Lisa Kendall – Young Farmer

“I’m a girl from Auckland who didn’t grow up on a farm,” Lisa Kendall, 2020 FMG Young Farmer of the Year winner for the Northern region, says. “So, when I went into farming, I felt a lot of pressure to fit in and be tough – and I avoided thinking about the health and safety side because I didn’t want to be ‘that Auckland girl’.” Three things have changed Franklinbased Lisa’s perspective – maturity, becoming an employer herself, and a back injury resulting from “years of abuse” lifting too-heavy weights in the workplace. Her business, Nurture Farming, provides contracting services for lifestyle blocks and she is focused strongly on ongoing risk management assessments for every job. Lisa has a Diploma in Agriculture and a Diploma in Farm Management, both from Lincoln and a Certificate in Advanced Personal Training and Graduate Certificate in Science and Technology from Massey. She began her farming career working on sheep and beef and dairy farms, punctuated by two OEs. Some of her employers provided the opportunity to do training courses in using equipment, but the overall approach to health and safety was fairly ‘hands off.’ “Because I was trying to fit in, I avoided thinking about the health and safety side,” she says. “But as I’ve got older and wiser, I’ve started to recognise how terrible I would feel if I saw someone doing something unsafe and didn’t say anything and they injured themselves in a massive way. I’ve realised I would rather be laughed at than see someone in hospital.” Lisa launched Nurture Farming 4 years ago. However, due to her back injury, she is now working full time for Farmlands as an Assistant Business Manager. “I launched Nurture Farming to provide contracting services for lifestyle blocks – everything from shearing to fencing, spraying and installing water lines,” she says. “I had a small number of employees and, as an employer, obviously I had my legal obligations and had a formal structure around health and safety. We used the Zero Harm Farm system, which was all on the computer and very accessible. “My focus is on active teaching, not just giving someone a manual or instructions. We’d go through the health and safety material as part of the induction. I never let a staff member use a piece of machinery until they had been fully trained and I was confident they were using it safely. I have done quite a lot of training myself – including first aid, machinery and chainsaw safety, chemical handling and quad bike safety. You learn quite formally in those scenarios but you still need to think about how you will approach every task safely, underpinned by safety conversations. “I always made clear to the people I employed that their safety and that of those around them comes first and if they think there is risk in doing something, then they won’t get told off if a job doesn’t get done because of that or takes longer than expected.” In Lisa’s experience, lifestyle block owners may not always be as attuned to the risks on their properties as farmers. “They aren’t negligent or trying not to be helpful, but they may not be used to having machinery around,” she says. “Contractors on lifestyle blocks should always feel happy to ask owners the same questions you would ask a farmer. “We’d have a conversation with them to ask what we needed to know about risks on their property but we would also do our own risk assessment too. “My workers were very good. We’d walk around and they’d point out things like a boggy corner of a gully. If they were providing a particular chemical for us to use, we’d ask about its hazard classification. “Equally, we’d talk to owners about managing the risks around our work. One of the big focuses was the work zone. On a farm, you’re in a much bigger space, but on a lifestyle block, you are likely to be closer to living areas. It’s about making sure everyone on the property knows not to come into the work zone and being very clear about what that zone is. We’d ask the client to phone or shout or wave from a distance if they needed to talk to us. “Kids are also a big issue on lifestyle blocks. They may well wander out to watch and you could be spraying or using a tractor. It’s hard for kids to resist when they see interesting stuff going on outside. So I always asked clients to keep children inside and keep an eye on them.”

| Lisa Kendall competes in the FMG Young Farmer of the Year Northern region competition.