THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP

The first heifers

The first spring on the farm, the calf shed filled up fast.

They were in the dairy before light, as always, only now the herd walking in was the one they ran. The kids came down after breakfast with their gumboots on the wrong feet.

He held up a tin of paint. "Which ones?"

She'd known for weeks. Under their share farming agreement, they reared a share of the heifer calves each year as their own stock. She walked the pen and pointed, and he put a dab of blue on each one.

The youngest wanted to name them all.

"Go on then," she said.

By lunch the blue calves were named after half the footy team.

The farmer a few roads over leaned on the rail and watched. Most mornings he walked the herd in with them, telling them which cow liked which gate. That morning he pointed out the strongest of the blue calves.

"That one'll be in your herd a long while," he said.

Once a month she wrote one page for the people who'd backed the farm, and the retired farmer rang every time it arrived, mostly to talk about the grass.

More than a job. A pathway to ownership.

By the end of spring the blue calves were out in the house paddock, and the youngest was on the fence every afternoon to watch them.

He leaned on the gate beside her. "Our herd," he said.

She laughed. "Our first heifers. The herd comes next."

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

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