EXTRA: But Could You Really Move To A Farm?

You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.

Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. A rural life looks good on Instagram, rolling green hills and shaded verandahs and pretty fluffy animals, sunsets and sunrises painted across big skies, acquired a pace, a calmer mind, and a rural life also looks good in your plan for your post work self.

Not anymore.

Now it's where Rachel Farm's cattle and her land regeneratively. You're going to hear her talking about deciding to become a farmer, a hands on one at sixty, and the existential crisis that pushed her in to regent farming.

As it's called.

You're going to hear her talking about what Brian thinks about life on the farm, clue he's not that into it. And you're going to hear about Rachel's life from a rarefied aristocratic upbringing in the English countryside to feeling pushed aside by the film industry, to what motherhood meant to her and how it all led her here to looking at cowpoo for validation that she's on the right track.

Yep.

So you bought the farmer initially as a holiday home almost, and it's grown in importance. Is that fair to say?

Yeah? Spot on.

We bought it as a sort of lifestyle retreat, and we bought one hundred acres and we had about thirty cars on there. And there was the guy that we bought it from. He continued to manage it. He moved to another house nearby and continued to manage it, and then it passed to Mick Green senior who managed it beautifully for.

How many years.

I would think about fifteen years and then young Nick took over. And that's where the documentary sort of joins in.

When you buy a place as a lifestyle retreat, but it's being managed, is that then? So you and your family, your growing family, you would go up there for summers, for holiday weekends, and.

You loved it right every holiday.

Yeah, you weren't necessarily hands in there, but it was your place, your happy place.

Yeah.

We didn't travel much. We didn't go overseas much. I've never been to Bali or places like that, so we just always went. Every holiday, we'd get in the car and go.

Up to the farm. So the kids are very country kids.

They went to school in Sydney, but every holidays we went up there and they had their life up there, and they had their ponies and you know, learning to drive, and we're quite near Scott's Heads, so they all learnt to surf and yes, and I was incredibly sort of hands off and thought that I had really nothing to contribute as far as the farm went. It seemed very much, you know, a man's domain.

And Brian was.

Very keen that we were participated locally, that we had cattle, and that we weren't just there as people who weren't part of the community. So we were from the beginning very much part of the cam unity. At one point we were even showing cattle or even that the Maxville Show with our cattle.

So but you know, but very just enjoying it.

Lucky to have, you know, to be able to have that escape to the country, and that's what we did.

And you grew up in the country, correct, So was it something that you were very keen to have that part in your child's life, in your life as you were.

Yes, I think I probably romanticized it, and I did grew up in the country. I didn't want to move full time to the country. I mean, I was very wedded to, you know, my career in entertainment, so I didn't see myself being a farmer at that stage. But as it went on, I mean, it was really not

So in the documentary, which is beautiful, I think I really really loved it. The part that sort of expresses this period, your daughter says that she was worried about you. You were very distressed. I mean, I can't imagine why by the climate crisis, the climate catastrophe, and that was it was like you were burning to do something about it, to somehow be part of a solution.

What was that time like hard?

I mean it was a yeah, it was brought on by my fear of I mean I really believe that the I would say today the fear mongering actually of carbon, the whole carbon issue, and I was, you know, I felt terribly impotent because I you know, on the in the media obviously we heard how that it was an existential problem, and yet sort of governments really didn't seem to be acting as if it was an existential problem. So it was that that thing of like, well, are

Yeah, so it was a.

It was timely and was it really because we had too much carbon in the atmosphere?

Is it really climate change or is it just a very long drought with a heavy load of fuel. So I think.

Today I'm more circumspect about that and I'm less concerned about that aspect of climate. I'm certainly, you know, really working hard that we get more biodiversity and we hold more water in our.

Land, because when you are on the land, whether you're living there full time or not, you're much closer to these disasters, like literally, but also emotionally and in terms of your stress levels about them, in terms of fire, flood, drought, and all of the rest of those things. You can feel it.

