THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP

Next generation farmers buy their own farm

The shed light was on and the others were already there, because one next generation farmer had rung them and asked them to come.

A folder sat on the bench, and in it was a farm he had found by turning up to help, over months, on someone else's place.

He is not one of the couple who farm the district's first place, and that couple are two farm workers who took the step.

A farmer who has done well stood with that couple, and the farm in the folder is a different place from theirs.

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 had been an aspiring farmer on other people's farms, turning up when a job needed another pair of hands, and staying for the tea.

One morning the job was a gate that wouldn't swing, and he stayed until it did, and the owner put the kettle on.

They drank the tea in the shed with the folder closed, and the owner talked about the season he had just had.

Another day he helped move the stock, and he learned which paddock the owner checks first.

He wrote the lanes, the sheds and the water into the folder, one page for each job.

He learned the order of the yards by doing them, and the folder was the record of that work.

A person could open that folder and know the place before they stood in the yard.

The owner got to know him in the yards and along the lanes, and the talk turned to who might take the farm on.

The owner wanted next generation farmers to have it, so the district could keep farms in local hands.

In the shed they went through the folder until each of them could say how the water runs, where the sheds sit, and what the house is for.

The owner could see they already knew the place from the work, and that made the talk in the shed a straight one.

The owner told them what he wanted kept as it is, and the group wrote that down before they talked about buying.

One of them had taken the drive, gathered the others, and hustled for the farm because they wanted it most.

They put their own money in to buy that farm together, and they brought on the people who could make it happen.

They asked the couple, and the farmer who stood with them, to walk the farm with the group.

The owner met that walk in his boots, took them down the lanes, and showed them the board where the tools hang.

On that walk the couple asked about the water, the sheds, and who would live in the house.

The farmer who stood with the couple let the owner answer, and those answers went into the folder with the rest.

The people in the shed were the ones buying the farm, and the couple left that decision with them.

This farm is their own, separate from the couple's place, and the group are the ones taking it on as owners.

The folder stayed on the bench, they locked the shed, and they went home with the farm agreed between them.

You Can Own a Farm is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.