Caroline Stocks on the obvious combination of journalism, media and farming
I’ve come to the conclusion I’ll have to start wearing platform shoes if I spend any more time on farms. I understand the need for giant cars when you’re driving across bumpy and muddy terrain, but does the clutch on four-wheel drive cars really have to be so toe-stretchingly far from the seat? I’d borrowed [...]
Once again I haven’t had internet connection for several days, so it hasn’t been until today that I’ve managed to catch up on emails and what’s been happening with my Nuffield chums who’ve been having the harvest from hell thanks to the rain. While things have got steadily drier for me as I’ve headed west [...]
Driving through this part of Victoria I’ve seen a lot of cattle country, with fields alternating largely between Angus and Holstein herds (or beef and dairy cows, for the non-farmers amongst you). Like a lot of the state I’ve seen already, the rolling hills around here are more than a little reminiscent of parts of [...]
Luckily, Albury is lovely this time of year. I’ve left Dave, Heidi and Isaac’s and headed south-west (after a slight detour and a planned visit to a former gold-mining town now famed for its wine) to Barooga to visit another Nuffield chum, Brad. Brad is someone I really wish I lived near just so I [...]
Contrary to what my last two posts might suggest, I did actually come to Bundaberg for a vaguely agricultural reason (you believe me, don’t you?) Bundy is home to Camilla Philip, a 2006 Nuffield Scholar who, along with her husband Andrew, are the tomato-growing king and queen of Australia. The Philips are the largest growers [...]
Can you believe it? Marty took me to a dairy today. He’ll try and deny it, but it was a bit embarrassing how excited he was about the visit. ‘Let me see a few cows,’ he pleaded with Emma and me. ‘I miss the smell of the silage, the splatter of manure, the lowing of [...]
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt on my travels, it’s that farmers in the UK share pretty much the same problems as every other farmer in the world. Supply and demand, retailer power, pricing, red tape and high input costs are affecting producers in every country I’ve been to so far, and Australia is certainly [...]
Think you’ve got it tough with badgers, pigeons and rabbits on your farm? Well spare a thought for my baramundi-farming friend Marty, who has to contend with these: This ‘little’ fella is a couple of metres long, and was just chillin’ by one of the ponds, sunning itself, when we drove past today. We managed [...]
