THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP

Ten years on

The town looks the way she said it would, that first night at the kitchen table.

The couple walk up the main street on a Saturday afternoon in their work clothes, the kids running ahead.

The school is full. On weekdays you can hear the yard from the footpath.

Down at the oval, the footy and netball clubs are fielding every grade. The juniors are in jumpers a size too big, and their eldest is warming up with the twos.

Young families are in the street, and the next generation are back, in their boots outside the bakery.

In the shop fridge, in the row you see first, is the district's own milk.

The farms all through the district are in local hands now, farmed together whichever way each one came in. Once a month the farmers meet at the shared calf shed by the feed hub, swapping ideas and spotting the next opportunity. These days the relief milker runs it.

The couple's own herd runs on the first farm, grown out of those first blue heifers. It's the farm they've grown into.

On the drive home, the farmer a few roads over waves from his verandah.

At home, the envelope is pinned to the fridge, soft at the corners. Every name on it has a tick or a note beside it.

The kids want to know what's next.

She takes a fresh envelope out of the drawer.

This is an illustration. The district and its people are made up.

Community Owned Farms is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.