You can almost well you're right in the middle of it usually and it has enormous consequences to you as a farmer and to the community that you love.

Yeah, so at the time, this the anxiety around climate, which, as you say, you've kind of shifted a little on. But you say in that you say in the documentary that also you've become a grandparent. You're looking at your grandkids and thinking what's going to happen for them? What kind of world are we giving them?

That was all part of the sort of you know, definitely adding to my fear load of what was the future of my grandchildren, because you know, I felt that I was okay, I mean, I'm not going to be probably around when probably around when everything comes home to roost. But I obviously, you know, with having grandchildren, it brings that very it brings that into focus, the fact that your grandchildren are going to be here, you know, after they have prophetically said that the world is nigh so.

And you One of the things about getting older I think sometimes too, is you struggle with the idea that not everything's getting better. In fact, quite a few things seem to be getting worse and sometimes there's the anxiety about what can I do about that? How is it too late for me to participate? I guess this is a lot of the stuff that was going on that.

Yes, it sort of trivializes to a lot of the things that you're doing. It feels very trivial, like making films and making TV shows. And I just felt I needed to, you know, push my energies in a different direction.

Dollar and the power of your person.

That's right, because that has an enormous effect on the way farmers farm.

So in the film, this begins in a way. It's a beautiful film because your property is beautiful, your enthusiasm and commitment to this project is beautiful. Your farm manager is such a great foil because he's kind of like steady on Rachel. I go all the time at the beginning of that, because obviously you've got a great narrative arc in the film in that you know, you get your soils tested, you work out what you're doing, you work out what you're aiming for. This is a massive

Careers basically winding up kids have gone, you know. And I still felt credibly energetic and like I had something to offer, but trying to find where that how you are going to contribute is a horrible moment. It's a very sort of until you also knowing that you're going

Make dramas directing actors.

Yeah, yeah, so it was a totally different entertainment form for me.

And I didn't want to be in it. I wanted to bring attention to all.

The wonderful farmers, these early adopters of this type of farming. And there's after reading the book, I was just suddenly made so aware of how heroic some of these early adopters have been and how they were still you know, going forward and doing it without really very little recognition. And yeah, so I didn't want to be in it. And then my producer, Beteina Dalton, said, oh, well, you have to be in it has to be your journey.

Don't know anything about this.

And I think she knew somehow that that was going to be Obviously the entertaining bit the fact that I knew nothing about it, but I still had to talk about it, and I still and you're not really when you're in the middle of your journey, you're very often not aware of what your journey is, what the you know, beginning, middle, and end is. And you know, we're all very used to the structures of a heroic journe and I certainly

But then what and luck nature hands you a few good plots.

Nature definitely hands me some good two good chapters.

Yeah, after the break, Rachel tells me what life on the farm is really like.

Stay with us.

One of the things that is really interesting about the story is that you it's it's very hands on work, and at one point you decide that you need to move to the farm permanently to do this properly. And you're learning everything that the that the farm managers were doing before, which you I've heard you say, which looks like very hard work to me, But I've heard you say that it was fun, like it's fun that you love that.

Yeah, it's a bit physical.

It's a bit physical, but it's not that ba I mean a lot of you know, farmers, they definitely need strengths, particularly strength in their hands. I find that that's you know, I talk a lot about this being female friendly, and it is in a way, because you're those things that you bring as a woman into the cattle yards. You know, we are more gentle. We're gentler with the animals, I think. But there's a lot of things I can't do. They

Keep up with those things.

That's my been my biggest learning curve is I'm not very far, but it's just and everything breaks all the time. You know, you're constantly getting people into fix the tractors well.

And also and I know that obviously the documentary consolidates these events, but anyone who lives on the land would know it's true. There's always a thing. So there's a drought, or there's a fire, or there's the muffler fires or there's whatever. Yeah, and it is hard work has discussed. But did you is it harder? I guess did you love it as much as it appears that you did it? Did it give you the kind of meaning that you were looking for in it?

