Sam Vincent: Where the Reed Warbler Called

Sam Vincent grew up on the farm where Charles Massy famously heard the call of the reed warbler for the first time in 150 years or so. But, like most millennials in his position, he wasn’t going to stay there. Until his old man now famously put his hand in a woodchipper. That’s when Sam left his inner-city life as a writer to help out, and unexpectedly found himself thinking differently about the farm, and his old man. Sam now runs Gollion Farm, with a suite of thriving enterprises, profound new connections with First Nations, and ongoing regeneration of country. And when he wrote a book about it all, called ‘My Father and Other Animals: How I took on the family farm’, it won the 2023 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

The book is billed as a ‘memoir about belonging, humility and regeneration – of land, family and culture’. Charles Massy calls it a delightful ‘must-read’, Anna Krien calls it ‘one of the most hopeful stories today’, and Billy Griffiths calls it a ‘rollicking comic memoir’.

A few weeks ago, we visited Sam at the family farm, just outside Canberra in the Yass Valley of NSW to chat about it.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers and a transcript, also available on Apple and some other apps. (Note the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read.)

Recorded on 4 March 2024.

Title slide: Sam Vincent, under the crab apple tree (pic: Olivia Cheng).

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from the film Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, featuring music chosen by guests (with thanks to podcast member Josie Symons).

Transcript

Sam: 0:00

Yeah, I think it is the highlight of my farming career so far. A nd I think a lot of farmers, they realise at one level that we're on the same page. We want to care for country. Farmers and traditional owners are often perceived to be enemies because of this history of frontier violence and dispossession, which is all true, but at the same time, farmers want to do what's right by their land and traditional owners do as well. A nd I think there's a great opportunity for collaborative projects like this one we've engaged in.

AJ: 1:02

G'day. My name's Anthony James and this is The RegenNarration, ad-free, freely available and entirely listener supported. Thanks to generous new subscribing members, Kate Forrest and Danielle Haan, for helping to make it possible. If you're also finding value in all this, please consider joining Kate and Danielle for as little as $3 a month or whatever you can and want to contribute. Subscribing members get behind scenes s tuff from me, the chance to engage in chat about each episode and more. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com/ support - and thanks again.

AJ: 1:43

Sam Vincent grew up on the farm where Charles Massy famously heard the call of the reed warbler for the first time in 150 years or so. But like most millennials in his position, he wasn't going to stay there until his old man now famously put his hand in a wood chipper. That's when Sam left his inner city life as a writer to help out and unexpectedly found himself thinking differently about the farm and his old man. Sam now runs Gollion Farm with a suite of thriving enterprises, profound new connections with First Nations and ongoing regeneration of country. And when he wrote a book about it called My Father and Other Animals: How I Took on the Family Farm, it won the 2023 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Nonfiction.

AJ: 2:38

I first enjoyed Sam's writing years ago now, so I was glad to see this book come out and soon after, fellow outstanding writer and previous guest on this podcast, Paul Cleary, reached out to tell me to get straight onto it. It is a ripping, funny and important read. So a few weeks ago we visited Sam at the family farm just outside Canberra in the Yass Valley of New South Wales to chat about it.

Sam: 3:09

One thing I do wonder about is how it's hard to quantify how many people are kind of putting this into practice. There's definitely a groundswell around Australia but it's like, yeah, I don't know how mainstream it is yet. Maybe you know more about that than me. I feel like there's because I'm a part of a few farmers groups my local land care group we're so close to Canberra. It's mainly rural residential people who want to learn about frogs in their backyard. That's all fine, but I have to travel a bit further to be part of a grazing group because there aren't that many working farms around here and we're pretty small working farms around here and we're pretty small.

Sam: 3:47

But the group I'm part of, which is in the upper Lachlan, so it's about an hour's drive from here. They're amazing. They're all of them. They're all kind of it's kind of blasé about this stuff. They've been doing it for decades. Yes, so my my experience of farming, I actually don't know that many conventional reactionary farmers who think this stuff is crazy. So I, for me, it's kind of the norm, which is pretty cool. That's very interesting and very cool.

AJ: 4:11

It's certainly apparent to me. We talk about charlie massey a bit south and we talk about david marsh a bit north and martin royds is over there on the eastern. I just got contacted by family of a of a subscriber to the podcast who are a bit closer than martin is to canberra and they're actually across the road from maloon. He's doing amazing things and they're doing amazing things which you'd never hear about. They're people you know, not on the airwaves or writing books or something.

Sam: 4:35

So there definitely appears to be a bit of a it's a bit maybe around here and I think, yeah, burrow where david marsh is and that's where charlie arnott's, I think that's a bit of a centre in Braidwood where the Roids are doing great stuff. Yeah, maybe you're right, maybe it's the kind of this region. I don't know why, but why that is exactly. It's really interesting to think. But then, like David Marsh and I've heard him say this before and he repeated it on the phone last week he said that you, the time he's been implementing this stuff since the 82 83 drought uh, his close neighbors never ask him what he's doing, charlie says it's all, it's all.

Sam: 5:12

The interest comes from further afield yes, yeah and bless.

AJ: 5:16

I mean, as the thing moves. Great, someone from over there will appeal to someone next.

Sam: 5:20

Well, that's fine, you know ultimately isn't it, but it does tend to be maybe little islands, and I mean this Upper Lachlan Lancat grazing group that I'm part of. They're all. Most of them are older than me and they're all on board with this stuff, which is cool, so there's definitely a cluster there. But yeah, hearing that about David Marsh and Charlie Massey, it is curious. And actually when I did the TAFE course in Holistic Management a few years ago, we went to that was at Braidwood, which is near where Martin Royd's his place is, and we went to his place and we jumped the fence and on his neighbour's place we were pouring water and timing how the difference in how it soaked into the soil and he said that that particular neighbour, he believed that he got less rainfall than Martin Royd, which is pretty funny but the stories we tell ourselves.

AJ: 6:07

Yeah, this is the thing, this is the very real nature of how we live, the narratives that we construct around reality to make it fit, until a certain sense of incoherence builds and the levee breaks and and you, you just have to shift the way you think, and yeah. So back to your original question how much of a? How much does it just look like it's, it's happening around the place and how much is? Is that, uh, commensurate with the broader reality? My impression is, at times, I, because I'm looking for the same thing too, like always trying to bridge out as well. So I'm seeing a lot that doesn't look great still, and, of course, I see the polarity just in our politics in general and that's caught up in it.

AJ: 6:51

I mean, you talked a bit about national farmers federation and you've got some other stuff there. But having said that, whenever I think a bit about that, I just learn about one, two, three, four more pockets where stuff's coming up and it is next generational stuff, and it just makes you go. Actually, this is now beyond what you can track. It's just happening, popping up all over the place. Now that makes you wonder. Indeed, perhaps it's more commonplace than we think. Yeah, in some variety, like there's obviously a spectrum of experiences, a spectrum of choice of enterprises, landscapes, big country, but it does make you think that, quite possibly, well, definitely, it's coming on fast. How much the base remains low or how much it's a bit higher than we think, hard to tell though.

