactive website so their team could jot things down on the computer instead of nagging.  From day one you could see the huge potential for this to be a game changer for our industry, but Ginny’s passion was for teaching, not creating a software company, so I ended up taking it on.  Upon reflection I don’t think I gave much thought as to what I was doing or the journey it’d take me on, but it certainly hasn’t been dull!

Part of the reason I said yes to the Shepherdess article was I think we women are really hard on ourselves.  My happy place is when I see someone as crazy as me, doing the juggle, dropping a few balls, but not pretending to be perfect.  I love the dry sense of humour of when you’ve done a rubbish job (today’s example – I forgot to put the sandwich in Miss 4’s lunch box for kindy), but being able to laugh at yourself, embrace it, and through it all know that what I achieved this morning (albeit only with 2.5 lunches) was a bloody good effort under the circumstances.  A friend once told me that to be successful as an entrepreneur you basically need to be a narcissist.  I.e. you need to totally think you are 100% amaze-balls and faultless.  I can see how that may be beneficial – an endless belief in yourself and disregard for anything that suggests otherwise, but what a horrible species of people Entrepreneurs would be.

So here’s the background scoop on that beautiful image that Abby Hore, the photographer, took.  I had Hangry Kids.  The tired and hungry beasts that get created at the end of a long day during the summer holidays, with too many late nights recently, and when it coincides with dinner time.  I also had a hubby who’d been made to come in from the farm & get showered and Mr 14 rolling his eyes in total horror that he was being forced to do this.

Poor Abby had been doing a photoshoot down in the village before coming to us but not long after she’d arrived the siren had gone and with both of her subjects being pivotal members of the volunteer Fire & Ambulance, she was left in that awkward situation of “I might be late but I don’t know if it’ll be 10 minutes or 2 hours”.  So hence the delays and arriving at witching hour.

Enjoy this pic from behind the scenes.  I’m not sure how Abby managed to photoshop out the food Mr 10 had food in his mouth for EVERY one of the family photos.  And Miss 4 was actually in full-on tantrum mode.  But hey, the light was stunning, the Red Wagyus posed beautifully, and Abby must have super powers because we look half-pie normal.  I’d call that a result!

And from a personal perspective: I’m hoping my kids read the article and one day realise that although mummy would sometimes do things like forget to put the sandwich in the lunch box, it was because she was busy changing the world for NZ farmer’s who love farming and hate admin.

 

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