SMOKO STORIES - Alison Rees

 " EVERYTHING COMES BACK TO THE LAND"

In 2019 Alison made the decision to leave her hometown of Swansea and embark on a new adventure travelling and working around New Zealand. Almost four years later Alison is still there, with her boyfriend Joe living their dream of working in the agricultural industry. Here, in her own words, Ali tells me about her love of the land.

FF. Let's start at the beginning. What's your background and have you always lived rurally?

AR. Yea I have. I've lived in Rhossili most of my life and grew up surrounded by the rural community of Gower. Mum always had her own flock of black welsh mountain sheep on the land where I was growing up along with ducks and chickens. I vividly remember before my brothers were born we got an old ice cream sign from the local village, took all the stickers off and put new ones on to sell the eggs straight from the farm gate. In school I was always really good at art and creative subjects. The local Gower Show and in particular the arts and crafts tent, where I competed in all the competitions, was where I discovered my love of being creative. I would also win money if I won any prizes from the competitions, and some years would come home with roughly thirty pounds because I would have entered forty competitions in total. It was a big amount of money to me. This love of researching a theme and being able to find different ways to be creative continued through to my Young Farmers Club days. I remember winning a cookery competition and going on to compete in the Royal Welsh Show. The cooking wasn't all that good but I remember putting a lot of time and effort into the presentation of the dishes and I soon realised I had a flare for designing stuff.

FF. So what qualifications did you do once you left school?

AR. For my A-Levels I did Maths, History, Art, Biology and Geology but I dropped Geology because it turned out not to be what I thought it was. At college there was an opportunity to apply for an Oxford or Cambridge programme for any students that were achieving over a certain grade level. I was the only person doing an art subject that got chosen to go that year. Oxford University was the only university out of the two which offered a course in Fine Art, therefore I soon realised that I may struggle through the application stages of being offered a place due to the limited spaces available. So instead I went and did a foundation year at Swansea where students do several different creative courses that include fashion, photography and fine art to name a few. It was whilst completing this course that I discovered  it wasn't fine art I wanted to do, rather it was the 3D art aspect I enjoyed more. 

FF. So did you go to university?

AR. Yes I did. So on completion of my foundation course the decision to go to University came and I knew I wanted to be on the coast as I've always grown up by the sea. I wanted to be somewhere that wasn't too far away from rural landscapes. No way in hell was I going to London basically! Out of my five choices I loved Brighton. It had a completely different culture to Gower but it was all surrounded by the South Downs. Throughout my degree I'd always go and forage and collect stuff that had washed up on the beach and I would use all those gatherings as part of my inspiration for whatever themed project we were doing at the time

Whilst at Brighton University I discovered this charity called 'The Real Junk Food Project'. Basically they were located in a disused church and they collected surplus food from supermarkets that was out of date or wonky in shape. The reason I came to learn about them was because the food was free. As most students are aware, being at university the rent was extortionate so I thought sod it I'm going there for a free meal. My mum has always brought me up not to waste anything, for example if you have rotten bananas, then make a banana bread. From going there I learnt about  the worldwide homeless population and the amount of surplus food just thrown away and the methods the supermarkets were using to try and stop dumpster diving or the food being used elsewhere. It just made me look back at my childhood surrounded by all the farmers who had worked their balls off all year around to produce a product for the consumer. All of that hard work just appeared to have gone down the pan. And that's not rotten vegetables or meat, its stuff that was still safe to eat, it just had a best before date on it. So I decided to start volunteering for this group. I became fascinated about knowing where all this food comes from, and how the hell it goes through this massive, big complicated system to then end up in the rubbish bin.

A lot of the work I researched for a number of different projects at university for both my degree and masters qualifications ended up coming back to agriculture and in particular the government policies and politics within it. What I discovered is that it's education that is really going to change anything towards people's attitudes and change the way they think about food.

FF. So you finished your degree and you completed your Masters. How have you ended up coming back to the land? What made you come to New Zealand?