Sam: 7:34

I guess with a lot of farmers they're humble and they can be quite private and who really knows how much crazy. I say crazy but in a good way composting and biodynamics is going on. That we're just. You know people aren't bragging about it or writing books about it.

AJ: 7:50

Could not agree more.

Sam: 7:51

I mean, I always stress, I'm very new to farming. That's why I feel quite embarrassed when I talk to people like David Marsh and Charlie Massey. I'm a writer, probably more than I am a farmer, so I was able to get this message out, but I feel like I barely know what I'm doing. I'm just kind of still in this learning process. But these, yeah, there are these legendary figures around that are yeah, they're kind of dotted around, so it gives me hope that it is spreading. I remember actually, at Maloon Creek a few years ago, being in an event and there were quite a few young guys from Booraw, I think, who'd come, and when David Marsh started speaking it was like the king had entered. He's so modest, he'd never presented himself like that, but the respect in the room for him among these younger farmers was really great and powerful. Yeah.

AJ: 8:39

And I've seen the same thing with Charlie, of course. In fact, if anything, he just went too hard for five years after the book came out, trying to meet them all and the hopes that he would join them for a talk or an event or a field day or something, and that ended up being around the world. Such was reed warbler's impact. So, yeah, if anything, it was, uh, his sense of seizing the moment slash, moral obligation, wanting to help people, that he drove himself so high trying to keep up with the interest and that respect but it is beautiful to see.

Sam: 9:12

I actually have to send him an email because, um, I mean, it looks a bit. It looks a looks a bit like a bomb's gone off now because I've just had the cattle crash grazing it, but where he saw the reed warbler. Way back in 2016 or so, before I put the cattle in there. A few weeks ago, I heard a beautiful reed warbler and I took a recording, so I'd better send it to him.

AJ: 9:32

Oh Sam, maybe we could even slot it in.

Sam: 9:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's on my phone somewhere I'll get it.

AJ: 9:38

Magnificent. I also think about the frogs you recorded when the rain came on, after the drought too, yeah yeah, I'm not going to delete that either.

Sam: 9:45

Yeah, yeah, special moments, but anyway we're being, we're kind of having a roundabout conversation. I like roundabout mate.

AJ: 9:54

Given, we've landed where the reed warbler sounded and then became iconic. I wonder if you could help bring listeners into what I'm sitting amongst with you now. Sure, Maybe by virtue of the legacy. What is it? 40 years now since family's been here? 40 years, yeah, what's the before and after? It's about the same age as me.

Sam: 10:12

Yeah, so it's quite a small farm by Australian standards 650 acres, but it's kind of long and skinny so where the reed warbler likes to hang out, it's about three or four k's from here on the Murrumbetman Creek and it's kind of the farm is quite hilly, so it's western and eastern end floodplains and in between these kind of spine of hills and we're kind of the beginning of one. Now In terms of the legacy, yeah, my parents both studied Ag Science at Melbourne Uni. They now say they reject everything they were taught. So they were. You know they had jobs in town. This was a hobby farm and it became a bit more than that when my dad retired.

Sam: 10:55

But I think, consistent with a lot of stories that I'm sure you've heard, whether it be David Marsh and Charlie Massey with the 82-83 drought, my dad, the millennium drought really coincided with him retiring from being a full time economist, which I think he's always hated, being holed up in an office, from being a full-time economist, which I think he's always hated, being holed up in an office. He retired as soon as he could and he wanted to just be outside and build up his cattle numbers and plant trees and fix the landscape. But at that stage he was still doing things like spreading out super and I think that cracked his mind open, to use a Charlie Massey phrase, and from there they really haven't looked back. So he did a. He visited Jerry Harvey and oh, tony, no, sorry, I've got a mind blank because I'm so busy at the moment.

AJ: 11:51

Peter, peter, yeah, peter Andrews.

Sam: 11:53

Before Peter before Australian Story, before Peter really took off and seeing what he was doing and started trying to implement that here on our patch of the creek in a pretty ad hoc way, just filling loads of rocks, but I think he picked a few really clever spots to put in these leaky weirs. So that's kind of the big legacy. That's the nicest part of the farm to work at right now. I was out there this morning and I was actually on the neighbor's place and just I always I'm curious to see, because there was a broken fence and I went in there but to see their patch of the creek and how.

Sam: 12:33

You know, our patch is pretty small, it'll be less than a kilometre, but before and after it's just it's so different, it's crazy. Yeah, can you describe it for us? Well, it's like it's the same amount of water, right, but it's when it goes into our place it slows down and particularly the lateral effect. So these green swathes of sedges and perennial grasses that are on our place, and then before our place and after our place it kind of reverts to deeply incised, eroded gullies, which is amazing, yeah.

AJ: 13:07

I recall you said that your dad ended up saying about 95% of farming was with the water.

Sam: 13:15

Yeah, what happens once it hits the ground, and so the average rainfall here is about 620 millimeters and it's. You know, we've had these three learning years in a row and this year's turned out to be this summer's wetter than was predicted. But one thing dad really focused on the last few decades before he retired, and what I think about all the time is making the most of that. It's not a given that we're going to get less rainfall. With climate change it's going to be more unpredictable and probably more violent storms, but really making the most of what does fall.

Sam: 13:50

So I'm always on the lookout for I kind of had this map in my head of where these, these patches of bare ground are, this historically poor erosion, and really trying to cover that up, because I always think how much is being wasted. Yeah, that could be lush pasture by treating it well, and then you're going to get nice soaking in from the rainfall and keeping it in the ground. Because another thing my dad's taught me is this obsession we have in Australia about building dams. It's pretty silly, given how much water just evaporates, and it's so much better to keep it in the landscape where it's not going to evaporate. You'll see, my veggie garden is pretty unimpressive at the moment because there's so much effort with the cattle and the fruit and the writing it kind of takes a back seat. But I do use wicking beds, um, because they, you know, you don't get that evaporation which here on a few hot days it can make a huge difference.

AJ: 14:46

and in dams indeed, yes, and I still think. We were just down in gippsland for another podcast recording and they're still talking about draining wetlands, because most of that was I mean, that whole region was wetland. Yeah, um, it's a history of draining it for farms originally for dairy farms originally, and ongoing now for veggie farms which puts a whole new light on, yeah, vegetarianism even it's just to do that in this continent still. So you've got that happening and back to what we're talking about. Before you got the region coming on, but you've also got that, also got that.

