THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
The night they took the step
By Sam Marwood
Post 1 of 19
The kitchen light was still on, and the two of them were home late from the hall.
They were farm workers, with the next morning's milking on someone else's farm and the boots still by the door. One of them put the kettle on, and the other sat down with the day still on 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.
"We're going to try."
They had sat near the back of the hall with people they worked beside on other farms. Farmers who had worked the district through their working lives were in the rows, and so were other farm workers, and so were people from town.
The front of the hall had the story, and the back had the farmers and the farm workers who had come in from the day. They stayed in the back and listened through to the end.
They knew the people in the next chairs, because they milked with some of them and worked beside others, and they drove home with that room still in mind. On the way home the ute was quiet, and they held the hall until they were in their own kitchen with the door shut.
What they heard there was a dairy district in another state that had already done it, for years. They were confident because a farmer like them had decided that if it was going to happen he'd have to do it himself.
Every farm there had a family on it. The real story of that district is told by name in Community Owned Farms.
They wanted to keep farms in local hands, and they said what they wanted this district to be saying in ten years. One of them said ten to twenty farms farmed together, with a family on every farm.
The other said the next generation back, the school full, and the footy and netball clubs fielding every grade. Then the two of them said the district's own milk in the shop fridge, and they stopped.
One of them wrote the lines on a bit of paper and put it on the table between the mugs. They read the lines back, so each of them had said the whole list out loud before they stood up.
They were due on a farm at dawn, and they stayed at the table with the paper between them. The decision was said, and the goals were said, and the way a farm would come was still ahead of them.
The farm they worked was waiting for the morning, and the decision stayed on the table. Both of them would be milking for someone else in the morning, and they left the decision where they had said it.
Unless you take the step, these opportunities don't arrive.
The doubt was said at the same table, by the one who hadn't said the first line. "We don't own a farm. Who are we to start this?"
The answer, and the reason they were still up, was that they wanted it most. They hadn't asked anyone yet, and the bit of paper stayed on the table when the light went off.
Community Owned Farms is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.