I sent Kane Brisco an email: How about I phone you on Sunday morning? Yes, he replied. No problem. 6.30am? Oh, how I laughed! I pushed him out to 9am.
I get up around 5.30am all year round, he says, the very idea causing all manner of involuntary shuddering at my end. I was recently parted from my duvet, just starting into that first crucial coffee of the day, while Brisco had already been working for nearly four hours.
Weve been feeding out today, he informs me, sounding gruesomely chipper. Actually, at calving time I get up even earlier, around 4.30am.
Brisco is a share milker on a farm in Taranaki, which in itself is unremarkable. All over the country at this time of year, people like Brisco are declining the allure of a warm bed, stomping out in the frosty dark to cup cows and feed out hay so that the rest of us late-sleepers might have milk for our coffee and the opportunity to take out a mortgage for a block of cheese at the local supermarket.
It is hard, thankless and largely isolated work, and exacts a heavy price on the men and women who do it. Brisco knows this from bitter experience. He has experienced periods of deep depression in the job, and thats motivated him to do something that is remarkable: going to great lengths to help other farmers look after their mental health.
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Brisco posts helpful Farm Fit videos on Facebook and Instagram, organises boot camps and operates a farmer-friendly outdoor gym. He organises a sponsored Gumboot Run where farmers and their supporters jog for miles in floppy boots. He speaks to community groups about rural mental health, and has just written a book - part memoir, part self-help guide - entitled Tools for the Top Paddock.
Ive been a farmer for 18 years, and even at the best of times its a bloody tough job. I went through my own shit and thought - what can I do to help others? Thats where the idea of Farm Fit came about. Being fit and healthy makes the physical side easier, and also gives you mental clarity. When youve got more energy and you can think clearly, you make better decisions.
Farmers are often dealing with different problems depending on age, he reckons.
Older guys get a lot of financial pressure, and also regulations and technology are changing rapidly, which is a big mental challenge for them. With younger ones, theyve often come straight out of high school into dairy farming and discovered its really hard yakka. Theyve been living with mum and dad and suddenly theyre doing 12-hour days in the cold and wet up some remote road somewhere away from all their mates.
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Briscos goal is to encourage farmers to find ways to fill their cup so the job doesnt become too much.
In the past, a higher level of physical fitness helped offset the pressures of the job.
Farmers used to be digging postholes, spraying gorse on hillsides. When I started out, you were running around hills with a knapsack. Now you might be in a milking shed cupping cows for three hours or sitting on your arse in a tractor, feeding out. And then calving time arrives, which is like the Tri Nations for the All Blacks; thats when your fitness gets proven on the field. You have to work hard building your fitness leading into that so you can handle it.
Like most farmers, Brisco treats the weather as some sort of cosmic joke foisted upon us by a capricious god, but he gets the last laugh by preparing for all eventualities.
There he is in one of his Facebook videos, standing in his driveway auctioning an electric fence unit for charity. If you have shithouse power on your farm, this is what you need he says to camera. Its a beast!
Brisco wears a thick blue-and-white checked long-sleeved woollen shirt that suggests mid-winter, but pan down and you find a pair of rad blue shorts with an orange racing stripe that just screams summer. Travel even further south and there are fleecy merino socks that might suit the Antarctic. No shoes.
Mate, I wear shorts all year round! As long as the old up-tops warm and the feet are warm, Im good to go. Its Taranaki, mate. Four seasons in one day. You have to be prepared for everything.
ANDY MACDONALD / STUFF/Stuff
Ive been a farmer for 18 years, and even at the best of times its a bloody tough job, says Brisco.
He is a natural comedian. Great timing, smooth delivery, deep knowledge of his target demographic. Another video offers training tips for the upcoming fundraising Gumboot Run: Imagine youve picked up a partner in a dodgy part of the country maybe Hamilton or Stratford, or the Clarendon [Hotel] in Waverley and you need extra protection. He then slides two pairs of socks over his wiggling pink feet like giant woolly condoms.
Theres liberal swearing, but its joyful rather than gratuitous: a garnish to a heaped helping of wise words about self-belief, personal responsibility, having pride in your work, the difficulties of dealing with a boss whos an absolute ball-sack.
