It's Farming, Just Different
On leaving the farm and finding I hadn't.
“I want to stay in Australia”.
The words of not one, but two children.
I knew when they left months before
Fresh faced teens following their hearts. Not their birthplace. Not their families. Their hearts.
So began the dismantling.
It was abrupt in a way. As if my own heart was also guiding me.
Asking, telling my brain to follow.
It was a pull.
As if everything in the world stopped and became clear in the one moment.
What mattered. What didn’t matter (as much).
We packed a suitcase each, my youngest and I and arrived in late February.
Sharp contrast to the cold and wet farm in Ireland we left behind.
A cottage on another farm, organised by a friend. Basic but homely. A yard. A garden.
We started again.
Rebuilt internal relationships with each other.
Me also desperately clinging to my identity as a farmer.
Arranging pigs, sheep, hens and a livestock guardian Maremma that would fly out at man, woman or beast that came within a 20m radius of my presence.
The chaos that ensued.
Marauding pigs breaking through fencing and into vegetable patches in the middle of the night. Being enticed back to their paddocks by a pyjama clad teen.
Sheep adventuring into the next door’s farm to be returned by a red faced, screaming neighbour taking his life’s frustrations again at the expense of the pyjama clad teen.
Eventually the tenancy ended. Abruptly. The animals dispersed. A shock. Numerous urban tenancies ensued.
More trimming of the animals. The hens. A dog. The cats remained, only just and by the kindness of a friend hosting them at her very “uncat” household.
And then our current home. Sat atop a rise overlooking the most stunning valley, a creek running through it in earshot of our house.
A modest, corrugated iron clad home.
With room for us all. A fireplace for the winter. Air con in the summer.
Birdsong at dawn and the clearest view of the galaxies above at night.
My garden in the corner of the yard, the only remnant of my farming past.
I look down below and watch our farmer landlord at his work moving cattle across the flats.
I am equally relieved and envious.
I long for a horse. I am grateful for the serenity.
Incongruous jobs have been endured. People who questioned my worth.
Once a media director for a global organisation, remonstrated for administration duties dished out by one unable to turn on a computer.
Another job at the complete opposite of my moral scale, enduring a colleague throwing objects across the room and sending emails to communicate although our desks were together.
Once farmer of the year, creating a business from nothing. Profit in year one. 60% profit growth each year for five years.
Now questioning her identity. Her worth. How she fits into this world.
And what I have been doing is navigating these challenges with as much grace as I can.
A safe, calm cocoon for my adult children to rest and grow. A smiling voice for the one far away across the other side of the world. Safe in the knowledge that “I’ve got them”.
Whatever that needs to look like.
It’s building the soil. The environment that enables the “things” to grow.
Allowing connections to form. Roots to be deep. I just know what’s growing for them, will be my greatest achievement.
It’s farming, just different.
Kylie, x
@soilsister 'tis a journey, carried out with resilience and carried along by motherly care, belonging and indeed, yes, a deep sense of responsibility. One of these days the roads will all meet and it will all have been just a journey - one with total achievement and so many lives enriched including your own. ('Dem' Magners Eggs have never been surpassed).
What a journey you are on. I once lived in a corrugated iron house up north in New Zealand. It was a great little old house, the rooms were large and the ceilings high. And of course the sound of the rain!! 😀 So - how much space do you have there! How are you doing? .