Yes, in many ways it did. I certainly love being on I love a rural lifestyle, and I didn't realize how much I would enjoy it, and I think maybe it was the time of life. You know, I was not really interested in, you know, a social life anymore, or you know, in the entertainment industry was getting harder and harder, and you know, obviously the gender and age issues come into that.

Did you feel that keenly as part of why you were pulling away from from that?

Yeah, there's a lot of brick walls in the entertainment industry and there's a lot of frustration, and as there is in farming. I've probably chosen.

Gone from farming is like, oh, I thought.

You know, I came up against nature, but we're up against so much more than nature. But the supply chains are really only geared to the big business and to sort of corporate farming and industrial farming, and that's really not what we want always. You know, it certainly fills a place, but it's certainly for anybody who wants to live a rural lifestyle. It's very difficult to maintain a life on the land.

So any idyllic vision of like this is going to be lovely. I'm going to be sitting on my veranda and the cows are we moving in the pastures, And it'll be is that.

It's not that I wish it was.

Yeah, sure, if you want to lose a lot of money, you know every year. Yeah, but every every farmer has somebody's got a second job in town. It's not possible really to make a living on farm.

And that's and that means.

That no young people are attracted to it. So the average age of the farmer is about sixty five. And I don't know who's coming up. My son actually has moved to the country, but he wants to try and grow hemp. So you know, he looks at mine and goes, well, that's not a career for me. I can't make money on what you've got set up. So I find very much now that I'm in a position of or that I'm involved much more in advocacy than.

I am in the farming farm.

I see, you know, I just think the government and the farming bodies are not paying enough attention to what's going on with small farms and rural lives.

And what they need, what they really need.

Or what those wholes the whole, the whole hint to land really from the coast three hundred kilometers towards the Great Dividing Range or whatever.

That's all small farms.

It sounds like the sort of to use a clumsy word, the sort of mission or purpose that brought you into this has morphed, right, and it keeps morphing, it keeps And there's a bit in the documentary where Brian, you know, your husband of forty years, is talking about you becoming a farmer, and he says she's always been searching for things. She always throws herself into stuff. He says, I wouldn't want to be a farmer. I don't want to work

To us, you want to throw Really I'd like to have, you know, just stuck at what I started with, which was like Brian as a as an actor, and you know, men don't necessarily have to change their careers.

That's interesting, right, you know, Brand.

Stayed as an actor and it's all you know, and he's produced and now he's writing books and stuff.

But he wasn't forced to move on. A lot of.

Women, you know, are used by dates come much sooner and then we have families and that gets them the way changing.

No, you don't think that's changing. You think that we're still like women are still very.

Much like oh, in the entertainment industry.

Yeah, and that's also true. You think as much behind the cameras in front of it, like filmmakers.

Oh, I think then there's many more jobs for women behind behind the camera. I think there are more not necessarily, not necessarily as directors or people in in ch you know, who get an opportunity to tell their stories.

I don't think there's there's a bit more women doing that.

I heard you telling a story about as young as in your words, like beautiful young women that you were growing up at these posh English tables and they're pretty young women's always sitting next to the most important person at the table. And then if the women get older, they're like move further down the table.

That's funny. I did say that.

Yeah, it's true, And that's kind of like a metaphor for of this, Like it's not just about that table, it's it says you go along.

It certainly feels well, that's why your power is in youth and beauty. That's if your power is in youth and beauty, and that that diminishes very quickly, so obviously one has to move on from that, and it's a free ride for a little while, a free ride with.

A cost though too right, it's that sort of people do you feel people really see?

I think I got a lot of opportunities for being a pretty girl. No, definitely, I mean I think that you know, just ah, yeah, I.

Mean doors do open.

