Please can we do some more farm jobs?

October 25, 2012October 25, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / Leave a comment

Apparently, Australian agriculture needs to be made more “sexy” to attract young people. I don’t think so. While you can get paid ridiculous amounts of money to work in mining, the call of the land is strong for those who really love it.

Already, I can see it’s in Zoe’s blood.

“I’ll get them, Mum, I can do it, you watch!”

Straight off the school bus, she launched into moving the yearlings with great gusto. It was like watching Patch. She ran around them in circles first, then made some crazy dashes right through the centre of the mob. Pure unadulterated fun!

We got them all out a few minutes later, with flushed cheeks and the wind in our hair. “Please, Mum, can we do some more farm jobs before we go home?”

My gut tells me Australian farming and fresh food has a great future. My head tells me that’s so too, with one caveat: before they can feed the world, there has to be a sustainable return so they have confidence there’ll be enough to feed themselves.

The perfect farmer’s body

October 5, 2012October 5, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 12 Comments

What does the perfect body look like? Not mine, that’s for sure! Yesterday, I was reminded just how bad my genes are for farming. Allergies run on both sides of my family and the worst irritant of all looks like this:

Yorkshire fog grass: one UK expat we could do without!

I’m told it’s called “fog” grass because the pollen is released in such huge quantities, it makes everything go misty. Dynamite! Yesterday, I had to wander through thigh-high forests of it to get the dam siphon running again. My scalp, eyes, nose, mouth and arms are all still desperately itchy 15 hours later.

The cows don’t like it either. Fog grass is covered in thick velvety “fur” that understandably is most unpalatable.

Thankfully, we have a lot less of this hideous grass nowdays. It was everywhere when I was a girl but much better grazing management has seen it restricted to untouched pockets of dampness (like the dam wall).

Grass management is a big deal for Australian dairy farmers because it is the greatest predictor of profitability. We count leaves, we estimate the tonnes of pasture in paddocks and aim for the magic nexus of quality and quantity. Somehow, it’s reassuring to know that nothing beats the simplicity of grazing grass for high performance dairy farming, even in 2012.

Tribute to a farmer who’s not a farmer

September 11, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

My husband was not born a farmer. While I rode my pony to primary school, Wayne caught the tram through the, err, “colourful” streets of St Kilda.

Before we took on the farm, Wayne had the idea that after milking you could have a nap on the couch – a ritual my father had adopted. But that hasn’t been our experience. I was bequeathed a terrifying mortgage along with the farm and making ends meet means running the place at fever pitch. Wayne is still driving up and down to Melbourne a few times a week and rounding it off with 14-hour days on the farm. He’s doing it so I can follow my dream. Maybe I sold him a pup.

The workload is exhausting. Things are improving – we’ve fixed most of the water, weed and wire problems that hobbled the farm just a few years ago – but it’s really hard yakka and, with a toddler literally strapped to my chest, I’m still not pulling my weight in the paddocks.

We keep reminding ourselves how much we’ve accomplished in just a few short years. I keep thanking my lucky stars for the man I married.

How a farmer hangs out her washing (or desperation is the mother of invention)

September 4, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 7 Comments

At 15 months, Alex loves “riding” the quad bike.

The little man is drawn to anything he can climb, toot or wobble, especially if it has buttons and the quad has all those magical qualities with the added bonus that it’s his Dad’s.

The mite’s adventurousness is only slightly hampered by his wet blanket of a Mama. When Wayne bought Zoe a hot pink mini-quad for Christmas last year, I refused to let him bring it home. Quads are seriously dangerous bits of gear and, besides, a pushie is still the best way to burn up all that excess energy.

But whether it was out of sheer exhaustion or the joie de vivre that comes with the first truly warm day of Spring, I relented just a touch today and took Alex for an illicit ride on the quad. As we’d passed the quad with the washing basket, he’d somehow become firmly attached to the Suzuki’s grimy plastic faring. A moment later, his padded posterior was straddling the gear shift.

It turns out that the trip from the laundry to the washing line with a toddler is gloriously smooth-sailing when you’re riding a quad – albeit at a snail’s pace. It also turns out that the quad makes an excellent table for the washing basket and is just the right height for pegging up everything from unmentionables to our Sunday best. Don’t tell anyone, will you?

A taste of my own medicine

July 10, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / Leave a comment

Last night, I had a shocking taste of my own medicine. The farm, you see, is almost entirely fenced with single strand electric wires.

These “hot wires” are kinder than barbs, low-cost and flexible. And while they are also less vulnerable to floods, the trio we had recently left our fences in a state of disarray. I have snipped the connections to all non-essential sections in order to keep the power up to the core and am going around fixing paddock by paddock ahead of the cows.

At the same time, Alex at 13 months is getting heavy. With 12 kgs of wriggling toddler on my chest, fencing work is becoming something of a challenge, so I decided to trial him on my back.

I ended up with an extra burden of mother guilt. Suffice to say, I am not used to crawling under electric fences with an extra load “up top”. Zap!

That horrid sensation of pulsing muscles hit me just as I crept tentatively under a fence. It must have connected with Alex on the carrier but he didn’t seem to notice at all, as he carried on with his babbling, happy as a lark while mum staggered to her feet.

Glad none of the cows were watching!

The positives of being a dairy farmer

April 13, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 1 Comment

It’s one year since I started Milk Maid Marian and seeing as I’ve just finished reconciling our accounts for March, I thought it perfect timing to do the same for my life as a dairy farmer, beginning with the top five positives.