AJ: 15:14

So it's a bit of a there's a real moment in time, I think, which does make it all the more powerful. I think that some of you guys, you farmers, do write something that becomes public and does become a talking point and in a way that's not vilifying, so that it is something we can come together on rather than pit would-be developers who are looking to drain wetlands and and regen farmers against each other, or have more of even that dialogue of National Farmers Federation. I mean, when they produce a report saying how diabolical the health of farmers is around Australia. Yeah, like, okay, now surely there's the grounds to connect right, but still not, apparently well, I think, the opportunities.

Sam: 15:55

I think Australia is kind of unique. It's one of the most urbanised societies in the world and I wrote the book. It's not aimed at David Marsh, charlie Massey types. It's aimed at people in the inner city who perhaps go to farmers markets, interested where their food comes from, trying to bridge that divide, because I think, you know, there's this weird thing in Australia Some people think that farmers should be a protected species and that in a bad drought should be given support without any interrogation of how they're managing.

Sam: 16:31

That's kind of one extreme and the other is this kind of vilification among a lot of city people. I think that all farmers are reactionaries who are trying to trash nature. I want to add a lot more nuance in between Me too, you know, like when I see footage of farmers struggling in a drought, feeding out hay, you know I feel for them. But also I think there should be an interrogation of management that leads to that point, rather than just saying they need support without questioning how they do it. But at the same time I'm pretty sick of I feel like I've got my foot in both camps.

Sam: 17:08

I live so close to Canberra. I'm a writer as well as a farmer. I went to uni in Canberra, various jobs, but I'm sick of being lumped in with either Barnaby Joyce or worse, amazonian deforesters. You know, ranching in what was a tropical rainforest, this kind of this dichotomy that seems to exist, that, yeah, if you're a cattle farmer, you're an environmental vandal, you're a vegan, then you're somehow doing everything right. Yeah, I want to mess that up. I want people to question this stuff a bit more. Insert some nuance into it.

AJ: 17:48

Yes, so important because, vice versa, right, the vegans get hammered by everybody else.

Sam: 17:53

Yeah, sure, so there's sanctimonious yeah, stuff on either side no, I'm not about that either. I'm just I, just I. I like to question everything.

AJ: 18:00

Yes, and with a depolarizing focus. I mean, you had a. There's a hell of a moment in your book that essentially you're talking to here. We were a particular radio interview with a struggling farmer, yeah, sounded, and there was just no critical awareness or investigation. So when you say the word interrogation, I agree completely and I, but I just think, as much as any other walk of life, we there's an accountability there, particularly when you're custodian well, we might come back to that term too but custodian of an, of a national estate, effectively part of, but not interrogation, then it's sort of punitively oriented. Yeah, just, it's where support and interrogation come together rather than one without the other.

Sam: 18:42

I guess I want to be careful. I, since I've become a farmer, I love it so much I can see how most people who do it do as well, and I'm in a very fortunate position in that, ideologically, as far as land management goes, I'm on the same page as my parents. So I'm not. There's not this. I know a lot of younger farmers are trying to perhaps farm in a way that's a bit more in tune with nature and there are roadblocks because of family and I understand that.

Sam: 19:10

But I think if you're really facing dire straits in a, in a drought and we're going to have droughts, we always have uh, and you, you just keep doing the same thing and and fighting it I think you need to question what's you know, whether that's the the best way forward, uh and uh. And you know, famously, people like david marsh, charlie massey, have used that opportunity to to change things. Um, yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to vilify people who feel like they're trapped, whether they're heavily indebted or there's this family pressure, community pressure, um, but equally so. Yeah, the part of the book you're referring to. It was a. It was a radio interview where I think it was during the black summer and a farmer was pushing down trees to feed their stock, and I just thought there was. There was no, not even a polite question of why they were doing that.

Sam: 20:02

Why not, um, sell that stock, save the tree by that stage yeah, and I think a lot of it comes back to this, this role of the farmer as the mythical kind of frontiersman in Australia. This, yeah, the status we place farmers as being kind of the real Australians, which is peculiar given how urban we are.

AJ: 20:25

Indeed, and how neglected farmers are. Exactly, yeah, yeah yeah. So we mentioned Martin Roids before. It might be worth inserting here, given the Black Summer context, how his farm fared, where he had destocked ahead of the fires, and then what happened there.

Sam: 20:42

I'll leave you to speak and so I'll digress momentarily to say that we didn't destock fast enough so we weren't looking great. But he famously, in the whole wider district, destocked very fast. And I know that I'm part of the Land to Market Co-op ecological verification, and I've got some friends who are ecological verifiers. They said when they were verifying Martin Royd's place very soon after the drought broke and it hadn't had stock on it for ages, it was just like they were dropping pins trying to monitor what grass was in the pasture and they just couldn't find none. It was just crazy, it looked like a different planet.

Sam: 21:20

And I remember actually seeing the Australian story of Charlie Massey's farm, severn Park, and these drone shots. And that wasn't after the drought, that was during the drought and he had maintained pretty good ground cover and then the drone would fly over the boundary and it just went to moonscape. So, yeah, he showed what you can do and takes courage to get ahead of the curve and and desock when the, the warning signs are there. That's, that's the big big thing I want to take away. I always stress that since I started farming here it's mainly been London.

Sam: 21:52

Yeah, it's been really easy. The. The challenge is going to come the next drought and I have to um, hold forth and uh, yeah, and and and be disciplined and and start de-stocking when, when the signs are telling me that that it's time to. That's why I'm part of these farmers groups to kind of get that advice from people who've seen it all before, and follow these long-term trends and keep an eye on the Indian Ocean dipole and things like that too, yeah, to to know when to start doing it yes, and I guess, if you ever need I mean, it occurs to me I'm constantly still amazed.

AJ: 22:24

Well, I'm amazed at the living world period constantly and I'm amazed at some of the things that turn up out of these practices, and I guess that's the tonic and the the thing that invites you to sense ever deeper into it and make these bold decisions relative to how it's been before anyway, where the fire also behaved differently around martin's place yeah, I heard that on on charlie arnott's podcast.

Sam: 22:50

Um, it was martin. It's another braidwood person, I don't know who. It is off the top of my head, but he was talking about, yeah, particularly biodynamic farms that didn't just have ground cover, but really well-established perennials, deep-rooted perennials, because the fire, when it was going through paddocks, it wasn't just burning shallow rooted dead annuals. Once it hit these still living perennials, it was slowing right down and and and, whereas the soil itself was, was, was, um on fire and other properties. Uh, in some of these other farms it it didn't. It just kind of stopped in its tracks, which is incredible. It's incredible. So I think nature is a lot more resilient than we sometimes give it credit for.

Sam: 23:37

Yes, my dad always talks about kind of trying to give it a hand to take care of itself, and I reckon that's an example of it.

