Why Farmers daughters are just as important as farmers sons.
What happens when God chooses a girl to be the oldest child in a farming family.
Long has it been known that many farming families in the western world hope for a son to come along to take on and run the family business. If that son happens to be the oldest and they want to stay and farm, then I guess it makes it a much easier decision.
Unless that is you’re the eldest child in a farming family and you’re a girl. Which is where I have found myself, I am the 5th generation on our family farm, I was also the first to be born in that generation. LUCKY ME! I say this like this because I can’t help thinking that I have been chosen to be right here right now, because I have enough fire in my belly and vision in my mind to keep fighting for the change that so needs to come. Not just in my family either I know many daughters of farmers who are the eldest, and who find themselves in somewhat of a tough position because we aren’t really sure where we fit.
And the title farmers daughter, just seems to make the burden all the heavier. We seem to want to protect and change and see breakthrough not just in ourselves but in our families. Yet many times we are left feeling like failures, like unless we can lift a 25kg bag of feed or rugby tackle a sheep to the ground then we just never feel quite good enough.
I will say here, I have been blessed with the family I have been placed in, in such as they have never stopped me doing what I wanted to do, and in being like that I tried to find as many ways as possible to never come home and farm through my teens. I would work on other farmers, but working on ours was a nightmare and I didn’t want anything to do with it, unless I was being guilted into go out and check the sheep at lambing or something.
That is until my grandad died rather suddenly changing everything that we were doing and how we were to move forward. Time stopped for a while as we got over the shock, but I found myself so dissatisfied with everything, any job I did or aspirations to be a paramedic seem to just not fill the void that was somehow hidden deep inside of me.
After being told for most of my teenage life to not come home farming, “there is no money in it you work long hours for not a lot”, and of course I used to think “I am not coming home to work here, the atmosphere was always to heated, there was far too much arguing, and if I am honest, I did not want to work alongside my dad I wanted more freedom”.
I went self-employed and came home aged 19 and I am still here, however things have changed rather drastically since those days of turning over hundreds of sheep to do their feet, back in the days when I thought I was physically invincible, it turns out that the female body requires a bit more care and attention than I was giving it, a lot more rest and sleep than I gave it, because I was always working or playing hard. And at 25 when I was expecting our daughter Hayley I injured myself to such a degree that 11 years on I am still undoing the damage. I wrote about some of this journey in my book “Farming Broke Me, But I Keep Fighting”
You see now looking back, I had a deep-seated belief that in order to make it in the farming world I needed to be strong, masculine and indestructible, I used to boast about it in the pub how strong I was, and prove my point if anyone was to over step the mark and piss me off. I was a bit of a fighter back then which makes sense to me now, but I was never intended to be a physical fighter. I was designed to be a spiritual fighter. A warrior prayer princess in Gods end time army to bring about change, not some butch maid with an attitude problem and enough anger to sink the Titanic.
I was designed to get a fire in my belly and keep going with it, and that is probably why I am writing this today. You see the feelings of inadequacy I felt where because there was a long-term spiritual battle playing out in my family, and for whatever reason I have been placed right here and now to be able to see what’s happened and do something about it. You may be one of those maids too.
God had a different plan for us because through my own physical brokenness, mother hood and a desire that things needed to change, I have been able to work out how we could work smarter rather than harder on our farm, protecting our health and more importantly healing broken relationships. Through what I have thought more than once was one of the darkest points in my life just after becoming a mum, when I couldn’t walk unaided, when I was trying to look after a baby, but my mental and emotional state was a mess.
I realised that if I wasn’t going to be able to help my mum and dad as I had before, then I was going to need to use this beautiful brain that I had been given to work out a plan.
And guess what…
It has been my very feminine naturally nurturing self which has enabled us to literally turn things around on our farm with a focus on our personal health and especially our relationships with each other first. We no longer put the farm first (we do look after our animals to the highest degree, don’t read me wrong here), however instead of making every decision be about the farm and what is best for the farm business, we make the decisions based on what is best for us, and how will it affect our time, our energy our health and essentially our relationships in the long run.
By flipping the focus to be around the family, not the farm this has opened up multiple opportunities for us to make changes. It is also a big blessing that I seem to have been given a multi-functional entrepreneurial brain ( self diagnosed ADHD) which enables me to think outside of the box, which we seem to have been backed into.
For example, I have a vision that in my life time I will see our same 210 acres, 83ha double if not triple production because we are focusing on our soil health and the most importantly how we can grow plants without artificial fertiliser. I like to learn about soil and ways we can improve things.
I have also been fortunate enough to be part of a company that makes healthy beauty products which contain no harsh chemicals as many products do.
It is through being an Ambassador with Tropic Skin Care that its opened my eyes up to body burden and our chemical load, and how our bodies are becoming increasingly toxic with medications we take, the things we put on it, and of course what we eat. It was this knowledge that got me thinking, why are we treating our animals with so many medicines that they may not even need? and how do we change that in the long term? (it’s still a working progress). This thought alone has saved us thousands of pounds over the last 10 years, as we work to create a farming environment that is healthy not sick.
The other important part that being part of Tropic or rather Susie Ma its CEO shared with us, was about carbon off setting and how knowledge of this, has helped us to create an altogether more sustainable environment that works for our farm, set here on the Devon and Cornwall Border. More about that to come in another blog no doubt.
You see in a twist of Godly wisdom through a situation that was out of my control and has changed my life for the better in so many ways, by losing my physical health I have been able to sit back and think more about how I was going to make things easier, for my parents, but ultimately for me and my husband in the future as well. Bringing about changes that so desperately were needed to free us from the mill stones around our necks, from the spiritual warfare as well as what is happening in the physical with the land grab and the government seemingly wanting us our, that it created an atmosphere which was of survival and lack rather, than thriving and abundance.
The best bit is we the farming family are at the forefront, we have better relationships, we have more time to do meaningful things we want to do like, spend more time as a family, home educate our kids, host farm tours, and all the other wonderful ideas we shall implement as time goes by no doubt.
We are more mindful of our time and particularly this year where my physical health has taken a turn and I am able to do even less for a season than before you can read more about that on my Facebook page, now more than ever I am so grateful we have had the chance to create a work smarter not harder environment that our kids can be brought up in.
So when God made a farmers daughter and chose her to be the eldest it wasn’t to upset the balance and potentially the sons, in fact it is so we can bring our femineity to the kitchen table that we can say I want a different way of life for my child/children particularly if they are girls, rather than them thinking they always have something to prove and working all hours they can to prove it.
That nagging thing us girls do works well because when I know in my heart that something needs to change so that we can make all our farming lives easier, I wont give up I will keep nagging and nagging, gaining all the evidence I can find to prove that making certain changes is going to improve our quality of life in the long run. In my case it’s my poor dad that gets my “preaches” he calls it. I call it our steps towards freedom.
I was born to be a fighter to bring about change in our farming family, for such a time as this. I was born to start speaking out and sharing with the farming world the importance of the feminine touch in the business decisions, not just in keeping a home, doing the book keeping and making dinner for all and sundry. And of course, you don’t have to be the oldest daughter that’s just where I am placed right now.
Women can bring equal ideas and solutions to the farming family table, so it is high time we stopped seeing such a patriarchal industry and started teaming up bringing both the masculine and feminine gifts to the table to bring about true change for ours and our children’s futures.
It is never too late, and it’s not impossible even if you think you are living with a family from hell.
If you want to chat today because something has resonated here click this link to book a zoom call.
Written with joy
Leanne Barriball
Quick links
Book “Farming Broke Me But I Keep Fighting”
Facebook Page The Devonshire Shepherdess
