THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
The day she secured her legacy
By Sam Marwood
Post 13 of 19
She met the two farm workers at the dairy and walked them the long way, on the outside fences. She wanted them to see the farm as one place before anyone talked about what happened to it.
She kept to the outside fences the whole way, so the walk itself showed how the farm sat. The paddocks ran out to that line, the sheds sat inside it, and the dairy stayed in view as they went.
They passed the trough at the corner and the gate that opened onto the lane. The lane gate took a hand to swing, and she swung it herself, then she kept walking the boundary she had farmed to.
The outside fence was the whole of the farm in one line, and she wanted that line understood before she said what she wanted done with it. They walked the next side in the same quiet, sheds on the one hand and open paddock running to the fence.
A strainer post leaned a little and she set her hand on it as she passed, the way a person checked a fence they had kept. She did not stop for long, because the gate was where she meant to speak, and the boundary was what she brought them to see.
She set the pace because she knew every step of that fence. She stopped once so they could see the place was still one farm from this side, and the two farm workers stayed quiet while she looked.
With her hand on the gate she said she wanted the farm kept whole after her, and that this was about securing her legacy. She had farmed the place on her own, and there was no one to hand it to.
For her, farm succession was the decision to keep the farm whole after her, made while she could still see the fences. They could hear the plant from the gate, and the sound was a working dairy, which was what she wanted left on the place.
The farm moves into the Cultivate Trust, and it stays whole, stays farmed and stays in local hands. The right farmer goes on it: the best farmer for the farm, not the highest bidder.
She decided there, and they started the walk back only once she had decided.
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.
Your Farm, Your Legacy is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.