FARMING GROWTH - Women in agriculture

The contribution made by women to Australian farming is incalculable and often unheralded, as it’s certainly not just farm work they do. Many women also undertake outside jobs while juggling the myriad unpaid domestic farm duties of home maintenance and child-rearing. And yet, more and more women are taking up farming in Australia with ABARE estimating that 32 per cent of the farming workforce are women. And the number is growing.

Words TONY BLACKIE

Australian women have always been at the centre of farming in this country. Without them the multi-billion-dollar industry would likely grind to a halt. Their role of ‘keeping the home fires burning’ has been immortalised in various bush ballads but, more often than not, these women also worked alongside their farmer husbands on the land. Not much has changed on that score, and neither has the strength, versatility and resilience of rural woman in the face of drought, floods, fire and the vagaries of the marketplace.

FROM ACADEMIA TO THE LAND

Eight years ago, Louise Freckelton, was working in the sandstone cloistered world of the University of Sydney, battling the daily grind of academic life. But she always felt that she was meant to be elsewhere. “I often say some people are born in the wrong place. I always knew I was meant to be a farmer,” she says.

Mt Adrah Dorper sheep farmer Louise Freckelton traded the academic life for Highfield Farm and Woodland.

Louise decided to trade the erudite University life for an 830-acre farm near Mt Adrah, just off the Snowy Mountains Highway in New South Wales. The land is box gum grassy woodland, previously common to the backslopes of the Great Dividing Range, from Queensland to the Victorian border, but is now mostly cleared.

Approximately two-thirds of the property is conservation land protecting critically endangered species. Before the fires came through earlier this year, Louise and ornithologists had identified 137 bird species including some that are endangered.

With husband David, Louise began building a herd of Dorper sheep. “We always liked sheep and we’re foodies. We wanted to be able to feed ourselves and with the excess, feed others,” she says. “Because I’d always been a closet farmer, I knew of Dorpers and when we got here I knew I didn’t want wool – I wanted meat sheep – even though everyone told me I should go with wool.”

Mt Adrah Dorper sheep farmer Louise Freckelton traded the academic life for Highfield Farm and Woodland.

Louise refers to the learning process of moving to the farm as ‘participatory observation’. She took as many farming short courses as she could find.

“For the first two years I was doing them all, using my university brain to lap up all the information I could,” she says. “But I didn’t have a framework to put over it. That’s when I decided to do an organic farming course through the National Environment Centre in Albury. That helped me contextualise the process.” Louise and David’s property, Highfield Farm and Woodland, is a mixed farming proposition. They run Dorpers and, thanks to the land’s conservation listing, they’ve been able to incorporate farm stay accommodation in eco-huts.

Louise and the Dorper lambs.

Their offering to visiting guests of high quality food grown on the farm was given a major boost in late May 2020. Highfield Farm and Woodland Grass-fed Dorper Lamb has been judged a State Winner for Lamb in the 2020 Delicious Magazine Awards (Paddock section).

“Two lamb producers have been named as exceptional quality by the Delicious Magazine judges. We are honoured to be considered in the same league as the wellknown Moorlands Lamb from near Boorowa,” says Louise.

“In a week or two we will be submitting samples for the National Delicious Magazine Producers Award,” she adds. “Here we are, farming novices but we have a bloody good product. The Dorpers get derided as hobby farmer sheep but who’s laughing now?”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Further down the Hume Highway, some 40 kilometres out of Albury, Allysa Leverton runs a 250-acre, agroecological modelled, multienterprise farm, growing food for local communities in southern NSW and north-eastern Victoria.

She has worked the land on Eaglerise Farm with her partner Gerard Lawry, through good and bad times, but Allysa admits the recent drought was almost too much.

The impact on the mental health of farmers was something that Allysa believes many people would not understand.

“I wasn’t set up for how bad it would be, how draining it was,” she says. “I now have a greater appreciation for farming women and what they go through.”

