THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP

A different kind of farm

On the second visit the farmer was at his own gate when the ute pulled up, and he started on the water before the doors were shut.

He had asked, as the open day on the first farm was ending, whether this only works for cows.

The yard was still full when he asked, and they told him it doesn't, and that a proper answer would wait until his own place was walked.

This is an illustration of how it could unfold when it goes right. The district and the people in it aren't any one place or person.

He farms in the same district, and his place isn't a dairy.

The people at the gate were the couple, two farm workers who farm the first place, and the farmer who has done well and stood with them.

They walked his paddocks, then the shed he uses most, then the water, then the house, and they let him talk for nearly all of it.

He showed them where the water comes in, and where he likes to stand of a morning.

He talked the way a man talks when the farm is his own.

He named the jobs he still wants and the jobs a family could take, and they wrote both lists before anyone was asked for a yes.

He took them to the gate he walks when the light is going, and he said that round is one he means to keep.

He walked them along the fence he fixes himself, and he said a family wouldn't be asked to take that job.

He kept his own boots by the door for that evening round, and he said those boots stay when a family is on the place.

In the shed he pointed to the gear that stays with him and the gear a family would use, and each pile became its own line.

The house was on the page because he means to keep living in it, and a family would work the place around that fact.

He poured the tea while both sides read the page aloud, and he corrected one job he still wanted to do himself, before anyone signed.

After the walk they sat with his records, the same quiet check the first farm had, and he could follow every line.

The farmer who stood with the couple asked what the place needs in the first month, and the answer was in the records.

Nobody asked him what the place would fetch, and they wrote what a family would need ready so the first week could start cleanly.

He gave his yes that afternoon at his own table, and the question he put in his own words was, how do I stay on my farm.

The page named that the family took the mornings, that he kept the evening round and the fence, and that he lived in the house.

The farm stayed in his name, and a family sharefarmed it.

That page is his way to retire without selling the farm, and share farming is the name of what they wrote.

The following season the family had taken the jobs marked as theirs, and he had kept the round he named on that visit.

One clear morning he stood at his gate, heard them already going, and the farm was still in his name.

Ageing on Farm is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.