AJ: 23:45

Yeah, my old mentor, frank Fisher, sort of legendary systems thinking educator out of tertiary ed in Melbourne. He used to get really annoyed when people would describe nature as fragile. That's not fragile, it's just we're belting it over their head. Yeah, the title of your book, sam, is really interesting. It actually makes me curious how many titles you went through before you were there a lot or did this was there were a lot, they were pretty lame.

Sam: 24:09

This came from my editor and initially I I didn't. I thought it was funny. But I thought it was funny, but I thought it was a bit mean. I thought that people would think that my dad was a monster. Yeah, yeah, but you know, it's pretty funny. It is pretty funny so we went for marketing purposes, and we'd offer the hat to Gerald Durrell, obviously, which was deliberate because, yeah, I was trying to employ a similar kind of conversational, humorous way of writing about it.

AJ: 24:38

Yeah, which it is. And it makes me think and I'm right with the choice, by the way it makes me think of the particularity of the father-son relationship, just sort of archetypally let alone you guys, because it's such a sweeping book really. The title could have been coming from any any lens, but this was the lens. There's something obviously particular about the father-son thing.

Sam: 25:04

Well, the father-son thing that's. I guess that's the rollicking ride in the book. But there's a lot of the book, like you say, it's sweeping, and I kind of thought of it this way I was trying to smuggle into the book a lot of serious stuff that maybe people wouldn't pick up the book and read if they knew it was just going to be serious regen ag, questioning how we treat nature. But if you kind of couch that in a rollicking father-son yarn, then you can win some people over without them knowing it. That was my approach. But you know I've also been been criticized in a friendly way by plenty of people that my mum isn't in it enough. Uh, and she I I deliberately got her in really early into the book because she's she's been a really important part of this farm story and my thinking, uh, and I hope I've done her justice, but obviously by going through it for this title it's, it centers my dad, it's father son which is a particular son journey, and particularly when it's perhaps all the more in farming.

AJ: 26:05

But I think in general that's why it's so poignant some of the moments you had, which I'll leave readers to read about, but so many of the moments you did have, you know, with all the thorns and and all the grace, at times I'm curious. You closed your book, hoping that your dad wouldn't be too embarrassed by it. Ultimately, how did he feel?

Sam: 26:23

yeah, he's a funny one, he's quite a private person, um, so I think he's a little bit embarrassed at the limelight, not at the depiction of him. Uh, last year a really lovely and unexpected thing happened. It won the prime minister's literary award for non-fiction and, uh, I invited my parents to the event. I wanted them to be there for it. Initially, dad said he didn't want to come. He said he was embarrassed because he didn't want to be the center of attention, and then when he came, he had a great time, I think, yeah, chatting to everyone, and I think he was pretty proud, not just of the book and me, but of what he had achieved and that I had thought worthy of writing about great.

AJ: 27:09

that comes across to me too. Yeah, it's a legacy that goes back the decades that you're picking up. It's a beautiful thing and I do recall I mean, charlie was just telling me last night how much admiration he's got for your dad, david, from back at Charlie's first book. I think it was Breaking the Sheep's Back with the self-destruction of the wool industry and he recalls a moment in the Cooma Town Hall with your dad, charlie and somebody else, and they were the only three out of 300 that were opposed to the scheme that ended up crashing this history.

Sam: 27:41

Yeah, I think it was my dad's old colleague, Andy Stokehill, and they were basically yelled out of town and the rest is history. Yeah, but I think, charlie, he's continued that A lot of farmers hate what he says. Yeah.

AJ: 27:53

Well, that's what happens when you. He puts himself out. Yeah, yeah, this comes with the territory. Yeah, sadly in a way, but as long as there's enough support from the rest of us. Um, I've come to think for all of us really. And then your mum. I remember david marsh. First thing he said to me almost was your mum, jane, and her incredible work. I think from memory it was with the land care.

Sam: 28:15

Yeah, so she was. Um, both my parents were heavily involved with our local land care group for decades and decades, um, and then my mum had a had a rural consultancy business as well, but, um, yeah, she's. She's kind of behind a lot of the interesting stuff that happens on this farm, whether it's um the many thousands of trees that my family's planted, engaging with the local Ngambri and Ngunnawal communities to protect the ochre quarry that's at the back of our place. And mum formed a really nice friendship with senior Ngambri elder Matilda House. That's ongoing. I guess it was harder for me to write about mum's influence and my relationship with mum in an entertaining, energetic way, because we'd have these conversations around the kitchen table, whereas when I was learning how to farm.

Sam: 29:09

I was with my dad out in the paddock Stuffing stuffing and he'd be teasing me about how I was holding the dong incorrectly when I was belting in a star picket, or what are you doing with these silly girly little knots you're tying off a fence with? And so that's. That was naturally what I thought would would grip a reader. Um yeah, so I wasn't deliberately trying to put my mum in the shade. It was just a bit harder to kind of bring bring her influence to life. It's everywhere, it's just a bit more subtle.

AJ: 29:39

Indeed, you dedicate the book to them both though. Yeah, and you said an interesting line for this time of gifts.

Sam: 29:46

Yeah, so that's another literary reference to Patrick Lee Fermor's two books. He walked across Europe, I think from the hook of Holland to Istanbul, just before the First World War, so he's describing this world that is about to change forever. And there's two books. One is called Between the Woods and the Water and the other one is called the time of gifts. And I just thought this this period between 2014 and really it happened just after the drought broke in 2020, 2021, when I wasn't living at Galleon I was mainly living in Canberra, but I was working here two days a week that, for me, is a period where I learned so much from my parents. I have never been closer to my dad, and that all started then. So that's what I meant by a ton of gifts a sharing of their legacy, of their passions, but also of themselves. And, yeah, it's not like we were ever distant for benevolent reasons. We just, I guess, didn't have anything, a passion to bind us together, and I had no idea that my dad was such a softy at heart, I guess.

AJ: 31:12

Wow.

Sam: 31:13

Yeah, until I started working with him out in the paddock and he'd be looking at frogs and ants and birds and things.

AJ: 31:19

Yeah, isn't that interesting because obviously the the seat of your book is the millennial who leaves the farm like all the others do. Yeah, he comes back to it and to think that there was so much of that, not only for your passion for the place that was sort of undiscovered, but so much of that in your dad that you wouldn't have met yeah, and I think like and I really stress this is a I'm.

Sam: 31:42

I've got a lot of different things going on rider hat, orchardist hat, grazier hat now but a lot of much bigger, more profitable farms. They go through this, this same challenge where the the boomer dad tends to tell the millennial generally, son, don't take over the farm, it's too hard a life, and my dad was definitely doing that, but on a scale where he still considers this a bit of a hobby. So, yeah, I think he was worried about me for quite a while and now he sees, you know, I'm making a bit of a go of it as a rider. The orchard is really taking off because of the proximity to high-end restaurants in Canberra and my connections there.

