The sheep of The Stone Chimney paddocks used to roam as they pleased across their mighty green 100-acre property, bathing in the sun, sleeping beneath the shade of luscious trees and eating as much grass as they’d like. A luxurious life for Australian sheep, to say the least. Now the grass has turned a stale brown and the soil a ashen black. Drought has devastated their once palatable kingdom.
Fiona Cumming, the owner of The Stone Chimney property has been forced to shepherd her sheep into a containment paddock, where she has to feed them individually by hand several times a day. This is a process called containment feeding and it usually takes a few hours each day.
“I felt awful about it, but it is standard practice to save their lives,” Fiona says.
Fiona, 71, owns three properties in the Barwon area and is a well established agriculturist in her community. Raised in a town named Timboon about a 2 hour drive away from The Stone Chimney, her parents, James and Jean Cumming bought the farm in 1978. While her career as a nutritionist took her around the globe for most of her adult life, Cumming returned to the property in 2007 to look after her aging parents, who sadly passed away in 2012. Since then, she has been putting in the work to continue her parents’ legacy and lend a helping hand to the Barwon community in times of drought and strife.
Her other properties, a model farm just next door to The Stone Chimney, and a cattle farm that doubles as an air field for her aeroplane which is about a twenty minute drive away, on the other side of town. She and her partner live humbly, living off their land when they can, although the drought makes things difficult.
It’s hard to tell just when a drought is going to become a problem. “It creeps up on you,” Fiona says. Usually just around Anzac Day is when the autumn break occurs. This is when she says the rain would fall and the farmers would plant their crops.
“So I put the crop in and sat there and waited, and nothing happened,” Fiona says. “And it just kept not raining.”
The drought has been going on for two years.
Water and grain are hard to come by now, and increasingly more expensive. Although for Fiona who among other things is well versed as a nutritionist and agriculturist, this is merely a matter of creativity. Feed Me Surf Coast is a charity that collects leftover food from local supermarkets and donates it to those in need. Every other Saturday, as the charity closes its doors, Fiona and her crew collect as much bread, fruit, vegetables and other scraps that would otherwise be thrown into landfill and turn them into a nutritious feed for her livestock across her properties.
“It’s gorgeous what relationships you can build just when you’ve got a network, when you’ve got a community and when you’re out there like I am,” she says.
It’s this connection to her community that gets Fiona and many other farmers in the area through these tough times. She talked of the COVID times, where she founded an organisation named Friends of Lake Modewarre, a community group centred around protecting and researching their local wetlands. She also managed to start a flying school in her area where she’d organise lessons, lectures and lunches for her neighbours.
There’s no telling when the drought will end, although Fiona describes herself as a mentally resilient woman.
“I’m staying cautiously optimistic.” she said.
Whether it’s cloudy or clear , the sky is the limit. There is no drought that could dry up the roots that Fiona has tethered to her farms.
At the end of each day, as the sun falls behind the earth and the animals have been fed. Fiona looks out across her land from her kitchen window, even if it’s not as luscious as it once was, her love for nature and the beauty of her lifestyle makes it all worth it.
“Follow your heart, love your life, protect the earth, invest in the wonderful natural life we have the privilege to be a part of.”
This story is part of a project exploring regional Victoria and the issues farmers are facing. See the whole collection here.