Whnau are never far away. Brisco is filming on his deck in one clip, encouraging fellow farmers to get out for a run or walk in the evening. Mt Taranaki stands proud on the horizon, the setting sun flooding the scene in soft orange light. Suddenly, two of his daughters hoon out of the house in their PJs and hug his long legs. Brisco introduces his kids as my little mates, but the youngest frowns and protests Im not little!.
Other clips find him in the stockyards, giving some cows penicillin for mastitis while talking about managing stress, or running up a ridgeline along a bush road, reflecting on ways to manage lifes inevitable failures while also taking time to celebrate your successes.
The main thing, he reckons, is to encourage farmers to find ways to fill their cup so the job doesnt become too much.
I try to get people to build even a few hours into their week where they get off the farm and do something physical and maybe social as well. Go for a hike or drive into town for a game of squash. Connecting with nature and connecting with other people is key. Theres bugger-all time these days to lean on the fence having a yak because were all so busy, so people arent as connected with their local community. Thats partly why I started doing the boot camps.
To help farmers reconnect with their neighbours, Brisco set up Farm Fit classes on his driveway with some skipping ropes, a few free weights and some boxing gear.
It ran twice a week after milking, January till July when calving started. Five people showed up at first, and I was expecting less, because its a half-hour drive to get here. As it got bigger, I concocted a basic set-up in a horse paddock next to the house with hay bales and tractor tyres people could roll or flip. I got sledgehammers out so you could whack the tyres - like chopping wood, but less productive. I filled up hessian sacks as sandbags and got people carrying strainer posts - things that related to real work people do.
ANDY MACDONALD / STUFF/Stuff
Mental health wise, a lot of stuff Ive been through is pretty similar to other struggling farmers, he says.
A few years back, he organised a half-marathon in gumboots around the district, raising more than $7000 for charity.
Since then, the Gumboot Run has grown into a big thing nationwide, even though gumboots are a bastard to run in. You get a few blisters, even with multiple socks, but it raises a lot of money. Rather than farmers digging into their own pockets, I got rural businesses to sponsor runners all over the country, coughing up a certain amount per kilometre.
The initial goal was to get enough runners signed up to run the countrys length - around 1600km. In the end, so many joined in, they ran the length of the country three times over.
We raised over 20 grand for (mental health charity) I Am Hope and (suicide prevention charity) Will to Live. That money will enable some people in the farming community to get the help they need so they dont leave the job or hit rock bottom.
Somewhere along the way, a publisher hit him up to write a book about his life and what hes learned.
Mental health wise, a lot of stuff Ive been through is pretty similar to other struggling farmers, so theres tips for managing the strain and finding your way out of that. I just hope its useful to people.
Hes also hopeful Tips for the Top Paddock might help address the misconceptions of townies, who seldom think about dairy farmers with much understanding or compassion, tending instead to demonise them as huge contributors to Aotearoas greenhouse gas emissions and prime polluters of the nations waterways.
That was a big part of my own depression, to be honest. I was doing a job I loved and feeling like people hated me for it. A lot of farmers feel that, particularly over the last 10 years as the rural/urban divide has deepened. Id say 95% of farmers care deeply about the land and their animals, but a few bad eggs get all the media attention and give the rest of us a bad name. Nobody loves the land more than I do. You cant do this job successfully without that love running deep. We have to put our hand up and admit that farmers havent always done things right in the past, but we understand ecosystems better now and most farmers are making good changes.
If you dont believe him, Brisco invites you to slip on your togs and head for the Taranaki hinterland.
A lot of townies might be shocked to come out here and have a swim in the farm waterways and see how much cleaner they are than the waterways downstream from their own town. Ive never worked on a farm where I wouldnt swim in the creeks and the lakes, and Ive been doing this for 20 years.
There is still work to do, he admits, both to protect the environment and to nurture the wellbeing of those working on the land.
It used to be that as a profession, farmers had the highest suicide rate in this country, but I think weve been overtaken by builders now. Thats shocking, so were doing what we can to help change that. We get powerful messages confirming that this work has saved lives, and that puts a bit of wood on the fire to keep going.
Tools for the Top Paddock: Lessons from a Life on the Land by Kane Brisco is available Wednesday
Go here to see the original:
Meet the farmer changing the way we think about rural mental health - Stuff
