This month I will attend the Urenui Rodeo and Golden Shears for Farmer First health checks, the Norwood Sports Awards, the Ford Ranger Rural Games, Feilding sale yards for Farmer First health checks and the Waimarino Rodeo 70th jubilee for two days. I’ll also go to Trev’s 2020 Farm Yarn bike tour for farmer wellbeing and finally be the clerk of the course at the Methven races on the last weekend of the month. Also running this month are many regional field days around the country.
Farmers, I challenge you to get off the farm, leave behind the drought and lower prices, turn off the media speculation of what the coronavirus will mean for commodity prices and travel to enjoy some company you might not have seen for a while at one of the many events on throughout New Zealand this autumn.
But don’t just do it now, try to do it more often. Visit a mate, watch a local footy game, go to a school event or, better still, invite someone to your table. I know cost can inhibit many but even if it’s just a cuppa with a neighbour please just do it.
Times are tough. We have had our grass burnt off and the banks are looking to reduce their rural involvement or at least increase the capital repaid. The election looms and already the double speak is confusing the issues and deferring the truth to another day.
Not a lot is in our control at the moment but if time out, even for just a few hours once a week, can charge our batteries and keep us focused then make that time a priority.
This month I met Kane Brisco, a young man from Taranaki, who decided to get farmers off their farms and give them a chance to improve their health. He is a past boxer and rep rugby player who is now a share farmer.
Not for profit or fame but for his community he runs a boot camp fitness programme every Wednesday and Friday nights for the locals who want to attend. They lift posts, carry drench containers full of water, biff hay bales and roll tractor tyres. When they get worn out then they punch a bag and finally stretch.
The benefits are physical, social and mental as the whole group works to lift each other. The frustrations of the day leave through the sweat they shed and the kilos they lose. The sleep at night comes easier and the community, which has no hall or focal point, is now growing in numbers as Kane facilitates a reason to get together. He is an inspiration along with those who regularly turn up. Farmfit is the name of his programme. Take a look at this month’s Farmers Voice video. It features Kane and his people.
Leighton Minnell, an old mate from my Jetsprinting commentary days, is taking 17 Trevs from New Plymouth to Napier via farm tracks on the old Honda step-through motorbikes, stopping off in places like Raetihi, my old home town along the way. There will be a night out to listen to a rare breed of a man known as Cavie in Raetihi as he talks of his self-imposed isolation eating peanut butter in a cave for 40-odd days and his life as the wild man of jet sprint commentary both here and in Australia.
These things might not be your cup of tea. Bike tours, races, rodeo and boot camps are only suggestions. Find something you think might enhance your community and start it up or if there is a struggling club you can lend a hand to, join it. Ask not what your community can do for you but ask what your community needs from you. It’s a good excuse to actually improve yourself along the way.
About now I can hear all those people heavily involved in their communities asking what Wiggy is on about. They are already doing that. With the transient nature of our rural workforce in today’s climate it’s up to those who are involved to welcome and invite the newbies to an area into the group or organisation they belong too.
We all know there are people struggling with mental and physical health challenges. The isolation of farm work and increasing addiction to personal devices plays right into the hands of those challenges. My answer might be simplistic and back to the future but let’s rebuild our communities so everyone feels a part of them.
Healthy communities are full of healthy people and healthy people build healthy communities.
