February 13 this year was the anniversary of a tornado hitting the Mirboo North community.
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For Fiona Baker, it was the first anniversary of the death of her husband, Bruce Manintveld, a man who was always meant to be a dairy farmer.
“Manintveld means man in the green field, the man on the farm, a farmer,” Fiona said.
“Bruce could grow grass in his sleep.
“Bruce always wanted to be a farmer, and he took a lot of pride looking after his cows and the land.”
Soon after Fiona arrived home from work on February 13, 2024, Bruce said he would bring the cows up to the dairy before the storm worsened.
“When I got home from work, I said to him, have you seen what’s coming?”, Fiona recalls.
“He said, if I go get the cows now, I should be back at the [dairy] shed before the storm hits.”
Bruce was following the tail-enders along the laneway when he sent his last communication, a tweet at 4.07pm containing a short video of the incoming storm and a screenshot of the weather bureau’s recording of 128km/h wind.
Fiona was waiting at home, but became concerned as the weather worsened so she went looking for him.
In the time between, a shed roof had lifted and flown through the air, tumbled by the wind along the laneway, killing Bruce and a few of his cows. They were just up the laneway from the dairy shed.
That was how Fiona found him, and she entered a very traumatising situation involving ambulance, police, WorkCover inspectors and the coroner.
She also had a dairy farm and business to make decisions about.
The cows weren’t milked that night, but the next morning dairy farmers Brian Corr from Moyarra and Jason Lee from Yinnar arrived to help her.
“They said, what do you want to do? And I’m like, get rid of the cows; and they’re like, whoa, and I’m like, nah, I’ve got to sell them all, this is too hard. I know what I want to do,” Fiona said.
“They said, just slow down, you’ve got to slow down a bit.
“So we put the cows on once-a-day milking, because Brian and Jason wanted to come and help, but they also had their own farms to run.”
That decision took some of the pressure off Fiona, while she dealt with a very traumatic situation, her grief and anger. She even had to wait to hold Bruce’s funeral, because his body wasn’t released quickly by the coroner.
“Once-a-day milking every morning also meant Brian and Jason didn’t have to be there both ends of the day,” Fiona said.
The cows hadn’t been milked for 24 hours at that point. When Brian arrived at 6am, the first thing he had to do was connect the PTO generator to the dairy – grid power was disconnected by the storm.
“We had to get the bloody equipment off the back of the tractor that was still hooked up from the day before,” Fiona said.
“Then Brian hooked the tractor up to the generator and between us, we worked out how everything connected. But we didn’t know what damage had been done in the storm.
“The shed roof that got pulled off by the storm had flown over the dairy and tumbled up the laneway, and we didn’t know if it had damaged the dairy roof.
“As it was, we turned on the generator and Brian said, does it normally make that noise? A water pipe protruding from the roof was clipped by the other shed roof as it flew over the afternoon before; and the pipe split.
“So we had to fix that before we started milking.”
There was a lot of work to be done clearing up after the storm.
Fortunately, there was money in the bank, so Fiona just approved what needed to be done.
Fiona told Dairy News Australia about contingency plans that Bruce and her had made, based on his health. Bruce was on warfarin, was a type one diabetic, and had already had heart surgery.
“Because he had type one diabetes, you’ve got all the complications that go with that,” Fiona said.
“And often as you get older, the complications become more severe and affect you more. And he had the artificial heart valve put in. And the warfarin he was on for life, well, you get tired a lot easier because it thins your blood out, there’s less oxygen going around your body, he felt the heat and cold a lot.
“We always had a couple of contingency plans for when farming would get too much for him.”
Those contingency plans included buying a house off the farm, for them to either retire to, or for a farm worker or sharefarmer if or when Bruce needed to step back from farming on his own.
“We didn’t actually employ any labour. We used contractors for hay and silage, but Bruce did most of the work on the farm himself,” Fiona said.
“But it was getting to the point where we’d either have to employ someone or I was going to have to step away from my off-farm job and do more work on farm, or we’d start working with a sharefarmer.