I think you know if you're yeah, I'm not going to diminish that, it means that you actually don't. It's not very satisfying for yourself because actually you can never take credit for it, I mean, because it's not it's just God given. Yeah, you know, you've got a good looking mum or whatever, and you know you can take advantage of that for a few years.

But it's very.

Unsatisfying because you kind of know, as my mother would say to me, don't take yourself so seriously, darling. You'd hardly be ware you were if you didn't look the way you lived, so she was, and.

A bet at the time that went down really well, and I.

Was denying it to the hilt.

But of course, you know, you know, really that until you actually develop a few skills or you know, actually a challenged by something and have to develop other skills than the way you look.

Well there's no skills in that, but yeah, we.

Just do it later, so you're always a little bit behind.

And then I didn't go to you.

I didn't go to university until I was When did I go thirty seven?

And was that you had your kids by then?

And yeah too uni.

Yeah, so I had all the you know, as an actress, I had my life and then I had kids, and then when I turned when my kids went to school, that as she When my son was born, I went, I've got to get my I got to get my skills up now because in a minute he'll be off at school and then what So, yeah.

It doesn't sound like you're ever someone who is happy to just.

I was quite good at recognizing that used by dates were coming up.

That's interesting.

Yeah, I knew that as an actress I had a certain amount of time. I was very difficult, difficult for me moving here too as an actor because it was at a time where Australia was very much sort of forging its own identity and I was infinitely as a as a throwback. You know as an actress, I was a sounded look to everything as another era and I didn't have that Australian quintessential thing that was going to anyway, so it was difficult for me to get work.

It's very often and somewhere in midlife that women might choose to get more connected to nature. And I'm not obviously by owning a farm necessarily, but I'm very into my gardening. For example, I know plenty of women who discover that they love to walk in nature, love to hire, call those things. Do you think there is like almost a call in us to that as we get older, that it sort of settles us, helps us.

I think it's so individual.

I imagine there's a lot of that online where people can see other people's lives and they look very much less stress in them. Great for the kids, I mean, I think it's a wonderful way to live if you can live without, you know, the culture that a city gives you and the rets, the friends I suppose if you if you, I mean obviously in places like the Northern Rivers, there's so many young people up there, and of course there's massive of friendship groups and all that.

Do we want to be urban or urban or do we want to have an opportunity to have a rural life as well.

So I think that we have to be careful we don't lose that choice.

More of my conversation with Rachel Ward after this break. You've made some beautiful Australian films, though.

Behind the camera as an actress it dried up very quickly for me, which which is always good because it forces you in another direction. I didn't have any choice but to get behind the camera you as I.

Am originally from England too, as you can probably tell, I've been here for thirty years, so a long time. One of the things that struck me so much in the documentary though, is that you clearly have a very deep connection out of that land. You've learned a lot about it now, as you say towards the end of the film, you do feel like you have deep roots. Does it feel like that? Does it feel like home? Do you think?

Yeah, definitely feels like home. I love it there, and I love it even more now that my boy is there. That's absolutely great and he loves it and he's just completely sort of switched on, turned on by the beauty of it as I am. And yeah, I think it's that thing as you get older, that you just you're less distracted by the great things that nature and beauty can offer. I think we're just too busy chasing our tails.

Certainly I was.

And it's really only when I was sort of forced to be there over COVID that I.

Sort of breathed into it.

And sort of let it come to me and was surprised by how much I could be there alone and be completely Yeah, I felt very comfortable in the country, and I guess growing up in the country definitely makes you.

Is when it's the best. Let's go. You know, I'm talking about on horses and things.

Clearly you've been married for, as we said before, forty years. Obviously your differences in those ways and your different passions and things obviously works right. Like it's not it's not like she's going off to the farm. Well that's it, you.

Know, Well it is a little bit, a little bit. Yeah, I think that's healthy. You know. Brian is much more rooted in Sydney and that's his you know, it comes from the western suburbs.

His comfort zone is the city.

