THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
They set the deal up themselves
By Sam Marwood
Post 14 of 19
His phone rang while he was still in the paddock, and he wiped his hands on his pants before he answered.
A farmer from a few roads over was on the line, and he still owned his place.
He had seen a flier on the board at the hardware store, and he wanted to talk while there was light enough to walk a paddock.
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.
The man who took the call is an aspiring farmer from the district, and he had written that flier himself and pinned it on the board.
The flier said he wanted to farm here, and that he was ready to talk with a farmer who was thinking about their own place.
People were already talking about how to keep farms in local hands, and he put his number where a working farmer would see it.
The couple who farm the district's first place are two farm workers, and a farmer who has done well stood with them when they took the step.
He drove over the next week and met both owners at the cattle grid, and the owners did most of the talking while they walked.
They stopped at the yards, the sheds and the house, and the owners named what they still wanted to do themselves.
He asked where the water comes from in a dry month, and one of the owners walked him to the answer.
They stood in the shed while the owners showed him which tools stay, and which tools move with the work.
He wrote those jobs down before they left the paddock, including the gate the owners still open on their own round.
He is the family coming on, one aspiring farmer from the district, and the owners stay the owners.
At the kitchen table that night, share farming was a short list on the page in front of them.
Who takes the mornings, what gear is already in the shed, which jobs the owners will keep, and who lives in the house were the lines they sat with.
They wrote the answers in plain words, so the page showed he took the mornings, the owners kept their own round, and the owners lived in the house.
Those pages became a sharefarming agreement over several evenings, and they read each page aloud before anyone signed.
The owners and the aspiring farmer signed it at that same table, and from then the deal was theirs.
The farm stayed in the owners' names, and a family sharefarmed it.
He started in the yards on a Monday, and the owners stayed with him to show the gates he couldn't learn from one walk.
The couple, and the farmer who stood with them, heard about that Monday only after the first morning was done and the yard was quiet.
The owners and the aspiring farmer didn't need us, but they just loved the concept, and they set up their own sharefarming deal.
The flier is still on the board at the hardware store, curled a little at one corner, with the number still clear enough to ring.
The card is in his own handwriting, and it sits on that board among the other notes a farmer stops to read.
Community Owned Farms is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.