Sam: 32:23

Yeah, the grazing enterprise is going really well. I think he's yeah, he's pleasantly surprised that I'm surviving. I can remember we had a family meeting about the future of the farm, which I wrote about in the book, which took place where we are sitting right now, under this crabapple tree, and he said a few crazy things like oh, you probably won't even be able to afford to pay the rates here, or you might not be able to afford to run a few cars because you won't pay for fuel.

AJ: 32:54

That's funny because I remember the part of your book where you talked about his more half-glass-empty disposition.

Sam: 33:00

He can be an extreme pessimist.

AJ: 33:03

This is doubly funny for me, because you talked about the AFL preliminary final in 1993. Yeah, where?

Sam: 33:08

our shared team. Yeah, I gathered that from you.

AJ: 33:11

yeah, I was at that game.

Sam: 33:14

Wow, that's funny.

AJ: 33:14

And at half-time we were seven goals down at three-quarter. We've got them but, your dad leaves the room and doesn't come back till they've won.

Sam: 33:24

Yeah, it's funny. So I guess when I was, not just the pessimism but thinking back of. When I think of my dad as a farmer growing up here and not really seeing this soft kind of environmental side to him, I would often associate it with football. His work ethic was such and his pessimism that generally three-quarter time if Essendon was behind, he'd go and do a farm job and then miss the end of the day. That's funny that you're Essendon fans. Uh, our paddock names. I'm sure a lot of the farms you visit have very strange paddock names. And uh, you might notice in in my book there's a um a little map. There's a in the map. Sorry this doesn't make great audio, but we have a paddock called Coleman. It's actually been divided into Coleman East and Coleman West. I never thought After John Coleman.

AJ: 34:12

Outstanding. For listeners who don't know, I will say the greatest pool pool I've ever lived in.

Sam: 34:18

Yeah, it's getting a little bit esoteric, but I'm a Geelong fan and so there's an Ablett paddock. I did wonder about that one.

AJ: 34:25

There's quite a well a father-son thing there too, of course. So give us a hint, sam, at what is happening right now and how you are making it work with those connections into Canberra and so forth.

Sam: 34:36

I would say I love my life. It's pretty crazy. I'm very busy. I have a nearly. Two-year-old. I have a riding career that's going from strength to strength. I have a head of 200 cattle.

Sam: 34:53

I'm trying to manage them as well as I can, but I also have this little side hustle, which is a fig orchard.

Sam: 34:59

I have a hundred odd trees of black genoa figs that I planted.

Sam: 35:11

Starting in 2016 and, mainly through living in Canberra and having friends who worked in hospitality, I developed a network of chefs and they tried some figs off a nearly 40 year old tree that's in one of our orchards and they just thought this fruit was amazing.

Sam: 35:22

So we don't know if it's the genetics or the aspect of the orchard or the soil here, but my parents both thought it would be a nice idea for me to to kind of capitalize on what was unique about this one fig tree. So, yeah, starting in 2016, I would take cuttings from this one tree in the spring, generally around November, and then I'd put them into wicking beds and keep them going over the summer and then the following autumn, when they drop their leaves, I'd put them in the ground in what was a bit of pretty rundown little paddock. And now, yeah, nearly 100 fig trees is totally covered with a net. And I always tell people that one autumn, autumn, it's going to just explode. It's not going to be an incremental development and this is the autumn where it's just it's pumping, I mean.

Sam: 36:12

So I'm, yeah, I'm picking figs a couple of times a day at the moment they're kind of like tomatoes when the sun is shining they ripen so fast. But so far I'm doing a pretty good job of matching supply and demand, which means a lot of messaging chefs. It's just me picking, my partner's picking it a little bit, but it's me delivering and sorting. I'm supplying about 12, 15 cafes and restaurants, yeah, and tend to empty the cool room and then fill it up again. So yeah, I'm not chucking away anything, which is great, amazing. But I mentioned earlier, it is a bit strange.

Sam: 36:53

The last few years I've kind of told people April, mid-april, is kind of the height of the fig season and this year it's been quite early. I started picking late February. It's not really a big commercial fig scene in Australia, um, so I don't, I don't know any other fig farmers, um, so I'm kind of learning this on the fly a little bit. How interesting. But yeah, so it's, it's going well and it's, it's, it's, it's. It's a lot of work but it's also a pleasure, like seeing this, this orchard which is. You know they look, they look like proper trees now they've grown so much and fig leaves have this really distinct beautiful. It's kind of like a coconut aroma and the orchard smells good now walking around it amazing so yeah, beautiful, and then the livestock's obviously a key part of it too.

AJ: 37:39

So yeah, you're learning all about that that's the main thing.

Sam: 37:42

I mean, yeah, the the orchard work takes up a lot of time. In terms of income it's a lot less than the cattle I like working with stock and and fruit. It's really different. But yeah, so that the livestock enterprise I have head of 200 black Angus cattle and you know I could do things. I could do things better if I had the time. I don't yet use electric fencing. We kind of subdivide paddocks where we can with regular fencing. We've got a lot of dams so that makes it easy to do.

Sam: 38:15

And I'm going to sell my. I'm kind of still rebuilding the herd a little bit since the black summer drought. But I'm going to sell all of my wiener steers in May. I'm going to sell them as late as possible. It's a pretty good year. So there's a sale on the 31st of May, so I'm aiming for that, um, aiming to have them around 300 kilos, and one of the biggest sale yards in southern New South Wales is just down the road in Yass. So that makes things easy but it also complicates things.

Sam: 38:43

Um, I don't know, this probably comes up with people you talk to. I kind of I feel a bit conflicted. I talk a lot about the figs and supplying to all these restaurants. I'm having an event with Pilot Restaurant in April which has got my traveler says it's the best restaurant in Canberra. They're doing a whole night where all the fruit comes from here and yet I've never tasted my beef. It's this crazy situation where, because it's so valuable, you know, I put it on a truck and it goes to the market and then most of the time I'm selling these wieners as calves and someone else in Australia is going to fatten them up.

Sam: 39:19

I have no control over how they manage them, how they're going to finish them, so that's a bit tricky I do hear it a lot.

AJ: 39:26

Yeah, partly because there's some people who are getting micro abattoirs going, yes, and more direct market than like you're doing with the orchard stuff, which has its fulfillment and relationships, and obviously you just there's an accountability going back to that too. You, you can see it right through. There's that. But of course there's also mostly where that doesn't exist yeah, I mean it's, it's so, so strange.

Sam: 39:50

One of my favorite parts of farming I'll include this in farming because it's kind of it's extending my reach into the food system is taking boxes full of figs that are so fresh you can see that the sap on them into restaurants when they're closed. Then they're chilled out if they're open and their chefs are a bit crazy.

