Queen Georgia

You should have your own farmer, like a mechanic or a doctor. Meet 28-year-old Georgia Brown from Grub Farm who says small-scale agriculture is the future of food in Australia. 

Brought to you by The Queensland Writers Centre and supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

Produced by F&K Media.

Transcript

Telling our stories to the world is a series from Queensland Writers Center. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was made.  Welcome to Queens of the Land, a series about women carving out their best life on the land. Brought to you by the Queensland Writers Center.

I'm Helen Roche. And I'm Jane Hultgren. Jane, do you know where your food comes from? Who do you think grows your food? The Fred Frog here just came from the cafe downstairs. 

Yeah. Farmers. Lots of them. I couldn't name you specifics. Why? Why do you ask?  Well, today we are meeting Georgia, who's very entrepreneurial. She's 28. She's so impressive. She had her own business selling veggie boxes directly to the public, and she wants you to have your own farmer for your fruit and veggies, like you have a mechanic or a dentist.

I'm a country girl, but I'm a third-generation farmer. Okay.  But they were very different farmers to me. So my dad was a banana farmer, his dad was a banana farmer. My mom was like a permaculturalist,  and her mom grew ginger ,and her dad was a keen farmer. So definitely like. Came from a farming family.

Mm-hmm. And then when I finished school, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, so I went and did a permaculture course, and then my farming interest sort of grew from there. Permaculture is a trend in the eighties where women got their hair permed.  Love it.  What is the difference between permaculture and agriculture?

She's gonna tell you agriculture's like a methodology for like living a sustainable life, saving waste, saving time. Growing diverse food, like it's, it's sort of like this whole op and then you decided to do your own thing. Yeah, we, we had land.  So we decided to start one at home, but it was a very like difficult block to grow on.

So we've since sold and now we're looking for the next month. Okay. So that was Grub Farm? That was Grub Farm. Okay. Veggie boxes for the public. Mm-hmm. And then. Restaurants, which suited me more because like I'm always only one person running it, so it was like a bit easier for me to juggle six or seven restaurants versus like 30 people.

But I've since learned so much about the, the like models of selling that I would do it differently next time. So Jane? Yeah. How do you reckon you'd go as a farmer? What do you think you'd struggle with, Helen? I have never kept a single plant alive. I killed a cactus. Several, right? Cacti actually in the end.

So yeah, I can't describe how bad I would go. How about you? Look, I'm a little bit better than that. My husband and I get very excited, like we've got a little veggie plot and Occasionally, we'll get a tomato and we both joke and we go, oh God, well we, we will be fine In the zombie apocalypse, we won't starve 'cause we've got one tomato or may invite the whole street round invite.

Yep. Look, look, we got a tomato. So yeah, nothing that I could put in a veggie box that everyone would want from week to week. Oh, we can pick your lone tomato in a special box. I have to cut it up. So Georgia learned a lot with Grub Farm. I mean, in running a business.  Alongside running a farm was a big challenge.

Mm-hmm. Like, it's already such a big challenge to to grow food on scale for people, given the weather and the risks involved, and the money isn't that good, it's not a very stable.  Job for one. It's a very, very hard job to make a living on. And so running the farm as well as like trying to keep my counts in order, was really hard for me.

The floods completely wiped me up. Okay. Like for a good few months, like that was really challenging. And I mean, every summer was tough. Like summers here are tough, I think in a lot of countries, the the peak season. But here it's like.  The hardest season. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hot. The weather's always really chaotic and yeah, summer is here.

Is is tough. How old is Georgia? 28 years old. That is amazing. Like what a legend to not necessarily know exactly how to do it, but she's just mucking in and giving it her best shot. That is just like. Incredible. It would be interesting, wouldn't it, to be at the mercy of nature for your job. Interesting is one word for it.

You know, I can come into an office. Yeah. Whether it's raining, flooding, snowing, but you know, all it takes is a week of rain at the wrong time and an entire season's crop is gone. And how you get through that heartbreak, I don't know. And get up the next day, and then go, oh, well off we go again. Another thing I found challenging was when I was doing the veggie boxes, I found people's response to them pretty, um, unrealistic with their expectations.