AR. At the end of my Masters qualification the lecturers wanted me to do a PhD to develop the work I had been doing on government policies and exploring why our food system is the way that it is and try to discover what aspects potentially need to change. It's a bottleneck system that starts with the farmer who produces the product that then travels through this system of politics and government money which then opens back out again to the consumer. Doing a PhD was one option, which potentially I still would like to do later in life or the other option was to go and see the world. All the research I had done was based on a global scale but only with the knowledge of the British agricultural industry. Therefore my plan was to travel to New Zealand for a year, then to Australia for two years, then possibly South America for roughly a year and potentially do an eight year stint travelling and working around the world seeing how different cultures farm compared to the local scale I knew from home. I used to get frustrated sitting in the library reading up on different countries and their farming methods but not really understanding them as I hadn't physically worked or seen it happening. I guess I realised I was an academic person to a certain level but I need the practical side to go along with it. When I was at University and I used to have heated debates with my housemates or classmates who were vegans, I was the only one with any understanding of what a farmer goes through in a day and what their job as a farmer means to them. It's not as simple as changing the whole system to what others think it should be when they had no experience of producing a product. It's conversations like that that really start a fire burning inside me. There's more to farming than making money. It's part of your soul. Human beings need shelter, water and food and you are basically sorted. We don't need anything else as they just don't matter. As far as I am concerned agriculture is the only thing that does matter. It doesn't matter what we wear or what car we drive, as long as we are fed, have shelter and are loved then what more does a human want. Everything comes back to the land.

Both myself and Joe would still like to travel the world, however after working in New Zealand through the Covid pandemic, we have both fallen in love with this country. We both agree that this is where we would like to come back to. I definitely think part of me will end up back at home in Wales at some point as I don't think I'm finished at home yet. However, for me while I am in my prime this is the country I want to be based. Joe and I have both worked on a number of different farms since being in New Zealand and have worked towards getting residency which we now have which will now enable us the freedom to keep trying new things. But as we all know with the Covid pandemic and other issues, life is good at throwing a spanner in the works so you can never fully have a plan for the future.

FF. Who would you say has been your inspiration through this agricultural journey so far and what impact have they had on you to help you achieve what you have?

AR. That's a really difficult question to answer. Mum is definitely my number one, in fact my parents both are as they are both agriculturally connected to the land and rural communities. My upbringing wasn't the easiest and I guess a lot of my drive is a response of me saying I can do this on my own. My mum has brought me up that I have to be strong and I have to do it for myself. But definitely my mum as she brought me up on her own and she loves the land. She loves foraging, she just loves everything about it. It's in her blood therefore it's in mine. But all my academic inspirations have come from all the lecturers I have had through school, college and university over the years. Tom in particular through my degree and masters was amazing at getting me to question and challenge the information I was collecting and evaluating and basically helping me phrase what I was exactly trying to say. Honestly though I would say everyone who has played a part in my life so far has inspired me to get to where I am now for sure whether it's for good or bad reasons.

FF. What farming system are you working within now in New Zealand?

AR. I am working on a dairy farm milking a herd of 880 cows in Patearoa in Central Otago on the South Island of New Zealand. In recent years the farm has gradually been reducing its livestock numbers down from just over 1000 head of cattle split between two milking herds. The farm used to be a low input max output farm with a massive herd of not necessarily high production cows. There was no herd testing, no concentrates in the shed and it was a case of pumping as much milk out as possible without having to invest heavily into the business. There was a change in the farm ownership which meant changes to the farming business. The new owner is very forward thinking and understands where the farm needs to be. She is very knowledgeable about the policies within New Zealand agriculture and the fact they are changing for the future and therefore knows where the business needs to be to stand on its own two feet in roughly ten years time. The rough farm plan from my understanding is to invest where needed in the business and reduce cow numbers with the aim to produce the same amount of milk. The farm is located in a extremely dry area of New Zealand which means we have four irrigation pivots and there are two dams on farm also. The farm is roughly 450 hectares and is heavily reliant on the irrigation in order to grow the grass to feed the livestock. It will be interesting to see where the farm is in another five years as there have been a lot of changes with regard to nitrogen applications in recent years which have had an effect on the management systems the farm has previously been using.

FF. What advice would you give to anyone thinking about working in this industry? 

