“Follow your knowing – you already possess the courage to do it. The tiniest of steps in the right direction is still a step forward,” – Melissa Connors.
The kinds of inspirational speakers who feature each year at Farm World’s Telstra Women in Agriculture Lunch are those who can provide fresh perspective on life in just a few, short minutes as RUSSELL BENNETT explains…
This year, Farm World celebrated 52 years of proud tradition at Warragul’s Lardner Park.
Recognised as one of the state’s – if not Australia’s – premier regional agricultural shows, the event provides a platform to showcase the very best in agribusiness, the latest in technology, equipment and information, and provides an ideal chance to get up close and chat with the experts.
This year, Farm World’s theme was simply ‘Love Your Farmer’ and throughout the event there was a host of activities and opportunities to celebrate the incredible work farmers do, and their importance to the $13 billion food and fibre industry.
The Telstra Women in Agriculture Luncheon is one of the signature events at Farm World each year and it provides the ideal platform to hear from some incredibly inspirational speakers, and also for women on the land to network and liaise with their peers.
Angela Betheras is the patron of the event. The winner of the 2011 Victorian AgriFutures Rural Woman of the Year award, she initiated the luncheon the following year as a way of celebrating the significant contribution that women make in rural and regional Australia.
This year, on the Thursday at Farm World, Angela spoke about how ‘Ladies Day’ came about, and where it originated. She said there’s been nearly 30 speakers since the initiative first took off in 2012.
“The difference about this lunch is that everyone who speaks has to have a rural or regional Australian connection,” she explained.
“I’ve listened to so many speakers where you hear somebody who’s gone from ‘I worked on my business from a kitchen table and three years later I was turning over $2 million’ and apparently there were no glitches or nothing went wrong in between. “You come away from those speakers thinking ‘yeah, right’ or ‘I could never do that – I’ll never make it’. We ask all our speakers to share as much as they can about their stories, to show us their achievements, but share with us along the way all the ups and downs.”
Again this year, the Women in Agriculture Luncheon on Farm World’s Thursday calendar featured some amazing speakers who shared their own inspiring, uplifting stories.
The first of those was Melissa Connors from ‘This Farm Needs a Farmer’.
The winner of the 2018 Victorian AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award spoke about her initial journey in moving on to a farm, and her realisation that – like most things in life – it wouldn’t be as simple as what she and her family had planned.
“I had plans as a teenager – those carefree days when I knew everything,” she said.
“I’d never get married… I just celebrated 17 years in March.
“John Lennon was right – life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
Melissa and her husband David always envisioned moving to a country property at same stage of their lives.
“This was probably triggered by the romantic memories I had of visiting my grandparents’ dairy farm as a kid,” she said.
“In January of 2011 we spent a weekend at a farm stay in Kyneton.
“Upon returning home we decided to look at houses in area with the possibility of moving. The fast train was about to start running – which we’re still waiting for – so my husband could commute to Melbourne easily. We had a two-year window before our eldest began school, so we thought we’d give it a go.
But the reception Melissa and her husband received for their plan was hardly what they’d hoped. It was more what Melissa had feared.
“I had such an intense knowing that this is where our lives were headed,” she said.
“It was undeniable, and the signs the universe was giving us were obvious and constant.
“Everywhere I looked Kyneton was there, while in our local milk bar where we were living at the time – yes, some do still exist, in the drinks fridge they had a big sign advertising a drink. It was Kyneton Mineral Springs mineral water.
“Every time I opened a paper, magazine, or brochure there was something written about Kyneton.
“I just knew with every fibre of my being that this is where we had to be.
“The opposition was venomous – it was relentless, it was cruel, it was constant… emails, texts, phone calls, drop-ins, demands… it was making our lives impossible.
All these different opinions were being thrown at me and I couldn’t make sense of anything. Why was something I felt with every cell of my body to be right upsetting to so many people?