She points out that the drought caused many farmers to lose income and had to dramatically change their lifestyles: going from bottled to cask wine, not being able to afford to go out to dinner, having to practice extreme water conservation with infrequent showering and bathing. “You don’t reach out because you don’t want people to know you are struggling. It’s just easier to say nothing,” Allysa says.

But with the rain that came after the fires, the landscape has changed dramatically.

“The dam is now five metres deep, twice as much water as we have ever had. That is making me more enthusiastic.”

As a result, Allysa has been able to plan ramping up sales of Eaglerise farm produce.

FROM MINING TO FARMING

At the other end of the country, Cecily Richardson was working in harsh conditions as a geologist at the Argyle Diamond mine in the Kimberly near Kununurra in Western Australia. As the mine was about to close, the owners Rio Tinto offered all permanent staff retraining. Cecily opted for an agriculture course focussing on organics which most of the smaller farms in the Kununurra area have adopted.

As a geologist, Cecily was well acquainted with soil chemistry so the scientific side of the study came naturally.

With her partner Nick, whom she met while trekking in Africa, Cecily bought a small farm 30 kilometres from the Northern Territory border out of Kununurra, right on the banks of the Lake Kununurra – which is the dammed Ord River.

Cecily Richardson with partner Nick.

The property is currently broken into three sections – 380 mango trees, 8,000 banana plants, general farming and vegetables. Both Cecily and Nick work part time to ensure cash flow, Cecily in the local library and Nick as a mechanic.

Cecily believes that women farmers bring special skills to farming and the land, and that these work in concert with the traditional skills attributed to men.

“When I first came to Australia, I came up to a remote part of the Canning Stock route to help with a muster. In the evening I spent time with the station owner’s wife and it struck me that she was the planner and the doer. She was tough and strong,” says Cecily.

Cecily and Nick grow (among other things) mangoes and bananas on their Kununurra farm.

“Women tend to work smarter,” she says, hastening to add that she does not mean this to be derogatory to men. “An example might be that we have 100 metre rows of vegetables growing with tomatoes on frames. To move those frames we use a forklift, not manual labour and the need for excess strength. Women can now do those jobs.”

Among other things, Cecily also takes on the marketing. Her farm is surrounded by broad-acre farming properties and the need to differentiate product is vital when selling into the Perth market. But she is philosophical about the return on farming investment: “It is not important for me to earn the big mining salary any more. We just need to be sustainable.”

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

There is advice out there on the best way to make the move from the city to the land, and author Susan Wills has contributed to this with her book – The Flamboyant Farmer. Susan found the transition from suburban Darwin to 130 acres in Tasmania to be very difficult, but now, five and a half years down the track, she is able to look back on how her farming dream has changed.

With husband Andrew, former Director of Darwin’s Botanic Gardens and Herbarium, Susan arrived in central northern Tasmania with the idea of running cattle on their newly acquired farm. They had wanted to enter the organic meat market. “There was only one organic abattoir nearby but it closed just after we arrived,” she says. “So we decided to attack the organic food market with a stand at the Hobart markets. But they only had one stand per area and our neighbour got that spot.

“We then focussed on growing garlic. We had this garlic crop and it was beautiful – lots of people wanted to buy it but not for the right price. When I did the numbers I realised that we’d only made $300.”

Tasmania's Susan Wills and husband Andrew have turned to ‘people farming’ with a number of cabins on the property, and they plan to run support programs.

Susan says that was when they gave up on the farm making money, but not all has been lost. Andrew returned to teaching and Susan is studying psychology and counselling. They have now turned to ‘people farming’ with a number of cabins on the property, and they plan to run support programs. “The idea is not totally fleshed out yet, but we want to contribute to society in the best way we can,” Susan says.

The agricultural activities have continued with garlic still being grown along with fruit trees and bee hives. Land improvement is also underway with soil and water management and new dams.

“Maybe we will never be top-notch farmers but we will have a great farm resource,” Susan says.