He's got friends from years back, you know, who are in the city. And I think being an expert to someone who's not from here, I'm not so tied to places of you know, I don't have that investment in those early years.

You probably feel the same. You know.

It's interesting how you are romanced and it's also sentimental where you grow up and all of those thing triggers that you have as a child growing up, and you look back on those aspects in a very sort of tender sentimental way. So I didn't have that here. So that's grown for me in the country, and it's all of that sort of you know, comfort and sentimentality about it. I would miss it deeply if I moved away from it.

Now.

I heard you talk about this actually where you said that bits of England like, because you can live somewhere else for almost your entire adult life, bits of your DNA away you grew up. I grew up in the North of England, in Manchester, and I left when I was twenty one. But when I go back, the red brick, the chimneys, the buildings, I don't know. There's just something. I don't know what it is because I haven't even you know, I've had my children here, I've lived my.

I think it's your DNA. I think when you say your DNA, I don't think it's your experience.

I think it is your DNA because your English has comes through your mother, your grandmother, your grandfather, your great grandfather. I mean, all of those things that are in your cells, that experience has come through. I believe it's greater than that to just being in the experience of you. I just I still am English to the core, but I

Your children, as you say, have grown up going to the farm. I also heard you say once that you wanted to make sure your children had a different kind of childhood in terms of their connection to both you and to being together and all those things. Do you think when your kids are now proper adults and they've got children of their own, do you feel a level of pride that you achieved that that they've You've given them that different kind of life.

Yes, I mean, I don't know about pride, but I recognized that it was.

It was.

It was a strange life childhood that I had, you know, very separated from parents and very much brought up with paid care, paid help. So I didn't I didn't live with my mother and father, and they boarding school and also you know, completely looked after buying nanny's and whatever. So I didn't see my mother during the week at all. She would come down on the weekend. It was a very sort of Victorian old and you know in some

It was.

I mean, I look at Brian's life beside mine, and he had a mother only but who was completely devoted to him, and everything in her life was about her two children, and she didn't really have any life other than her two children. And I've never known anybody more confident than Brian and his sister. And I think that comes from the commitment of parents. And I think if parents aren't there, the commitment isn't there, you know, I mean they never came to you know, school things or anything.

You obviously wanted something different, and it feels like that in a way, it was a long shot, like coming to Australia with this man who was so different, to build this different life.

But it crazy, it stuck. When you look at that, like.

That young woman madly in love with this man so different.

Do you think what was I think, yes, sometimes, look.

At the decisions you made when you were young, and you were like, I was crazy, brave, Like is that what you think I do?

Actually I do look back and think, yeah, I know, because I see how hard it is with my kids looking after their kids, and I go. Yeah, but I was here and I didn't have mom or dad, or girlfriends or anything. I was so isolated. And I also did have I had no work, I had no career, I had no It was starting all over again, and like it is for any migrant.

It's quite a hard road.

It's very sort of it's not really you know, it's always about how lucky migrants are to reach the country that they want to be in.

It's interesting.

I was talking to a taxi my taxi driver last night, who was a Pakistani and he said, it's we don't do it for us. A lot of us are very homesick and want to go home. We do it for our children, to give our children an opportunity so that they can be bussy kids, and particularly the girls, so that the.

Girls can have opportunity and choice.

Yeah. Yeah, not growing up in those patriarchic article societies, which I definitely grew up in a very patriarchal society, and that was that was one of the things I wanted to get out, get away from.

Did you feel even then that Australia was a different, freer place.

Now I didn't know anything about it at all. Brian could have been taking me to Saudi Arabia.

It was just about going with him.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I arrived on ash Friday, which was forty years ago in Melbourne, where at noon we were in blackness and it.

Was and it was sing spires on the.

And we were literally scuffing through black ash on the pavement and I remember looking at and thinking, you want me to live here? This is apocalyptic this place and it was and also again and we were sort of in It was in drag at the time. And I arrived in Melbourne and then drove out to Ballarat and I just could not believe the devastation of the country and the trees, with the you know, the dead trees everywhere, and the and the and the straw like grass. You know,

I was pretty lucky to be here, really, but it does take.