“So I found myself living in two minds – questioning our decision. We knew we wanted more children, and moving to Kyneton would mean leaving our support network. It would mean starting over in an unfamiliar place we knew hardly anything about, and where we knew nobody.
So many unknowns that would make it easy to justify the decision to stay in our comfort zone and make the most of the life that we’d already made for ourselves, and ignore that constant pull.”
For the time being, Melissa and David kept their plan largely to conversations between the two of them in an attempt to gain clarity on what was best for their little family. They had time, as they thought, “to suss it all out” before they grew their family.
“In our quiet nightly conversations we saw our lives in Kyneton, and even though we didn’t have all the answers we knew we could work it out together,” she said.
“We then found a house, and we put in an offer and it was accepted. This was our window – we were really doing this.
“Then I peed on a stick.”
Already with two kids under two-and-a-half, she was pregnant again.
They then withdrew the offer on the house, putting it “in the too hard basket”.
Already feeling as though she was in over her head with the situation facing the family, compounding the situation was her feeling though not all was right with her pregnancy.
She said she could never really settle into it completely.
“Every twinge, niggle, pain, bump, nagging feeling saw me turning up to my obstetrician’s office to be checked out and reassured,” she said.
“But I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was wrong.”
In early August, she was eagerly awaiting her 20-week scan.
“There I was – laying on the bed with the wand on my stomach,” she said.
“My motherly instincts were on high alert with every part of me begging whoever was in charge to confirm that I was being paranoid and my baby was fine and developing as he should.”
Then two, simple words were said that she described as destroying her life as she knew it – “obliterated it beyond recognition into a trillion pieces that would never fit back together again”… ‘Don’t panic’.
“I didn’t know it in that moment, but I was now beginning a new chapter in my life known as the part of the ‘after’,” Melissa said.
“Our lives had been cut in two, and the ‘before’ book was now closed forever.
“The ‘after’ book ensures an innocence to life is no longer possible.
“Your heart not only breaks but never heals as there is now a hole that at times you can physically feel.”
Later that month, after a 20-hour labour, her son – in her words – was “born sleeping”.
Melissa’s speech, and the raw honesty of it, was nothing short of spine-tingling. It brought the whole room to complete silence.
Little did she know at the time of her son’s birth, an incredible iron-strong courage was also born.
“(It was) a courage that took hold and moved us to Kyneton when our Kyneton home found us three months after we laid Fionn to rest,” she said.
“(It was) a courage that ruled with ‘get out of my way, or I will run you over – you’re either with us, or against us. It’s your choice, I don’t care, because we’re doing this. Regardless’.”
From this courage came ‘This Farm Needs a Farmer’.
It was established in 2015 when a retired farmer said a throwaway line during a conversation – “I’m off the farm now – what else do I do with my time?”
Melissa said, in a nutshell, the concept was about connecting new and aspiring primary producers with working, generational, retired and retiring farmers to share their knowledge.
Her newfound courage had her knocking on doors, speaking with colleagues, applying for grants and awards, speaking at events, and simply saying ‘yes’ to the cause.
“All these things I would have never done previously as I would have second-guessed my every move,” she said.
“It is this courage that has given me a new perspective on life.
“So what do I know now? The more l learn, the less I know – but there are a couple of things I am sure of; I know for certain that nothing is for certain; life can be irrevocably changed in an instant, and somehow you can learn to breathe again; that hell does, in fact, exist on earth; people will surprise you, and when they are put to the test, you find out who’s really on your side.
“Follow your knowing – you already possess the courage to do it. The tiniest of steps in the right direction is still a step forward. Lastly – life rarely, if ever, goes to plan.”
For more information on This Farm Needs a Farmer – “connecting tree changers with farmers ready to lend a hand” – visit www.thisfarmneedsafarmer.com.au.
The second part of our story on this year’s Telstra Women in Agriculture Luncheon will feature in next week’s edition.
