{"id":2088,"date":"2012-02-03T18:51:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T08:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=2088"},"modified":"2015-02-23T16:05:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T06:05:49","slug":"farm-blogs-personal-stories-from-the-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/farm-blogs-personal-stories-from-the-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm blogs &#8211; personal stories from the bush"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are now\u00a0quite a few Australian farming blogs &#8211; and there are several different kinds.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There are those that\u00a0are entertaining and informative accounts of daily domestic issues,\u00a0written by women, which highlight the lifestyle and financial management differences between living in towns and living in the bush.\u00a0 These blogs are interesting and very useful\u00a0in regard to helping non-rural residents understand what it&#8217;s like to live in the bush &#8211; particularly from the point of view of being a mother and a wife.\u00a0\u00a0In the bush\u00a0 women still mainly run the household, which includes the business&#8217;s office (statistically, most rural women have spent more years in formal education).\u00a0 While blokes spend most of their time outside in a hands-on role.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not politically correct to point this out, but it remains an immutable fact that blokes are physically stronger when it comes to rural work, which remains physically demanding despite labour saving devices\u00a0&#8211; and as age advances, this difference between men and women becomes more apparent.\u00a0\u00a0 And women generally do a better job of organising and running a household, family etc.\u00a0 This is not to suggest that women should be\u00a0chained to the kitchen!\u00a0 In fact there are many blokes who deal with finances and many women who work outside, particularly in jobs requiring patience, such as training weaners.\u00a0 (To clarify further &#8211;\u00a0&#8216;running a household&#8217; is of course just as essential as working to earn an income &#8211; successful\u00a0farming families usually have a husband and wife partnership, in which each person does what they&#8217;re best at,\u00a0enabling the other to do the best job they can, sometimes swapping roles, and supporting one another.)\u00a0 It is mostly blokes who are writing blogs discussing more technical, factual, hands-on\u00a0aspects of farming, because they&#8217;re usually the ones driving the tractor all night or branding or crutching all day\u00a0&#8211; and these are the farming blogs that are the scarcest (for obvious reasons).<\/li>\n<li>There are also many\u00a0blogs written by people running food production enterprises that are not of a sufficient scale to produce an income large enough to live on.\u00a0 I.E., they&#8217;re &#8216;hobby farm&#8217; type enterprises, for want of a better description.\u00a0 These are often run by people who have made a living in an urban career, and bought rural land to escape to on the weekend or in retirement.\u00a0 Those written by people who do not have a rural background are interesting in regard to growing your own\u00a0food in your spare time, often with very innovative ideas, and often with very clear descriptions of farming practices\u00a0because they&#8217;ve been written by people new to the business.\u00a0 However as farming blogs they can be misleading, because often the way of doing things is not economically feasible on a farming operation that is required to generate sufficient income to support a family, long-term.\u00a0\u00a0How it is possible to manage a small number of livestock or grow food on small acreage often isn&#8217;t transferrable to a full-time going concern that grows enough food to sell to others and make a full-time, long term living for a family.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to be\u00a0idealistic and use practices that would be inefficient on a large scale, \u00a0if\u00a0 there&#8217;s\u00a0another source of capital or income.\u00a0\u00a0There are quite a few\u00a0blogs that purport to be &#8216;farm blogs&#8217; that fall into this category.\u00a0 Without naming any names, some of these &#8216;farm&#8217; blogs are written in a\u00a0clearly superior\/smug tone, either criticising the previous owners (the farm we bought from an elderly couple was very run down and degraded&#8230;) and\/or neighbours.\u00a0 How <em>not <\/em>to win friends &amp; influence people, and how to set yourself up for future criticism by successors.\u00a0 It must be pointed out, however, that anyone who has purchased rural land and set about improving the natural environment and producing good quality food, is a very valuable asset to the local community.\u00a0 Often people who have built up capital outside primary production have the financial resources to spend\u00a0money on renovating and\/or embarking on capital works that would otherwise have been difficult.\u00a0 This includes work on buildings (homes, machinery &amp; shearing sheds) to yards, fencing, waters, pastures and livestock breeding programmes; and weed and pest management.\u00a0 This capital expenditure doesn&#8217;t just improve the property they own, it can help introduce innovative ideas to others, improve local moral, provide local employment and help local businesses.<\/li>\n<li>The exception to the above &#8216;hobby farm&#8217; group of blogs, is blogs written by people who grew up on farms, moved to the city or mines for a career, then returned to the bush with enough money to buy their own land (which may or may not be enough to make a living off).\u00a0 The old saying &#8216;you can take the boy out of the bush but not the bush out of the boy&#8217; is true.\u00a0 People who grew up on the land\u00a0and return to it, do so\u00a0with enthusiasm tempered by a healthy dose of realism.\u00a0 They understand the good aspects of rural life and primary production but they also know the downsides so they&#8217;re not filled with romantic dreams or out-of-control idealism.\u00a0 They\u00a0retain a life-long understanding of the web of life and that making a living from primary production is complicated, completely weather and market dependent, and\u00a0not a two-dimensional career in which hard work and talent is predictably rewarded.\u00a0 If you grow up in the bush you have a fundamental understanding that what&#8217;s great in theory won&#8217;t\u00a0necessarily be feasible in practice, but most people are creative, prepared to give new things a go, and hard working.\u00a0 Blogs written by this group of people tend to be especially well written, because they&#8217;ve got very broad life experience.