Sam: 40:09

And talking to chefs about food and inevitably when they asked me what's happening on the farm, I talk about the cattle. They say we'd love to get some beef on the menu. It's like I just don't really know how to do it. I'm yet to work out a way to do it that makes financial sense for everybody. The nearest abattoir is in Cooma. I could get a mobile butcher, but it's still it's not. It would be a fun thing to do, but I don't think I'm pretty pressed for time. It's not. It makes far less money than if I just put them on the truck. It's, there's a lot of barriers there, yeah well this is where the support can come in.

Sam: 40:48

And a lot of countries aren't like this. I mean, I just don't think that the people in France and Italy are dying of salmonella poisoning far more than we are in Australia. They have this history, this tradition of small farmers supplying restaurants in a way that we just don't have here. So it's tricky. Uh, we are going to in in july, uh, no, in june. One thing I like to do is is bring chefs out here and show them around, and we've we've had quite a few informal events.

Sam: 41:18

Um, I have a small um mob of dorper sheep I use to graze the orchards in winter but also eat them for my family. So when I butcher them, I like bringing chefs out and they help out and we have a bit of a feast. I'm actually going to do a heifer in June. I have a heifer. That's a bit it's got a bit of a gammy leg. I probably should have sold it a while ago, but I've been fattening it up for this very purpose, because I want to know what our beef tastes like and I want to have this, this social event. I like opening the, the farm up, and so we're, yeah, doing research into the logistics of that and beautiful, yeah, and have a kind of community community event makes me think of how well you wrote about some of the meat stuff and the methane stuff and then some of even the mythology around cattle too.

AJ: 42:09

I'd like to just cover off on these briefly, if we can here. There's obviously detail in the book, but that's. These are such important topics and the way you went about the methane issue was such music to my ears because I've been seeing again so much polarity that seemed to be needless. Yeah, when you look at how the system can work, if the whole system, the living system, is attended, then the methane that happens on the one hand from the cattle is part of a system where the net gain is still bigger than what comes out.

Sam: 42:43

I don't know where to start, but I remember when I was doing some research for the book, I read a journal article about methane that was produced by ruminants in what is now the continental United States, at the verge of Columbus arriving, and it was 80% of what it is today, which is incredible because there were so many bison, so many reindeer, all kinds of things. The difference is that there were these ecosystems intact that were able to suck carbon back down. There's nothing unnatural about ruminants producing methane.

AJ: 43:23

We do have more methane in the atmosphere now, but because of fossil fuels?

Sam: 43:28

Yeah, of course, fossil fuels. And since then there's been mass deforestation as well, and it's true that the vast majority of beef cattle, particularly in the West, is produced in a terrible way. And I guess I try and simplify it for people. I don't blame a lot of city people, I've never been on a farm but I'm just trying to point out that you know there are, there are parts of the world that are better suited for grazing than others. I mean cutting down a rainforest and then putting animals there. Compared to where we are right now, it's it's range land it's unsuitable for cropping.

Sam: 44:03

You know, a lot of people talk about the amount of water that you need for producing beef. We don't. The only water we use is what falls from the sky. Um, so I think it's about matching matching what's suitable to produce what. And I like to talk about what would happen here, on this very farm, if we removed cattle.

Sam: 44:23

Okay, so you're going to get woody weeds and then eventually you'd have kind of dry sclerophyll forests and then inevitably you're going to have huge fires every few years, which is going to release a heap of carbon into the atmosphere, and you're not producing any food at the same time. So yeah, it's. It's a tricky one. I know I sound crazy when I tell people. What I'm trying to do is basically what fire stick farmers were doing, using fire to cycle nutrients through grasslands and before them what megafauna were doing. Here it's about using a surrogate species to to cycle perennials through the landscape. Um, yeah, but but people like simple answers and so it's kind of descended to this dichotomy that meat bad, plant-based good this is where I think there's the great opportunity.

AJ: 45:18

If the health of farmers are suffering and the health of city folk are suffering with bad food and meanwhile you turned up research too. That said, the health of farmers doing regen is on the up yeah, it's bucking that trend and I see it, of course, all the time. You're a case. I mean you're here for a reason as well. You've come back for a reason. Even the fact that I'm around it is related to the same thing. It's just so viscerally, tangibly and nutritionally a sensory experience that I think that's partly why I think it animates city dwellers, who it reaches so much.

AJ: 45:52

Some of your endorsements even paint that picture yeah some other people have endorsed it in a similar way, and I want to add I did find there's now a movement to let cows burp, yeah, yeah, so there is a broader embrace, I think, coming on as well. I just my hope is that it's not another vilification yeah, I don't.

Sam: 46:13

I don't want to be a reactionary and say that you know. Let's put as much methane as we can into the atmosphere.

Sam: 46:18

I'm saying we should strive for a planet where we have uh ecosystems functioning so that they can cycle this stuff, so it doesn't build up and up and up. And you know my dad likes to always point out this catastrophe we are facing. It didn't really exist prior to the Industrial Revolution, whereas ruminants predate the Industrial Revolution in mass numbers on most continents, yeah so yeah, it's the burning of fossil fuels at this incredible rate that has put us in this problem, not cattle and sure, management of cattle can be greatly improved in a lot of countries but the single biggest way we can address this is to stop burning fossil fuels.

AJ: 47:03

Yeah, way we can address this is to stop burning fossil fuels. Yeah, so I was fascinated to read how you would describe your sense of belonging here and then start to connect with the people who always belonged here, and as much through your sister eve, when you said that even as kids she felt the absence of that?

Sam: 47:29

Yeah, I didn't really. I was a bit more of an airhead A bit vague yeah.

Sam: 47:37

Yeah, it's funny, since she's said that, and since the context is that we engaged with with the local Ngambri Ngunnawal communities and we had what was a, an ochre quarry on our farm listed as an aboriginal place, capital A, capital P, which means under New South Wales heritage law, it's it's, it's protected um, but as part of that process, now I I think about you know this, countless generations of custodians before me on this patch of what is now australia. I think about it all the time, yeah, yeah. And when I was out at the creek, I think about the amount of food that would have been there and what a center that would have been for um, for people. Yeah, yeah, in terms of belonging, yeah, there we're here in early autumn, which is autumn's my favourite time of year, not just for fig season, it's this.

Sam: 48:29

There's little subtle changes. I love here the insect sounds, the light, the day shortening, the cooler nights. Yeah, I just feel incredibly content now working on the farm. I had three months in Parisis october, november, december when my partner was doing a writer's residency and we had a great time. But, yeah, coming back and seeing that explosion of of sight and sound and me, it made me realize how much I belong here yeah, and you said the, the reconnection with traditional custodians has been a real highlight, if not the highlight of your farming yeah, so far yeah and that you've come to see food everywhere, even in the explosion of edible weeds, you know yeah yeah, that was interesting.

