Jacqui Bateman knows all about diversification, from farming to crayfishing, photography through to reporting for Rural Press, Jacqui inspires through enthusiastic multi-tasking and a camera lens that sometimes doesnt leave a lot to the imagination. You will have to read her blog to see what I mean!
Crikey, an invitation to be a guest blogger on Nicole Alexanders site! Hmm, what do I write about? I actually dont even know that Im really that interesting! Oh well, Ill give it a whirl!
Furner in the Limestone Coast region of South Australia, isnt a bad spot to be farming – situated right in between the world renowned Coonawarra wine district and the southern coast fishing village of Robe. It may be a tad cool(ish) at times (horizontal rain and howling southerlies straight off the southern ocean in the winter) but I could think of worse places to live. Its a high rainfall and high production cropping and grazing area.
Richard and I took over his share of the 3rd generation family farming and grazing business in the year 2000 at the beginning of the new millennium – thanks to some very forward succession planning by his parents (something that I hadnt really appreciated until recently, whilst witnessing some of the chaos that other farming families are going through trying to sort their own succession).
We farm beef cattle and prime lambs, with a bit of opportunity wheat and broad bean cropping, which after harvest, provide useful stubbles for summer grazing, especially when good feed may be in short supply. In the last few years, weve diversified off farm and own a share of a cray fishing business, which has been a pretty steep new learning curve – albeit a good one! So now, we have a combination of Beef and Reef. Surf and Turf. Pier and Steer. (Enough? OK).
Anyway, from having a fairly hands-on role in the business, I quickly found myself firmly entrenched in the office, in charge of farm finances and admin – which I enjoyed for quite a few years when our boys were small. And then I discovered photography.
Id always dabbled in photography and now my photographic career has kind of morphed from being just a hobby being a mum with a camera, into a quite a good business. I specialise in natural light portraits, family portraits and a limited number of boutique weddings each year (although the farm really does come first. Try telling the ATO that the BAS wasnt filed on time because you had a shoot scheduled and you just couldnt work around it. Just doesnt work).
I also do a bit of work as a correspondent for Rural Press (SAs weekly farm paper, Stock Journal), having first started in early 2002 – helping to cover cattle and sheep markets, sales and field days, in fact, anything rural that the permanent Stock Journal staff arent able to cover. It sure beats doing housework though and its a pretty good way to combine farming and photography. In more recent times, Ive also become an agvocate for Australian Agriculture through social media.Ive met some wonderful characters over the years and decided to start photographing some of our local farmers and graziers for 2012 Australian Year of the Farmer, culminating in a (very ambitious) photography exhibition held in conjunction with a Farmers Ball to celebrate our local rural community.
It was a huge job but the night was a massive success with farmers, stock agents, truck drivers, machinery dealers, contractors – in fact everyone connected to the local agricultural industry – coming together to celebrate the Year of the Farmer.
An incredible privilege for me, was to have some of my Year of the Farmer images appear on the closing credits of ABCs Landline in May and being seen as far away as Singapore and New Guinea!
I believe that Australian Agriculture has a very bright future. Especially if we keep highlighting our good news stories which make it through to the general public. So, with a half decent internet connection, social media and a bit of motivation, theres no reason why we cant work together and agvocate to make a difference to our industry.
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