A Couple of Drought Things…

It’s been a crazy ride, being a farmer over the past decade…

We arrived back almost here 11 years from the ‘Big Smoke’ – both of us farm kids who had built other lives in the city.  Good lives. Well-rewarded lives. Comfortable lives.  We made great friends who lived all kinds of lives – some comfortable and some not.  Then some discomfort made us rethink our lives.

And we decided comfortable probably wasn’t for us.  The Bush was. And we came home – to take off our city hats, and don our Akubras (or in my case, a cap).

And we knuckled down and took on things like dust and debt and floods and succession planning.

Uncomfortable things.

Sometimes deeply uncomfortable things…

But the payoff – living in our own space, bringing up our kids to know hard work and freedom at a gut level, providing food for Aussies and the world – yeah, the payoff has been worth it.  But I also feel like this part of it, the payoff, has been a bit of a secret… something WE know, but not something the general, mostly urban Aussie public, really GETS.

Because all too often the only reminders that urban Aussies get of farming is so negative. We only share (and the media only seem to care) when farmers need to cry out or yell in distress.  When it just gets TOO tough. It’s partly why this blog exists – I really wanted to provide some sort of balance here – to share tiny glimpses of the WHY of our lives…

Then, a few months ago, word got out of the devastating drought that currently has most of News South Wales in its ferocious grasp.  It’s a drought that has held much of western Queensland to ransom for a number of years already – but this drought is different to previous droughts.

It’s different (I think in part) because of social media – because of stories like those told by my hugely talented mate Edwina – because of stories and images being openly shared of the true horror of drought and what it means to many farmers.

The result has been a little like a bushfire – the first flames lit by people like Eddie, have caught and been shared on through social media, exploding into the general media and been fanned ever higher.

Entire program telecasts have been devoted to drought stories, telethons raising funds for drought relief, successful campaigns through schools like Fiver for a Farmer (which has raised $1 million on it’s own) have been born.

A nerve seems to have been touched in the general conscience – suddenly the public has SEEN the Bush. Has SEEN its people.  And has responded.  With incredible generosity of all kinds – with donations of money to various drought charities, of dresses to country girls (and suits to country boys) who might not have graduation outfits otherwise, with letters, with messages of support and hope.

And then great Aussie artists have chimed in and added to this inferno of generosity…

And this maelstrom of goodwill … well, it’s DONE something.

The financial donations, of course, are incredibly welcome and able to work in a real and practical way through getting hay to farmers in most dire need.

But it’s the OTHER offerings in that list that I really want to address.  Because the value on dresses, and letters and messages of hope… those things, those sentiments, are PRICELESS.  And so far-reaching, that the givers can really have no idea of their true value.

We are pretty dry here – but nowhere near as deeply affected by drought as so many further west and south.  We are buying our own hay, but we won’t need to get it from charities anytime soon (fingers crossed!).  We are managing our grass, and our cattle numbers and putting out molasses mixes to help our cows utilize the dry feed we have available to them. We haven’t needed a direct helping hand.

But we feel THOSE donations – that support, that hope – to our very bones.

Every single time I see a letter posted onto social media, or retold in the media, from a city kid to a farmer he or she doesn’t know, I get a little shot of happy.  A little shot of hope.  Because it’s proof that people CARE.  They care about the animals and they care about the people.  They care about BOTH.  And these people WANT to understand.  How bloody MARVELLOUS!

And yes, I admit, it’s also frustrating that it has taken so long, and such circumstances, for that reaction, that reaching out, to occur.

I understand the WHY to a degree – after all, we WERE those urban consumers just over a decade ago, living our lives so very separately from our food producers.  Living in Brisbane, working long hours, wrapped up in our own lives, we could see how VERY easy it was for a suburban Aussie family to remain oblivious to the story of their food.  SO easy…

Because those in the city work hard too.  Their money, that pays for the food farmers produce, is hard-earned too. Our first-world lifestyles, and first-world supermarkets, have provided a comfortable and ever-thickening buffer between the paddock and the plate – so they haven’t necessarily been aware of what it takes to get that food to them.  It wasn’t obvious, it certainly wasn’t seen as necessary, to know your food’s story.  So the story of that food, and of those behind it, got a little lost.  A LOT lost really.

And then our stories got a little hijacked, a little twisted along the way.  We inadvertently let others tell our stories – we sat back in shock, as activists took over our narratives, and edited their versions of truth to an increasingly horrified public.  We didn’t really know what to do, so (mostly) we did nothing …

Don’t get me wrong, some of those things that were exposed needed to be sorted out. No farmer worth their salt supports cruelty of any kind.  But the end result was that the story of farmers in general got warped.

And in taking BACK the telling of our own stories, especially while we have this new spotlight on us all, we have managed to tear through that warped rhetoric.  And people have reached out, through that comfortable buffer, to show they still care.

We, as farmers, really need to feel that ‘reaching out’, out here, sometimes.  When we are forced to use our energies not just to care for our crops and our animals, but to battle against bureaucracy and bad politics, to endure when our local roads shake our vehicles to pieces, and to up the ante in tending our stock when it just. won’t. rain…

We need to know that people (particularly our customers) CAN see beyond their supermarkets, their restaurants and their take-out menus.  That they can see beyond those long production chains, that keep us so physically separated from each other these days … and they SEE US.  And we get to, in turn, see THEM.

The response to THIS drought… it’s like someone has turned the lights on.  For all of us. And for that I am so very bloody grateful!

The exciting thing is that I don’t think this is going away either…  in the wake of the Strawberry Tampering saga (where needles were put into random strawberries, shutting down supply in supermarkets) the public has again stepped up and worked out how to support their farmers.  People have been buying bulk, often direct from farmers gates, have shared strawberry recipes right across the internet.Now is exactly the right time for primary producers to take back our stories more fully.  To open up discussions better.  To welcome people into our paddocks.

It’s awful that it has taken drought and suffering to flick that switch.

But it’s on now.

And I, for one, will not be letting anyone turn it off anytime soon.

Oh and the other thing I wanted to say…

THANKYOU AUSTRALIA.

PS If you’d like to make your own donation, one of our favourite drought charities is Drought Angels.

PPS Dear Hughie… LET IT RAIN!!!!