Sam: 49:17

I think that was. That was in the context of the the drought breaking um just suddenly seeing nettles and mallow and even things like south thistle. It's not the most delicious but it's. I went through a stage of of picking a lot of this stuff and wilting it and having it with my eggs for breakfast. Also, since the book came out, I wrote a big piece for the monthly magazine about native foods in Australia and learning of just how much food there is everywhere and changing that mindset that this place is somehow barren of food. Yeah, I think it is the highlight of my farming career so far and I think a lot of farmers. They realise at one level that we're on the same page. We want to care for the country.

Sam: 50:03

Farmers and traditional owners are often perceived to be enemies because of this history of frontier violence and dispossession, which is all true, but at the same time, farmers want to do what's right by their land and traditional owners do as well, and I think there's a great opportunity for collaborative projects like this one we've engaged in. So, just as an example, we haven't actually changed our management of this hill that is now protected. It used to be a paddock called Bald Hill. It was a kind of strange ironstone outcrop and because it's an ironstone outcrop it has ochre in. It now has a Ngunnawal name, which is Deroa Dara, which means yellow ground. The colour of the ochre is yellow, but I still graze its slopes. If anything, it's improved the management of that bit of the farm because we've fenced off this, this site, so I get a bit more of a herd effect with my cattle there.

Sam: 51:10

But it's kind of it's. It's. It's mutually beneficial. Like we I don't have this cultural connection to it that the nambra and nunawar communities do coming out and and loving learning about how their um ancestors uh, would would mine ochre there. I'm looking at different stuff. I'm looking at what's in the pasture and trying to get more native perennials. But we can both use it to our own ends and they're not harming each other. It's mutually beneficial.

AJ: 51:41

So, yeah, it's really cool it's very cool and it makes me wonder because, again, it's such an area where there's so much fear that seems needless around inviting that cohabitation if you like yeah, I wonder what it makes you reflect on this concept of ownership.

Sam: 52:01

Yeah, I think it's. White people in this country are still fixated on on the Western definition of ownership and repeatedly, when I would meet these elders who would come out to see this site, they would say you know, we don't. We don't want your land, we just want learn about this place and get some respect for it. This, yeah, they're not different.

AJ: 52:23

Different needs from the land, I guess it's interesting that what you turned up to the history that you researched, which different needs from the land. I guess it's interesting that what you turned up to the history that you researched, which I hadn't heard about, but it makes sense that cattle were sort of synonymous at a time in history with the enclosures and privatisation of land.

Sam: 52:39

Yeah, definitely, and particularly when I think of the Old West and the United States, kind of ranching on the open range is synonymous with frontier violence and and here to a to a degree as well, I mean maybe more so with sheep in the early days, these huge squatters and and that kind of frontier violence that they're often their, their employees, their shepherds would engage in. Yeah, I think that probably explains some of the negative connotation of cattlemen in the eyes of city people in Australia at the moment.

Sam: 53:12

Yeah, yeah, no, that's not to say there's also a huge, huge amount of Indigenous people in the cattle industry in Australia and some really interesting Indigenous-run and owned enterprises in northern Australia. It's a bit simplistic to say that experience exactly.

AJ: 53:29

My experience is they love it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, in a sense, one of the great problems we face as a country came from when they were booted off the stations because of obviously I would be a good thing, so they're not slave labor yeah, but it unintentionally caused this lack of belonging like lostness. It was lost enough, being taken from country, but they were still connected through stations and then we lost that too this phenomenal tradition of stockmanship yeah, and those what we call low stress stock handling yes, yes they just do it.

AJ: 54:00

It's very interesting on multiple levels. Yes, I wonder. Just to wind up that part and come towards our close, you talked about wanting to offer the idea of farming, harvesting native foods here with the mob.

Sam: 54:15

I haven't really done anything since then. I find it quite tricky how to actually approach that. It's probably become more tricky since then. Uh, there's a lot of debate around intellectual property. I don't really know how to go about it. One of the chefs that I supply a lot of fruit to he's gotten hot water from foraging his own native foods without permission. I think there's a lot of people are unsure how to proceed.

AJ: 54:43

Yeah, there are these examples happening, hey yeah you've talked about a number of them in arnhem land naughty burrows restaurant in melbourne yeah, so I didn't write about in the book but, I'd wrote a big magazine feature and visited a lot of these people.

Sam: 54:56

There's a really cool initiative happening in in um. Yeah, right in the center of sydney, where kylie kwang's restaurant has, there's a rooftop native garden where um clarence slockey from gardening australia, um noongar man he's. He's the custodian of this garden, so people doing it in a really respectful way. Yeah, I'm not sure how to approach it yet, but you know there's other stuff here. Like you know, I bang on about this a lot, but even eating kangaroos in this country we need to that's how I first came across you in a monthly article.

Sam: 55:27

Yeah, yeah, probably 10 years ago, yeah, so this same chef who you know his heart is very much in the right place, um, but he talks a lot about and I agree with him wholeheartedly the kangaroo cull that happened in the act. Currently the bodies are kind of put in these mass graves, bulldozed. They're not even offered to local mob to eat them, let alone, you know, commercially. Yes, yeah, and in that same magazine piece I spoke to another chef at a now closed-down restaurant who was trying to get local kangaroo meat. He couldn't source it which is just crazy.

AJ: 56:02

Yes, exactly, it has to come, I think, from South Australia.

Sam: 56:04

Yeah, yeah.

AJ: 56:11

Yeah, it is crazy, and you know, in the northwest of WA.

Sam: 56:12

So what's come?

AJ: 56:12

through the podcast. There's this mass culling of donkeys as pests and other creatures too, but in one station they've harnessed the donkeys oh, yeah, yeah, as a regeneration tool.

Sam: 56:18

What's um Kachana station? Yeah, yeah, so I heard that guy speak. What's his name? Sorry, chris Hengler. Yeah, at the.

AJ: 56:23

Lananta market. Yeah, yes, it was awesome. Were you there? No, I wasn't there, but I've heard everybody else say I'd love to see yeah extraordinary and the government is now they're going through a mediation process because the family challenged it. The government edict to to kill them all because it's, you know, not supposed to be there. There's all sorts of opportunities actually in the law for them to arrange a plan how they go about it, but it's not not happening at the moment.

AJ: 56:49

What's doubly interesting is then I had a listener contact me. It became a subsequent episode. She's running a thing called the last stop donkey program, where she accepts would be fugitive donkeys wow, trains them up, re-socializes them if necessary, and then they are sold to east coast farmers as stock guardians. So the dingoes can still do their positive stuff. And also the export markets are clamoring for these donkeys. Yeah, at a premium, yeah, yet we are slaughtering them by the hundreds. That's gonna change, surely? Surely?