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s much harder to locate well-explained\u00a0rural blogs written by people who are hands-on running fulltime agribusinesses, long-term\u00a0&#8211; with nitty-gritty factual\u00a0information\u00a0and debatable issues relating to large scale farming and livestock raising.\u00a0 (Full time) farmers work long hours most or all days of the week\u00a0and are generally exhausted when they knock off.\u00a0 So naturally it&#8217;s hard to find any hands-on fulltime farmers dedicated enough to voluntarily spend some of their scant spare time, writing about what they do, for no other reason than\u00a0to help people unfamiliar with the industry, understand how their food and fibre is grown and encourage thought on topical issues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However there are a few.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a few excellent rural blogs that I&#8217;ve found via some concerted digging around the internet:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dairyfarming &#8211; <a title=\"Milk Maid Marian - dairy industry blog\" href=\"http:\/\/milkmaidmarian.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Milk Maid Marian<\/a>\u00a0(Marian Macdonald, Gippsland, Victoria) Excellent info on dairyfarming and explanations of issues.<\/li>\n<li>Free Range Pig farming &amp; heritage poultry and other rare livestock\u00a0breeds &#8211; <a title=\"Mt Gnomon farm blog\" href=\"http:\/\/mountgnomonfarm.blogspot.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mt Gnomon Farm<\/a>\u00a0(Guy Robertson &amp; Eliza Wood, NW Tasmania)\u00a0Loving descriptions of their livestock combined with the practical realities of raising livestock to be eaten &#8211; different to the average &#8216;organic, free range&#8217; type farmers who are specialising in odd breeds because they&#8217;re &#8216;cute&#8217;\u00a0&#8211; this couple are the real deal.<\/li>\n<li>Cotton growing &#8211; <a title=\"Tales of a Cotton wife blog\" href=\"http:\/\/cottonwife.blogspot.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tales of a Cotton Wife<\/a>\u00a0(Bess, Mungindi, northern NSW) Excellent info on cotton growing.<\/li>\n<li>Chook farming &#8211; <a title=\"Our Free Range Farm - chook blog\" href=\"http:\/\/andrew-peverill.blogspot.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Our Free Range Farm<\/a>\u00a0 (Andy Peverill, Cookamidgera NSW) Good explanations of the trials of chook farming.\u00a0 And no it&#8217;s not like having half a dozen chooks in the backyard, only bigger.<\/li>\n<li>Grain Cropping &#8211; <a title=\"Nerd Farmer Blog\" href=\"http:\/\/nerdfarmer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nerd Farmer<\/a>\u00a0(Jonathan Dyer, Wimmera district, Victoria)\u00a0 Wondering what your supermarket pasta is made from?\u00a0 Jonathan grows it, and he explains it.<\/li>\n<li>Sheep &#8211; wool production, plus sustainable land\u00a0&amp; wildlife management\u00a0&#8211; <a title=\"Ochre Archives blog by Phillip Diprose\" href=\"http:\/\/ochrearchives.blogspot.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ochre Archives<\/a>\u00a0(Phillip Diprose, Grenfell, Central NSW).\u00a0\u00a0Practical, no-nonsense, factual examples of sustainable farm management.\u00a0\u00a0Images\u00a0explain the writing in an exceptionally organised and clear manner.\u00a0 For example, before and after images of sheep mowing the house yard, wool selling, soil sampling and tree planting.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Merino wool production, crossbred fat lambs &amp; Hereford cattle, written especially for young children &#8211; especially those unfamiliar with life on a farm\u00a0&#8211; <a title=\"KT'S Farm Life blog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ktsfarmlife.blogspot.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">KT&#8217;s Farm Life<\/a>. \u00a0Over the years I&#8217;ve been contacted by many primary and secondary school teachers seeking agriculture-related teaching resources for their students.\u00a0 Older kids would find adult blogs interesting and informative, but younger kids need something specifically written for their age.\u00a0 This blog has been written by Alison Rutledge but from her five year old daughter&#8217;s perspective.\u00a0 Now I have somewhere to direct the enquiries from teachers!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s surprising\u00a0that well written, informative blogs similar to the style of the above farming blogs, but written by\u00a0people making a living out of Merino sheep (as distinct from non-fine wool breeds), are scarce.\u00a0 Given the historical significance of Australia&#8217;s production of fine wool,\u00a0the continuing uniqueness of our fine wool industry and increasing popularity of wool as the ultimate environmentally friendly fibre (with prices rising again in recent years) and the relatively high level of education amongst this sector of primary industry &#8211; \u00a0the lack of blogs written by people living on Merino sheep properties is surprising.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Writing good quality blog posts, regularly and long-term, with no prospect of financial or other tangible gain, is truly an act of dedication.\u00a0 The rural blogging\u00a0landscape is constantly changing as new farm bloggers\u00a0begin, full of\u00a0enthusiasm,\u00a0and longer term farm bloggers find their supply of time and\/or energy has depleted past the point where continued blogging is possible.<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to seeing\u00a0additional\u00a0farming blogs written by people involved in all aspects of Australian agriculture, from horticulture and fruit growing, to fishing and forestry, crop growing and livestock raising, in different parts of the continent.\u00a0\u00a0 The more variety there is, the faster two-dimensional farming stereotypes will be broken down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are now\u00a0quite a few Australian farming blogs &#8211; and there are several different kinds.\u00a0 There are those that\u00a0are entertaining and informative accounts of daily domestic issues,\u00a0written by women, which highlight the lifestyle and financial management differences between living in towns and living in the bush.\u00a0 These blogs are interesting and very useful\u00a0in regard to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,8,11],"tags":[56,57,82,179,220],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2088"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4531,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions\/4531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}