Farmer Jess
Farmer Time story – Jess Turnbull
Location of farm: Tararua, Hakataramea Valley, Canterbury
Type of farm: Sheep, cattle, goat, cropping (grain)
All about Jess
Jess and husband Dougal, along with their two young children live on a 1215ha farm in the Hakataramea Valley in South Canterbury (30min drive to nearest town). Here they operate a sheep, beef, goat and cropping farm.
The farm is located on the edge of the beautiful Hakataramea River, which is home to many different wildlife species and also a great place to swim!
Something quite unique about the Turnbull’s farm is that they breed half-bred Merino sheep which produce special wool fibre. This wool is sold off and used in the production of many wonderful products such as face masks and filters used in the space and aviation industries.
For Jess, being a part of Farmer Time has been really special:
“I love the idea of investing time and knowledge into our next generation who will become the caretakers of this amazing country. It’s awesome being able to show children who know little or nothing about farm life what it’s like!”
What made you get involved in Farmer Time?
A friend suggested we might be interested in participating in the pilot study, which sounded like a simple but brilliant way to show kids in urban areas what farm life is like.
It seemed important and bigger that just us – something that could benefit our whole industry.
What have the highlights been so far?
There have been so many highlights! Here are just a few:
Showing the kids our super cute newborn pups. They absolutely loved them and straight away started coming up with ideas for names. It was lovely to have the engagement and connection.
Getting lots of great questions relating to the short videos that I sent the class in between our class calls.
Showing and explaining the seasonal changes around the farm and why we do things when we do. When explaining sowing and harvesting, it was great to see the children were a super receptive audience!
What tips would you offer to other farmers who are involved (or are interested in becoming involved) in Farmer Time?
On the fly videos - as the weather and our plans didn’t always match the timing of our class call, I found it useful to take short videos of interesting things in-between calls and send these through to the teacher to show the class either prior to or in our Farmer Time session.
Creation of informative videos based on questions – It worked well for the teacher to email me questions in between Farmer Time sessions that I could then answer in a video and send back. This way we could use this video as a basis of discussion for the actual session.
Keep topics seasonal – this way content is easy to come up with, is topical and ever changing. Topics included mustering ewes down for autumn, weighing lambs in summer, looking at soil structure and earthworms at sowing, crutching ewes etc. There was ample content and definitely more to show than there was time in the class calls!
Some recent topics covered in Farmer Time sessions:
Sowing seeds
Crutching the ewes