THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
The farmer who rang after milking
By Sam Marwood
Post 3 of 19
The phone went on a quiet weeknight, after the milking was done.
A dairy farmer on the far side of the district was getting ready to step back, and he rang the two farm workers after he had milked. He had heard what they were doing, and that a farmer the district trusted was standing with them.
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 asked them to come and see the dairy on Saturday, when the morning could be about him. He wanted the district to keep farms in local hands, and for this farm that means locals back this farm together, and a family will sharefarm it.
They kept the phone call to the day and the invitation, and left the farm itself to the Saturday. The drive to the far side took a while, and on the way they agreed the morning was his.
He would show them the place, and they would let him talk until he had said what he wanted to say. They pulled up at the dairy with the farmer who stood with them, and the man who had rung was in the yard.
He set the order of the morning himself, dairy, then pasture, then the sheds, then the water, and then the house. They left the ute by the dairy and waited while he finished what he was doing, and then he led them.
They started in the dairy, because that was what he had asked them to see, and then they walked out to the pasture. He took them through the pasture in the order he grazed it, and he talked while they walked.
The sheds came next, and he took them through the yard and the dairy, and he said how the morning ran. They looked at the water, where it came from and where it reached, and they finished at the house.
The farmer who stood with them stayed quiet until the owner had finished each part of the place. The owner had lived in the house, and he talked about living there in the same plain way he had talked about the paddocks.
They stood in the kitchen while he talked, and the questions they asked were about how the place was run. Mostly they let him talk, and the morning stayed with the man who had rung.
They left price off the Saturday so the morning could stay on the pasture, the sheds, the water and the house. He had the day to say what the farm was, and they had the day to listen.
On the Monday they sat at his kitchen table with the records, and he turned the pages while they followed what they had heard on the walk. The couple sat on one side, and the farmer who stood with them sat beside them.
A valuer walked the pasture, the sheds, the water and the house on a later day, after he had been heard. The valuer's notes sat with the records.
With him, they wrote down what needed fixing on the sheds, the water and the house, in the order of the walk, and they did it before anything was bought.
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