“We saw employing someone or working with a sharefarmer as an opportunity to give someone else a crack at getting into the industry.”
The farm had been paid off 12 months previously; and the couple had always planned to have enough money set aside that if they suddenly had to move off the farm, probably because of Bruce’s health, they would be able to buy a house.
That financial cushion helped after Bruce’s untimely death.
“Brian and Jason wanted to get an excavator in to clear up the dead cows, the trees that were blown over, to clear the laneways and fix the broken fences,” Fiona said.
“I knew there was some money in the bank — I didn’t know how much — and I just told them to sort it out.
“They were making a lot of decisions for me initially, they were awesome.
“They said do you want us to get an excavator in because there’s so many trees down, most of the laneways were blocked, and fences needed repairing.
“I just said, do what you need to do to clean this place up.”
The milking herd was kept close to the dairy, almost in a containment feeding situation, because so much damage had occurred across the farm.
It meant they had to be fed silage every day as a maintenance feed.
Fiona admits that in her grief, with the cows being milked once a day, she miscalculated the grain they needed, which saw production drop off.
The herd wears collars, but with the power grid down for an unknown lengthy period, Brian arranged pregnancy testing, so empty cows could be sold.
“I talked to my stock agent, Dane Perczyk, and we discussed options for selling the farm, selling the cows and the young stock,” Fiona said.
“He was fantastic, like, what do I need to do to help?
“I told him I was open to all options going forward — selling the cows and farm, or leasing the farm — and I said that to Brian and Jason too, and anyone who drove up the driveway.
“I told them all that I just wanted out.
“Sharefarming was probably my lowest option, because sharefarming would involve me having to semi-manage the farm, and I don’t think I could work with someone who didn’t farm like Bruce did.”
Dane suggested a couple who owned another farm in Gippsland who were looking to expand their holdings.
Justin and Janelle Richards were not strangers to Fiona, because she and Bruce had bought bulls from them.
They are also Jersey breeders, and wanted to buy the herd, including the empty cows, because they knew the genetics.
Meanwhile, Brian and Jason were gently encouraging Fiona to take up more of the decision making and she was reluctant and pushing back.
Jason provided one of his workers to help ongoing with milking and feeding — the herd was still being milked once a day.
Fiona and Justin and Janelle entered into a lease-to-buy arrangement for the farm. They have installed managers and are leasing the farm for four years, with settlement to purchase at the end of that term.
Justin and Janelle also bought the young stock, which was a relief for Fiona, as she wanted to walk away from the farm with no obligations.
“The cattle sale actually paid for the house I bought,” Fiona said.
Dane organised a clearing sale for the machinery and equipment that wasn’t part of the deal with Justin and Janelle.
By the start of April, the deal to lease the farm was finalised, Justin and Janelle had been milking the herd for a fortnight; and Fiona had purchased a house with a one-month settlement in a nearby town, where she moved on May 1.
“We included an option that I can sell the farm to Justin and Janelle at any time along the four years, if I want to,” Fiona said.
“Leasing to them, to buy, was an immediate thing I could do to get off the farm.”
If she wants to sell the farm sooner, and the lessees are unable to buy, the contract includes that Fiona has to give them three months’ notice.
Her ongoing involvement with the farm has included discussion about necessary infrastructure improvements.
For example, a pump that breaks down, or improving the gravity-fed reticulated trough system.
There are days when she can cope with those discussions, and other days when the stress of having a potential conversation defeats her.
“Some days I just sit there and wish I had sold it all straight out,” she said.
“I left a lot of the decisions about the farm to Bruce. I don’t like organising things and he was good at it.
“There are days when I think I can’t deal with it, I honestly can’t deal with it.
“And those are the days I just wish I’d sold the place, so it was off my hands.”
Fiona has slowly returned to work, and in February this year was looking to increase her workdays.
She experiences post-traumatic stress, triggered by storms, and sometimes by hearing other people’s experiences of trauma.
Fiona she has learned some self-help techniques, including trying to avoid situations that will increase her trauma-related stress and feelings, but it is a daily challenge monitoring this.
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