Today we had a special visitor, Naomi, our young farmer. She came to talk to use about the three Ps: purpose, passion and people. After some brief technical difficulties, the presentation started. First off, purpose. This one is pretty obvious. Dairy really is all around us. Think about the food you eat in a day. At breakfast you might have cereal with milk, or fruit with yoghurt, a glass of milk. Lunchtime you may have a salad and cheese sandwich, or some leftover cheese pizza. Dinner may consist of creamy pasta, or a lasagne. Dessert could be ice cream, custard or yoghurt. As you can see, dairy is everywhere. Dairy farmers have a great purpose; they give us the milk to create delicious ice cream, cheese and of course, chocolate!
The second P, passion, is a farmer’s love of the land they work on, the work they do, and the lifestyle that comes with a farmer’s job. Finally, there are the people. There is a strong stereotype of farmers. Most people think of farmers as old men, who are very uneducated and are covered in mud and poo. On the contrary, using Naomi as an example, this can be completely inaccurate. Naomi is young, female, is studying at University, and as seen in the pictures below, clearly does not wear clothes covered in mud.
Also, there are many jobs that make up the farming industry. These include agronomy (which is basically a plant doctor), sale of land, herd management, agricultural journalist, and machinery technician. There are so many different opportunities for agricultural jobs, no matter what your interests are, you could find an agricultural job that is right for you.
Naomi is a 4th generation dairy farmer, so farming really does run in her family. She is currently studying Agriculture and Business at University, and hopes to one day work as a rural lender, which means that she will help other farmers to reach their dream of running their own farm. She would also like to go into marketing, particularly that of agricultural products.
After Naomi’s presentation, and a bit of a photo opportunity with Bessie (who could forget her?), we showed Naomi our Ag plot (we took Bessie too, she really likes the Ag plot). Naomi and some students cuddled our rabbits, explored the greenhouses, stepped carefully through the chicken coop (avoiding the poo!) and went to chill out with the sheep and cows.
We enjoyed Naomi’s visit so much, and we really learnt first-hand how different our idea of a farmer is from the real thing!
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