Yeah. Like it wasn't very well received. I thought it would've been picked up more by people, but I think that the awareness of, of supporting small ag isn't big enough. So do you think it's a money thing or it's more convenient to go to Woolies? Do you think that's what it ultimately comes down to? Yeah, I think it's mainly convenience.

Yeah. Like I, I really wanted people to pick up from the farm, but I did do some deliveries and, and then like ordering each week, like no one could make the time even to like order,  which was pretty wild. Like, I was like, come on guys.  Wow. Just hearing her say those things, like people's expectations of what's gonna be in there, like, oh my god. 

Humans suck. I suck. So I take this opportunity to personally apologize to Georgia and all the other farmers out there because it is one of those things where, you know, when you're cooking, we've got two young kids, and so when you're cooking for them and they're like really fussy, eat, there's like. Like random in season.

Amazing. Like fruit or veggies that they say they don't like. Then I can only eat so many, like whatever, like dragon fruits in that week, and I get really stressed, like, who wants a dragon fruit? We don't wanna have a go to waste. My kids won't eat them. Something. I find myself at Woolies getting their.

Bloody stupidly perfect looking green apples like, which just been sitting in the fridge there at Woolies for months. Exactly. In storage. Yeah. Which makes zero sense and because of the challenges around that model, that has led Georgia to go in a new direction. But a model that's really taking up at the moment is CSA shares.

Oh,  which stands for Community Support Agriculture. Oh, okay. That is sort of, in my opinion, the future of farming because it really allows the farmer to have security. Okay, so how does that work? You get a subscription to a veggie box each week? Yeah, and it's sort of like all automated, so you don't even really have to think about it.

It just arrives at your door every Wednesday or whatever it is. And it just means that I know how much to grow each week for my people. You know what I mean? So it really takes the risk out of my job. Like I don't need to be pushing all these beetroot that I've grown.  There's no pushing. It's just like I grow 40 veggie boxes worth every week, and I can plan my crops around that, and it's just like such a better model.

Doesn't that sound like a great idea? That does. Like she said, it takes the risk out of it. She knows what she's growing. She's not growing and hoping somebody orders online. A bit like taking out a gym membership, because if you say, I'm gonna go to a step class once a week and pay $15, how many times do you actually go?

No. But if you have to take out a membership, yeah, you've paid your $15. Regardless of whether you go or, not. Brilliant. Georgia says this model of farming could completely change the game for her. In my opinion, small-scale growing is. Is the future of food in Australia? I think if we could be supporting a farmer in the same way that we have, like a mechanic, like if we had a person growing our food rather than like broad acre farmers just sitting in a tractor selling it to Coles, and they sell it to you.

Like, it's such an indirect way to be eating. Yes. But this, it's such a nice model to have like your farmer that you know and trust, and they're growing your food for you, and it's like a, it's like a really localized. System. I don't disagree with you at all. And nutritionally too, you know, you're not eating something that's been in a freezer for six months, so that you can have a strawberry in the middle of winter or whenever it is.

Yeah. So it's exciting. It, it really does make that more possible for people starting out. Do you eat all of the food that you purchase? No. Okay. Before bin night, when you're emptying your fridge, do you have aching shame as you pull that waste dodgy zucchini? Exactly. That fricking judgy zucchini and all of its like floppy juice.

And it's like, yeah, and it's like slides out and you're like, it's just a marker of how much I'm failing in life. Now, imagine George's face was attached to the zucchini. It'd be like it wouldn't get there. It'd be like, Ugh. But George's zucchini would last longer, Oh, than the Kohl's zucchini we are buying because she's pulled it out of the ground the day before we've gotten our box.

Imagine. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. So Georgia ended up selling her farm, but she's close to buying some land so she can farm for herself again. It's bigger and it's just more suitable to growing. Like the first broad farm, I didn't buy the property knowing I would farm it. So yeah, we learnt so much there.

And you'd live on it. You'd live and work there. Yeah. I think the other cool thing about small-scale ag is that you can do it. On two acres, like you don't need acres and acres of land to make a living like you can do it on a corner of an acre as a non-farm, sorry, my questions may seem silly, but if you've got a smaller plot and you are growing, do you have to kind of let the soil rest between things that you planting?

