THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
The district ten years on
By Sam Marwood
The opening
The monthly meeting had started, and the last ute pulled up beside the feed hub.
Inside the shared calf shed the benches were full, and most of the faces were young, and the older farmers were among them, not up the front.
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.
Ten to twenty farms were in local hands, and those farms were being farmed together. The calves from those farms were in the one shed, and the feed hub sat on the pad beside it.
People came in off the pad and took a place on the benches. Farmers whose calves were in the shed sat with the people who fed them, and the talk moved along the pens.
Once a month they went through the calves, farm by farm, and they said how the feed had gone since they last sat here. A person from the next generation had the sheet and read the notes out.
An older farmer on the same bench added one short correction, and he stayed in the row. They swapped what they had seen on their own places since the last meeting, and they kept each note to what the next person needed.
Then a farmer said a place on the far side might come up, and he said who had told him, and he sat down. From the bench, one of the older farmers said he would go and see the owner this week.
He named the morning he could leave his own cows, and he asked the man who had raised the place to come with him. The person with the sheet wrote both names against that morning and read the line back, so the morning and the names were agreed.
The rest of the room heard the names and went back to the note still open. The visit sat on the sheet, and the month in front of them still got finished.
Two of the people who farm here were named to go and see the owner, and that is what they do to keep farms in local hands. They agreed to go after milking on that morning, and to ask the owner how he saw the place, and to bring his answer back.
Through the week the calves were fed in that shed, and this meeting was the morning they sat down and looked to the next place. The person with the sheet stayed back a minute and checked the two names once more before the utes left the yard.
When the meeting broke up, those two stayed by the pens and went over what they would ask, and that they would let the owner talk first. The others went to the feed hub or straight to the ute.
The shed stayed a calf shed, and the same farms would be back through the week to feed. A family was on every one of those farms, and people named who was at home on each place.
The next generation had the sheet, and the older farmers stayed in the row and let them have it.
It started with two farm workers who decided to take the step.
Community Owned Farms is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.