Love of the land
The first one has to be love of land. I am connected to this place and think of myself as its custodian. Just being here is good for the soul.

Farm children have something special
The farm allows me to work with Zoe and Alex, even in those precious early years. The farm’s also a great teacher: respect for work, respect for the environment, animals and nature. They have seen birth, life and death first-hand and I hope they have learned to accept life with good grace yet develop inquiring minds. There’s a palpable sense of responsibility about farm kids that’s matched with the enormous freedoms of farm life.

Working with animals
Cows, calves, bulls and dogs all have their own personalities but none of them play office politics around the water cooler. Because we work with our cows at least twice a day, we get to know and appreciate the characters!

Exercise for mind, body and soul
Farming is not for dummies, lazybones or fragile souls. The challenges are immense and that can be enervating because there is always something new to learn and do.

Knowing that we are making a difference
We produce great, clean, healthy food while looking after our animals and the land. That’s very satisfying.

Hail and hearty on the farm

April 10, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 8 Comments

Angry anvil clouds appeared above the ranges all through yesterday, sweeping rain up into the skies and pelting it down again with icy fury. In between were the most heavenly though frosty blue skies. As the day wore on, these glorious intermissions grew longer and we seized the opportunity to round up in the sun (albeit with at least three layers of clothing on).

With the cows yarded, we set off to open the gate to their new paddock. Just like the unfortunate Mr Gumpy, however, we were out in the middle of nowhere when the skies turned black.

As hailstones the size of garden peas stung our faces, Patch leapt from the back of the Bobcat onto my shoulders. Zoe buried her head in her coat shouting “It’s raining ice!” while Alex squirmed in his carrier under my layers of shirts and fleece. Our beanies were still in the tumble dryer after an earlier downpour and the hail was merciless.

But it was fun! Zoe began to laugh and so did I. Farm life is like that. It builds resilience and a sense of, dare I say it, dry humour.

To the victors flow the spoils

Dad always said: “Happy is he who appreciates what he has” and I think it’s very good advice.

Meet Patch the pup

April 7, 2012April 7, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 7 Comments

Patch and Zoe get to know each other

A new character has joined our farm crew! Patch (the pup formerly known as Buckley) is only five or six months old but he’s a very clever little fellow. In just one day, he’s already managed to scale the eight-step ladder up to Zoe’s cubby, been for a ride in the Bobcat and learnt (or remembered) to heel on a leash.

With Kelpie blood flowing through his veins, Patch loves to run. We expected that. What took us by surprise was this pup’s sense of calm. He nodded off less than five minutes after hopping in our car for the first time and seems completely unfazed by Zoe’s antics.

Finally, someone who can keep up with me!

It’s a new start for Patch, who was left at a pound just a few weeks old and rescued by the volunteer foster carers from Homeless Hounds.

Surfing the net at http://www.petrescue.com.au can be an emotional experience. There’s Sascha, the reluctantly surrendered tradies’ dog who can bark Happy Birthday, the pair of dogs who minded their owner’s body for three days until he was found and dozens more that I would love to bring home. I really can see how people end up with mobs of rescued dogs.

Manure manoeuvres

March 31, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / Leave a comment

It’s amazing where cow poo gets and what we’ll do to try to get it off.

"What on earth are you doing, Za Za?" "Getting the cow poo off, of course!"

From one farmer to the next

March 31, 2012March 31, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 1 Comment

I have no idea whether Zoe and Alex will be farmers but I’m quite sure my father was surprised when I fought to keep the farm in the family after he became gravely ill.

I’d been given a great education and had built a thriving two-person little business that fitted in perfectly with a new baby. He’d decided I was better off not farming and told the lawyer drafting his will that he was going to sell the farm. The thing is, rationally, he was right: I was much better off financially than I am now or am likely to be as a farmer. What Dad had forgotten to factor in was the call of the land.

Life on the land gets in your blood and I’d always wanted – no, expected – to come back to the farm when there was room for me.

Now that I am here and have children of my own growing up on the farm, I sometimes wonder whether they will feel the same pull. Maybe they’ll simply look back happily on a wonderfully free, healthy childhood and move on. Maybe they’ll want to farm. I hope they have the choice.

I tuck little bits of money into share portfolios for Zoe and Alex here and there to build an understanding of the way money works and nest eggs that will free them to hatch their dreams one day. That’s the big picture. Then there’s the little things, like creating digital farm maps and records.

The importance of maps was hammered home just the other day, when I got a call from Wayne, our sowing contractor, just as I was feeding Alex his dinner and while Zoe and my Wayne were out at a piano lesson. The plough had located (chewed up, that is) a water pipe I didn’t even know existed.

Agricultural archaeology

The water started off as a trickle but soon became a spectacular three-foot-high in-paddock fountain. The break was at the furthermost end of the paddock from the pump and I knew that more ploughing would only mean endless fountains unless I could find the start of the pipe. A hopeless situation, especially at 5.30pm.

In the end, I decided to pretend I was Dad. I stood at the break and looked north in the direction of the river pump. Decided an old blackwood tree on the bank of a gully would be a natural spot for Dad to have a joiner and went for a walk.

Thank you, Dad!

Dad was a little eccentric but I knew him well. Went to work with a garden saw to get to the joiner and voila, one end cap and some mumbled swearing later, all fixed!

Not a moment too soon

Got back to the house just as the sun was setting and Alex was totally over it but the troughs filled, a quagmire was averted and I smiled a little smile for Dad.