AR. Talk to your friends. Talk to people because it's really really hard. When I'm working my two weeks and feel on top of the world because I'm smashing it and thinking about how much I love this job I realise that I wouldn't want to be doing anything else with my life, but unfortunately no person working in agriculture feels like that all the time. It's hard and it knocks you down. It constantly throws obstacles at you and you fight things which are not just physically owned by the business such as the weather or new government legislations and things which are out of your control. But policies are changing all the time and unfortunately they are not always changing in farmers' favours, if anything it just makes the job more difficult. Financially it is extremely hard to stay afloat year on year because you are depending on the weather which is always changing, you're depending on exports and imports. Therefore you need to have people that you can talk to, share your concerns with and just offload.

FF. Do you think there has always been a stigma in Agriculture that you have to be tough and strong?

AR. For sure. You've just got to get on with it. In farming, you tend to work on your own all day for long periods of time. The farmers make me laugh when they pass each other on the roads in their trucks or see each other at the pub because they talk for ages and sometimes hours on end. When I was younger I used to get really impatient waiting for them to finish talking, but now I wouldn't dare hurry them along because those conversations are important. The work can always be done tomorrow in order for these guys to talk to each other. I'm actually bad for not doing it, talking that is, but I'm thankful I have Joe to come home to and cry or offload if I have had a bad day and he understands what I am talking about. When I have been feeling rock bottom, and I have called my mum sometimes she questions if I want to come back home, and most of the time that isn't what I want, I just want a listening ear. And it's important that people know that they don't need to respond with answers, they just need to listen and understand that I may be feeling shit today. I definitely feel a lot better when I have spoken to someone about things. It's an opportunity to offload the worries, stress and anxieties and get them out of my system. You need to get those feelings out of your mind somehow otherwise if you are like me you might feel as if you are going to explode.

FF. What do you do to take care of your mental health?

AR. I really enjoy gardening and growing my own food as much as possible. Watching my seedlings grow into these massive green leafy herbs or vegetables etc. And again it all comes back to agriculture and growing your own food and knowing the work involved in doing it. It teaches me patience as well as the nurturing skills to help them grow. Dairy farming isn't the most physical job in agriculture however due to the long hours we work it can be mentally challenging and all I want to do at the end of a working day is come home and collapse on the sofa. When I pull up outside my house at the end of the day and I see my vegetables all in pots and I see that my first tomato has appeared in a season, it's just amazing to be able to see the different stages of a plant and get excited about something I have produced. It's the same when you have a sick animal and you look after it and it gets better, there is nothing more rewarding than that, knowing you have helped.

Other hobbies include going diving on our days off, we travel to the coast which is roughly one and a half hours drive away, but I have to go to the sea and be near water. So myself and Joe have our kayaks and diving gear and that's what we like to do in our spare time.

FF. What would you say is one item of clothing you can't farm without?

AR. For sure it's my gumboots (wellington boots) as I have circulation problems therefore my boots are insulated and heavy duty but that's needed for all the work I have to do and I live and work in them every single day. However, if I was to pick an item of clothing, my sports bra would be the one item I couldn't farm without because its a cross over bra and I'm naturally quite busty which means I hunch a lot therefore when I am milking I realised I was hunching over more than I probably should have been. I invested in a particular sports bra which helps look after my posture when I am milking and helps me to roll my shoulders back.

FF. Final question. So calving and mating has finished, your main job now is to just milk the cows so you're in that shed for an afternoon milking. What is your song of choice if you just want to get those ladies milked on a sunny day in order to get home and enjoy the evening sunshine?

AR. That's difficult! Right I'm just going to pretend I'm in the shed now and thinking to myself that I am just going to smash this milking out. (Alison takes out her phone to take a look) That's a really tricky question but hang on, I think I know what it would be. It would probably at the moment be 'Fasta' by Riton and Kah-Lo. But my music choices change all the time, I can't say I have a song that I go to all the time but that would be my selection at the moment. I have five or six playlists that I have made for myself for working in the milking shed. I have my chilled feels playlist which includes Bob Dylan, Stereophonics and the kind of sad slow songs which are easy going and then I've got my R&B gangster playlist that includes the likes of Stormzy which reminds me of my university years in Brighton. I have a hard core playlist which has all the club classics on that I would have listened to at the Young Farmers dances and at the Royal Welsh Show Week for example as they all bring back good memories of the farming community back home.