Sam: 57:23

yep, um, yeah, just on Kachana, one thing I particularly loved about that story my understanding is that you know, and it's feral cattle too that are detained and used, and so when the cattle, I know that he has financial backing, I think from Switzerland, but he doesn't sell stock, so it dies where it falls.

Sam: 57:43

And it's this endless cycling and that's kind of what I think about a lot now when I'm farming, this kind of cycling, everything's cycling and and I had a cow die about a month ago presumed snake bite it was kind of weird. It just dropped dead. But uh, I found myself seeing it as an opportunity and I, um, I towed it with my paddock basher about a kilometre to this patch of bare ground and I subscribed to a great composting sub stack called the Rot and there was advice about composting dead animals and yeah, so I put this cow on bare ground, I opened her up a bit more. It was pretty smelly work on a hot day and I covered it with hay and just kind of, yeah, using that, using that as an opportunity. That I really love that about kachana too, that that these nutrients are constantly cycling, whether animals are dead or alive indeed, yep, right on, yep.

AJ: 58:42

There's so much that's interesting about it and that financial backing is really just people like the supporters of this podcast. It's not major corporate backing.

Sam: 58:50

No.

AJ: 58:51

It's people who've come on buying a.

Sam: 58:54

That's right sponsoring.

AJ: 58:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam: 58:56

He was pretty clever and I liked the way he was marketing it. He called himself a land doctor. I think yes, indeed, which is pretty different to most interpretations of cattle farming, which is great.

AJ: 59:10

That's right, all right. Do you homage to your wife, who I had to chuckle, when you called her Samurai Lauren?

Sam: 59:18

Where did that come from? I say she has X factor. Yeah, she's very passionate, very smart.

AJ: 59:25

No bullshit kind of woman yeah, and she's found some surprising benefits for being out here.

Sam: 59:30

Well, so her writing career is taking off and she calls it the farm subsidy. Not just that she has to hustle, living in a squalid share house, taking on freelancing gigs that she doesn't want to, but also the I think the, the piece that comes from working here. Yeah, um, she refers to Goli on this farm as our own little nation state. Um, we kind of play by our own rules and live on our own time.

AJ: 59:59

Oh, so much to be said about it.

Sam: 1:00:01

Yeah, and I mean I've mentioned in the book she's an incredible cook and I try and compliment that by bringing stuff in from the garden and orchards and paddock and yeah, so our tomato harvest is going off at the moment, so we're making lots of passata and, yeah, we live really well here. I'm currently trying to pick up my yabby catching game, which hasn't gone so well, but um that'll supplement things nicely that's the next step.

AJ: 1:00:27

And your book, you did say, was bookended by hospital admissions the one of your, the unfortunate one of your dad, yeah, but then the birth of your child, yeah, and I think it was in the acknowledgements too in your book. I think you ended it maybe or maybe it was at the start, but again a line that captured me you said we're gonna have so much fun yeah, one thing I would like to write about in the future is how compatible I am finding parenting and farming.

Sam: 1:00:51

I think again these stereotypes of Australian farmers very strict gender roles, conservative socially people but, um, particularly before Orlando, my daughter was in in daycare. I had her a lot on the farm and I remember last year it was in winter, it was pretty cold here in July, august I was fencing for a couple of weeks and I just put her down in the paddock and she'd be content and I'd be, you know, straining, offining off wires and it was just, it was awesome she was. She didn't even have toys, she was just playing with leaves and grasses. I remember looking back at her a few times and, and um, being thankful that I wasn't in in South Africa or Zimbabwe where there are big predators around.

Sam: 1:01:33

True, but, uh, yeah, but, but, but she loves it. Um and uh, but, but she loves it. Um and uh. Yeah, I have this paddock basher that I take her around in. And um, yeah, she loves, loves the cattle. Just yesterday I was checking the cattle with her. I had her in the baby carrier she's getting a bit big for that, probably one of the last trips and um, we had a little break at the at the creek.

AJ: 1:01:51

It was really shady and, um, she was having a little, uh, a little snack of peas and having a water and she was so happy seeing the cows and saying she just yeah, she thinks it's normal oh, it's outstanding, and and I say it in contrast to the other narratives around, certainly in cities, that the oppressive aspects of this time, the really anxious aspects of these times, that flies in a total other direction, but but without disowning how many other jobs can you take your your to pre-toddler to and make it work?

Sam: 1:02:25

I mean, there are definitely challenges. Things happen a little more slowly, but they still happen. Yeah, I've done a lot of fencing with her beside me Checking the cattle. Yeah, pushing this, I have one of these mountain buggy, huge off-road prams that I push from tree to tree picking figs. This will actually be her third fig harvest, so right from when she was born I was doing that.

AJ: 1:02:49

That's outstanding. Yeah, her microbiome must be something special. All right, mate. To close, I close every episode asking my guests for a little story about a piece of music that's been significant to them in their lives, perhaps something that accompanied you in a transformative time, or perhaps something just in the moment.

Sam: 1:03:09

I'm going to go off script a little bit. I do listen to a lot of podcasts, but I've found since and a lot of music less so in the paddock, but I've found since. I came back from France I haven't wanted to listen to anything because the sounds on this farm are just so beautiful and being in Paris in late autumn, early winter, where the only nature we saw were rats and pigeons, coming back here and just hearing the crickets and the birds, that's a soundtrack enough for me. I remember one of the first nights we were back here and just hearing the crickets and the birds, that's a soundtrack enough for me. I remember one of the first nights we were back here and Ollie wasn't sleeping very well and I literally just opened the front door and the sound of frogs was so deafening she just fell back asleep.

AJ: 1:03:53

Wow, doesn't that say something too about I don't know familiarity through the epigenetics or something that that's such a sound?

Sam: 1:04:02

Yeah, and just the value of biodiversity too. Yeah, that silence is not good. It's not a good sign.

AJ: 1:04:09

Yeah, yeah, and you're not the first guest who's answered that way either, by the way. SAM: bit of a cliche. AJ: Sam, bloody great to be here mate.

AJ: 1:04:18

SAM: Yeah, thanks AJ. AJ: Thanks for having us, thanks for speaking with me. SAM: N o worries. AJ: That was author and farmer Sam Vincent. For more on Sam and the book, see the links in the show notes. You can also see some photos on the website and more on Patreon for subscribing members, including that footage of the calling of the reed warbler. Thanks to you, generous listeners, for making this podcast possible. If you've been sitting on the fence about becoming a member or some other kind of supporter, please do join us. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thank you. A nd if you just can't afford it right now, please do continue to listen and perhaps, if you can, share the podcast with friends and continue to rate it on your preferred app. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden, and at the top you heard Green Shoots by the Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.