If you are using regenerative practices like leaving roots in the ground and compost and crop rotation. You can just keep rolling through and keep cycling through crops. But I mean, here in Queensland it's always a good idea to cover crop a farm for at least two to three months of the year. Okay. And then all those plants have different benefits to the soil, maybe fumigating soil from disease and the results are amazing.

So is that something that all farmers do, like you know, the big ones? Do they do that? I think some of 'em do, depending on the crop. It's what people do that care about soil. Okay. So I just don't know how many of them are thinking like that in the way of like the soil is a living organism. I think a lot of broad-acre farmers just are completely pillaging the land.

But yeah, if they have any understanding of soil, they probably would do it. You need to go back to the old ways. I know I sound like an old person, but No, I'm mean, let's go. Go. Let's go. Georgia. Set a commune for us. We go and live there. Have you had any challenges or things that you think are different for you as a woman as opposed to being a man in that industry?

Yeah, absolutely. Like, particularly when I come across like an old boy,  old farmer, they just shake their head at me.  I even had one guy say to me, you are not a farmer. You're a girl. Oh.  Oh. I just, so yeah, when I, whenever I have to deal with particularly an older generation farmer, I'm not very well received.

Oh, usually, and I think like in general, people tend to question your ability, your physical ability as a, as a woman. Yeah. But it is interesting because a lot of the growers I know are women, but I think there's always an undertone of like. People are surprised. People are often surprised to hear that I'm a farmer.

And I think with small-scale ag, it's like a whole new opportunity to like rethink what farming is like. That's in the middle of changing, which is exciting, and it's just like creating more space for women to kind of be like, oh, well maybe that's for me, like maybe that's a job that I would be interested in doing.

So I think it's becoming more appealing for women because it's like you're not just sitting on a tractor all day. Absent from the whole system. It's a very interesting job. You're observing different bugs and soil and you're just in it. You're just like in the, in the middle, you know? It's quite nice. You know, back in our grandmother's day, this is what they did.

Their entire backyard was a market garden really, wasn't it? And the women were the ones doing it. I, you know, it wasn't the supermarket situation. They had to grow their own food and they could maybe butcher a. Something and the milk could be delivered, but the rest of it was grow it yourself. So it, it's perfect that women would do it.

Absolutely. Women have always done it. So Georgia reckons, if people learnt more about small scale ag farmers, they'd be more likely to steer away from the big guys. Like there could be a conversation of, Hey, I'd really like tomato. It's in my box and then I can be like, yeah, I'll grow them. Like it's so, oh wow.

So nice to have that relationship around your food. Yeah. And it's not just like, yeah, this empty purchase each time, you know? And it's not with kids. Like I've had friends with kids who, you know, I know the kids really well and they, their parents just have to say like. Georgia grew this and they're like, oh my God.

And they wanna eat it. So it like really changes how they feel about vegetables, which is really cool. You know, I imagine if my kids had seen, because I didn't grow veggies when, you know, I was just trying to keep her life together. When I had kids, we did have some little tomatoes that kind of grew wild and the kids used to love going into the backyard and picking those tomatoes and eating them.

And this is kind of the same. Thing really. You know, my friend Georgia, or totally, you know, my father Georgia, sourcing to Georgia. That is really quite cool. Has this inspired you to wanna know your farmer? Uh, I wanna know Georgia, yes. It has inspired me. I love this idea. I as a mom of two young kids and I hate cooking and all of those things.

I'm always after hacks to fix my life  and I think. This just might be it. Like, I need the kids to eat healthier, I need to be more sustainable. And I think having your own farmer. Yeah, I want one.  You are listening to Queens of the Land, A season of the Telling Our Stories to the World Podcast, brought to you by the Queensland Writers Center and supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland produced by F+K Media. 

Stick around to hear what we've got planned for next season of telling our stories to the world. Hi, Lori-Jay, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Helen. Thanks for having me. You are the CEO for the Queensland Writers Center. Can you tell us what's in the works for next season of telling our stories to the world?