It does take a long time to belong, to deeply belong somewhere.

And you feel now that you when you said in the in the documentary, I feel like I was a shallow rooted person and I'm a deep rooted person on the farm.

Yeah, on the farm I belong. Yeah.

I don't feel it anywhere else, but I do feel it on the farm.

Tell me, now, after all we've discussed about and your journey. I hate that word, but with Regen, what do you want people to know about that now? Because at the end of the documentary it very much said you very much encouraging people to shop small, to you know, buy from local farms, buy from region farms. Understand what it is is that very much what your average person can do to.

I think, you know, I think it's that sort of understanding that if you are an environmentalists, if you are concerned about the way we're headed climate wise and diversity wise, and just the way our souls are blowing away, I think you have to make the connect between the food you're eating and the way you want people to farm

So care about where your food rong shop small if you can.

Yeah, just go and always ask, you know, where is this food from? I mean the moment is a little bit inconvenient because you have to make a bit more of an effort to find where who's farmed this?

Is there chemicals in it?

You know?

Is this from a person who's really trying to do the best by their land? And if we don't get that response, they'll go. And not only will they go, you know, it will become this.

I just think, you know, we only.

Have to look at Europe and look at America the disappearing small family farms.

They're all going.

So the whole structures of you know, of rural life will go. And I don't think that that people are making those connects, you know, and I think there's a huge movement with the with the World Economic Forum and all of those sort of bodies that people are try. It's all about scale and efficiency, and people want to get rid of the small farms. They want big industrial size farms that are that are that are basically run by corporations.

That maybe that's what we want.

Maybe the next generation just goes, just give me efficiency and give me the cheapest meat you can. I don't care, but there is definitely a section of our society that doesn't want that and at the moment we can't really get it because of the food chains, and particularly when you understand at what cost. I think that's the thing is it's easy to comby the meat from you know, the cheapest source, but once you begin to understand the cost.

If you don't understand the jaw, how happy somebody can be to see some insects crawling around in a cow pat as we used to call them in England cow pats, Yeah, then they need to watch this documentary. But it's a sign that what you're doing is working.

Of the health of your land. Yes, So if.

Your soil is dead and it's been blasted by chemicals and over farmed, then it's dry, lifeless.

Yeah, So the.

Dung beetle was a sign of joint You call me and you're like.

There's a family of It's actually I'm almost more excited by the worms. The worms are you.

Know, when you've got dry, when you've got dirt, not soil, there's no worms in there. And you know, and I think really what's made the difference with my land and most regenerative farmers is the coverage on our soil we've all got.

That's the main thing you have.

You do not want bear soil because then the sun just bakes it and dries it out and everything goes, all the micro or all the microbes, everything just goes. So you need to keep it as moist as you can. It's like putting compost on your on your gardens. Obviously it makes absolute sense. But obviously in places it is it is hard to keep coverage on your grass. But that is our number one priority, really is getting coverage on our soil.

So that means no tilling, so you're not churning underground you're keeping.

You're keeping this, You're keeping the roots in the soil, long healthy roots that dig down for the for the micro for the nutrients. And the more you use the chemicals, the shorter the roots become. And it's only really with that long growth and not tilling and.

Not you know, using too much chemical. You need you need to make the grass work.

And there we leave Rachel Ward with worms and dung beetles and the challenges and joys of life.

On the land.

I hope you've enjoyed the special bonus episode of Mid with Rachel Ward, who became a farmer when most people are retiring. Actually becoming a farmer is a dream retirement for some, although I think Rachel's story tells us why it's certainly not the cruisy option. In these special bonus episodes of Mid, we're talking about that next phase of life, that post work era, and about how whether you're thinking about dung or literal cruises, being prepared gives you choices.