by Imogen Semmler
It’s funny how time gets away from you. This year I took the big leap to study full-time Honours in Ecology at UNE, and while I am loving every minute of it, my brain is too full of measuring pasture groundcover and landscape function to make space for anything else. And so, despite my best intentions I am yet to publish my farmer stories for ‘Farmers in Flux’.
Matt Woodham works his filming magic.
There was a point late last year when I didn’t really know how to proceed with this project. I realised that my story about farmers transitioning to more ecological practices was turning into a story about farmers surviving bushfires and drought. The New England region was constantly on fire, dams and rivers were bone dry, temperatures were soaring and as far as the eye could see was bare ground that whipped into ferocious dust storms. Jane and Ray had stopped watering their plants, Jane wrote to me saying that they were waiting for everything to die. Lisa’s family farm had been hit by the Bees Nest bushfire. Alex and Bob were handfeeding their goats and cattle, unsure how much longer they could hang on for. All their hardships and horrors felt so raw, too raw to share while they were living through it. However, as the weather turned and the rains came in the new year, I reconnected with them all. It was a massive relief to see their farms flourishing after the rains but the best part was hearing what they had learned from the hard times to improve their systems and work towards building more resilient landscapes.
So, you will have to wait for these stories.
Scientist Ben Vincent chats to Bob Moylan and Alex Hunter at the 'Speed Dating' event in July 2019
But in the meantime, here is the video (shot and edited by my dear friend Matt Woodham) that was screened at Groundswell and Cementa Festivals. We filmed it in winter 2019 – peak drought, peak frost and peak New England grey. However, it does provide a nice introduction to the 3 farmer stories. It also takes you behind the scenes of my ‘speed dating’ event which brought participating farmers together with ecologists to experiment with farmer/scientist relationships and investigate the farmer stories a little deeper. Big thanks to all the scientists involved – Dr Timothy Cavagnaro, Dr Rachel Lawrence, Ben Vincent and Derek Smith (stepping in last minute for Dr Judi Earl who had some calving issues that day!). When Honours is over I would love to do more farmer/scientist speed dating events and call them ‘The Perfect Patch.’
And watch this space for the final chapter of Farmers in Flux.