Well, it's fingers crossed at the moment. We are desperately looking for that kind of funding for it, but we are very excited by this one. It's Mornington Island. We are looking up in the Torres Strait Island. We are looking at indigenous and First Nations writers. Capturing their stories, how they wanna capture them.

Really excited. But this is, uh, a long way away. So we've gotta get our bums up there, get our riders up there, put the tools up in place for those people to be able to capture their stories and then to disseminate them and share it with people. Wow, that sounds so exciting and hot. Exciting. And hot and hot.

Yes, I'm very excited to be part of that.  Now, what's the idea behind telling our stories to the world and how long have you been doing it for? So this cycle is number three. Mornington will be number four. We started off with telling our stories to the world as social prescription with Department of Health in Queensland.

So we went out into Longreach and Barcaldine and we were looking for people who were struggling with mental health and using the small act of writing to be able to get them talking about their stories. We quickly understood that there's gonna be people who can write a postcard for us or tell us a story.

Then we found a couple of people who are writers, and that was very exciting. We've got a couple of people now, or published authors from that first wave, and that's from finding them, giving them the tools, like I said, and then they're just off and running with their own stories. So with the postcards, I did this first session myself and we took a book about the lost crayons and when the crayons got lost, they sent a postcard back home. So I had all the little kids. And in these towns you've got children from GR like four years old, up to 14, 15 in the same classroom. So you need something that everyone's gonna be able to do. So we had them just write one or two sentences about, I love living in long reach because, and this is what I do with my family.

Then we told them we were gonna share this postcards, we're gonna post them, uh, around the world. And the first year we went to Germany and Japan and we sent them to classrooms over there and they wrote stories back as well that we then sent back to those schools. So it really was like a postcard exchange, uh, between two different.=

Very different groups of children across the world. This allows us to talk to the children and the children. Go, mom, I really liked this. Take me to the library this afternoon where those trainers are gonna be. Then we get to speak to the parents. So it's really a double kind of, you know, it's a folded environment where we start off here with the aim of like, let's speak to the parents about what their worlds are like out here, and do they have any.

In this particular instant, mental health issues that we needed to tackle. Second Wave was working with climate deniers, so the Department of Science and Environment. Really exciting. You're talking to kids in schools, trying to beat their parents so that we can have that really deep conversation about what does it look like when we tackle climate, when we have to endure it, when we are living with it, it's not going anywhere, so.

What are those changes? Using the kids to get their moms and dads down to the libraries. And again, the small acts of writing. And we found some great stories that we shared through anthologies and things like that.  And then last year, well last year it was Helen's year,  we met with camels. We met with women on their farms, women in rural and regional Queensland, in that southeast region.

And I think what's really important here was.  These stories need to be told in their voices. We haven't homogenized these stories. They are very clearly coming from the land of those, um, people and sharing it with, uh, the rest of the state, the rest of the country, and now on our podcast. We're very excited.

What wonderful project Lori-Jay and I think everyone should get on board with it. Now, if people do have an idea for any seasons, would you like to hear from them? We would love to. In particular if you know something about your region that the rest of us think we know, but we probably have the wrong end of the stick.

'cause you know, we are from the city or we're from, you know, the coast or something like that. We really wanna find. Did you know that this is what happens out here? One of the things that was very exciting with the first telling our stories to the world was we asked kids what it's like to live in Barcaldine?

And they'd be like, I go pig with dad and we have meat and three veg and we are, we will like from the city. We were like, oh really? And is that the same when we send those postcards to the children in Japan? And the kids were like, yes. I'm like, do you think they've got guns?  Oh, wouldn't they? Do you think they go pigging, do you think?

And it was very much this broadening of their world as well as they come in. And that's something we wanna keep their stories, but share them with, uh, the rest of the world and then. Vice versa. So I think that's one of the most powerful things that this project does is share those stories. Thanks so much for that, Laurie, Jay.

It's a really exciting project and I'm very, um, interested in seeing where it goes to next. Well, if anyone calls from Hamilton Island, we are free to also help with those stories. Definitely.