Resilience was the topic for discussion at the farmer panel at this year’s South Gippsland Dairy Expo.
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Resilience, in the best interpretations, is the ability of people to respond to stressful and unexpected situations and crises, and be able to adapt to change.
Matt Harms, from OnFarm Consulting, facilitated a discussion where two farmers, Colin Gray and Ancret Shipton, talked about the challenges they have had to deal with, and how each has adjusted to their new life.
The farmer panel is an institution of the dairy expo, and draws a considerable crowd every year.
It was established by farm consultant John Mulvaney. Matt Harms has been facilitating it for the past 12 years, including an online farmer panel during the pandemic.
This year’s theme was an adaptation of ‘This Is Your Life’, and Matt posed questions to the panel guests, which included podcaster, Chloe Brown, who is also a co-founder of the Cream of the Crop conference.
Colin and Jenny Gray were dairy farming at Nilma, Vic, and had started discussing transitioning to retirement. The couple had employed a sharefarmer.
Then Colin fell off a tractor and broke his neck.
“I was 62 years old, Jenny wanted me to retire, and we’d bought a new car and caravan,” he said.
Dairy farming had been Colin’s focus since he left school at 17 years old and started working full time on the family farm.
He was also active in the local CFA and woodworking club and participated in on farm discussion groups.
The accident in 2011 saw him in hospital for four months, then a rehabilitation centre for eight months.
He was in a coma for his first week at the Alfred Hospital (Melbourne), and a lot of the following year was spent intubated because of ongoing respiratory diseases.
“I was away from home for 16 months,” he said.
“I didn’t get out of bed for nine weeks, and I kept going back into ICU.
“The first four months after the accident were the worst of my life.”
Ancret and Michael Shipton met when she was 16 and he was 18. Michael was from a dairy farm at Verona, NSW, in the Bega Valley.
The couple worked on dairy farms in NSW and Victoria, and were able to build herd equity at each farm.
In 2014, Michael and Ancret returned to the Bega Valley, buying their own irrigated dairy farm at Kanoona.
“With a young family, it was important for us to return to the Bega Valley and be supported by both our families,” Ancret said.
They bought the original Kanoona dairy farm and Michael began building the business, passionate about achieving excellence in the dairy industry.
Losing 70 cows to facial eczema in 2016 and the east coast drought did not deter him.
In the immediate aftermath of the bushfire that came down Brown Mountain on December 30 and 31, 2019, Dairy News Australia interviewed Michael Shipton. He was busy donating a shed load of hay to other dairy farmers. He organised an electrician mate to accompany him with a generator to farmers in his district, so their herds could be milked.
That was the type of farmer and neighbour he was.
In the middle of 2020, with the dairy farm still in a building phase, Michael Shipton complained about sore legs.
“I convinced him to see a doctor. Everything changed after that,” Ancret told the audience at the dairy expo.
Michael had stage four cancer, originating in his stomach, and the soreness in his legs was caused by blood clots. Any one of those clots could cause his immediate death.
“The blood clots in his legs needed managing, and he needed chemotherapy treatment,” Ancret said.
“Michael was unable to keep milking.
“He passed away within nine-and-a-half weeks.”
In that short time, Michael had received two rounds of chemotherapy and, Ancret said, much of the time he was unable to communicate effectively.
Ancret was working as a librarian and the primary carer for their children, who were 15, 13 and nine years old when Michael was diagnosed with cancer.
She had minimal involvement in the farm.
“About five weeks into the diagnosis, I realised I needed to find out from Michael how to run the farm,” Ancret said.
“I needed to know what to do for joining, how much fodder we had to make – or buy – there was so much I needed to know that was in his head.”
She was committed to keeping the farm operating, for the future of their children.
So Ancret started asking questions of Michael and writing down everything he told her.
“The dairy industry in the Bega Valley is very supportive, and I got a lot of help for the day to day activities,” she said.
There was a day in hospital when Ancret asked Michael about fodder, and he could only hold up fingers to communicate. Ancret and their agronomist, who was also in the hospital room, were able to work out what Michael meant – how much hay, silage and grain was needed for the 350-head milking herd.
But in the 18 months aftermath of Michael’s death, Ancret needed help to make sense of the copious notes she had written.
“My brain struggled to cope with Michael’s death and understand what needed to be done next,” she said.
Following the farmer panel, in an interview with Dairy News Australia, Ancret revealed her personal life was compounded since Michael’s death.
Beyond the legal and financial burden created by a lack of life insurance and will, other unexpected stresses occurred.
Twelve months after Michael died, his brother Will was also diagnosed with cancer. Will was survived by his two daughters.
Will’s death was followed only a few weeks later by their father, Bob, passing away.
Then Ancret’s mother, Naomi Lewis, was diagnosed with cancer. Ancret nursed her for 12 months and she passed away in September last year.
“The last few years have changed the way I think and how I see the world,” Ancret told Dairy News Australia.
“It would be good to get that perspective without losing Michael.”
Matt asked Ancret and Colin if they considered selling their respective farms.
Colin said he and Jenny learned the value of family and friends.
“I had a tracheostomy, I was drugged to the eyeballs and had an unrealistic interpretation of what was happening to me,” Colin said.
“I was worried I wasn’t coming home.”
Since the accident in 2011, Colin and Jenny have had agreements with three sharefarmers, that means they have been able to remain involved with the farm.
“If we hadn’t had a share farmer in place at the time of the accident, we probably would have had to stop dairy farming,” Colin said.
“I’ve had to learn to trust that people know what they are doing with the farm.”
Colin worked hard in therapy to regain some use of one of his hands.
He said a big challenge was getting therapists to understand what farm work entailed. Colin was determined to return to farming, and wanted them to modify his rehabilitation exercises to support that ambition.
“The first three years were the hardest,” he said.
“Physiotherapy and hand therapy have helped develop fine motor skills in my right hand. I can feed and shave myself now.
“I can also do my own bookwork on the computer.”
He misses being able to walk around the farm and see what needs to be done, and what work is being done.
Ancret said she lacked confidence in what to do on the farm, but Michael had given her a couple of tenets to guide her.
“Michael’s advice was to focus on feeding cows and rely on the advisors he was using,” she said.
“And he said to hold on to your assets.”
She is now in a phase of developing a new business structure for managing the farm.
“Michael was a great farmer and when he died so much knowledge was lost,” Ancret said.
“I never expected to run the dairy farm and business, and it’s not something you can learn overnight.
“Every day I doubted I knew what I was doing
“I’ve learned not to be so hard on myself.
“Nine weeks changed our future plans.”
Ancret also recommends having life insurance and a will.
“We didn’t have either,” she said.
“We also didn’t have procedures written down. It’s a good idea to do it anyway, so someone else can come in and do the work while you have a break from the farm.”
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