15 September 2022

Day-care drop-off, baby calves and lunch on the run – a day in the life of a busy mother, farmer and student

WRITER: AS TOLD TO SIONAINN MENTOR-KING

PHOTOGRAPHER: ABBE HOARE

In the thick of calving season, with lambing looming on the horizon, farming mum-of-two Michelle Brown, 40, from Te Uri in Tararua, walks us through a day in her action-packed life, juggling farm work, kids, study and personal time.

photos-for-jean-shepherdess-magazine-michelle-brown-2

6:20am. Calving is one of our busiest times of the year. We're sheep and beef, but we have a second lease farm that has a bit of dairy as well. I rear Friesian bull calves here at home, so at the moment I'm getting up at about twenty past six. I make the kids' lunchboxes, make myself a coffee, head out the door and go and feed the calves. We're about to launch into lambing, so it will be lamb feeding, too, for the next six weeks.

8am. I hopefully have them done before eight o'clock, when I come home, get changed and do the day-care drop-off in Norsewood four days a week. For the next week anyway - our youngest, Alexander, is just about five and off to school in a week's time, so my life may become slightly less hectic. It takes about twenty-five minutes to get to day care, so that's roughly an hour round trip. Amelia, our eldest, goes on the school bus at about 8am from the end of our driveway.

9am. With calf rearing, I come home and clean all the rearing stuff and then sometimes I'm helping on the farm with my husband, Duncan, 41; other times, it's paperwork or study. I'm studying to become a personal trainer at the moment. I've always been into exercise and being fit and healthy, but I had gastric sleeve surgery two years ago and since then it's been stepped up another level. I really enjoy that it's something completely not farming. You need that.

If I don't come straight home after day-care drop-off, I'll go to the gym, pick up what I need to in town and then come home or head down to the other farm if they need me down there. There's always meetings with consultants or just catching up, house projects.

My parents are coming next weekend for Alexander's fifth birthday, and I said to my mum last night, "I apologise about the state of my house right now. It's relatively clean, but it is very messy." The bathroom's clean, the kitchen's clean - that's as good as it gets at the moment.

11am. My lunch break is wherever it fits in between eleven o'clock and 2pm. Lunch is a fend-for-yourself type situation. Quite often it's a sandwich on the run. Our other farm is an hour away, so if I'm down there I take a packed lunch with me. If I'm home, occasionally I will make lunch for Duncan, otherwise it's not often we have the same lunch schedule.

3pm. At three o'clock it's pick up from day care. If I'm there when school's finished I pick up Amelia, 8; if not she comes home on the bus. The kids come with me down to feed the calves in the afternoon, or if Duncan's finished on the farm he'll come home and hang out with them. While I'm calf feeding it's really, really busy. I'm so far behind on my admin duties at the moment. I could do with a day in my office, but I don't fit it in at the moment. I'm keeping up with the bare minimum: the bills are paid, and that's about it.

5:30pm. I'm usually pretty good at making sure we're all home by five-thirty. If I'm not home cooking tea, Duncan is. Dinner is our main meal of the day, and I make sure we all sit around the table and chat. We always do the question: "What was your favourite part of the day?" We're lucky we run really well together. I wouldn't be able to do everything I do if I didn't have a very supportive husband who helps pick up the other side of everything. If we didn't look after each other then it wouldn't work, we couldn't do it.

photos-for-jean-shepherdess-magazine-michelle-brown-26

11pm. I go to bed far too late. I should really go to bed at ten, but that last hour is my best hour. My husband's gone to bed, and I just sit there and do what I want - which is generally nothing, but I can't bring myself to put myself in bed any earlier.

I hate the word 'busy' but I do love being busy or doing stuff all the time. My poor husband and kids, sometimes they're like, "No. We just want to sit here. Can we not do something for one day, please?" So I say, "Sit there, then. I'll go do something."

I love hiking, so I've set myself a target of doing forty different walks in my fortieth year. I'm slowly ticking those off in my spare time. I'm only up to five or six since May, but I've got quite a few planned. I'm doing the Tongariro Crossing with a bunch of girlfriends in late October, and I'm doing an adventure race in The Redwoods in Rotorua with my sister and one of my best mates. Then I'm going down to Wanaka, cos there's heaps of peaks down there that I want to conquer.

I'm pretty good at saying 'no' to stuff that doesn't light me up, so most of the stuff I do I genuinely enjoy doing. I mean, I can't say every day when it's pissing down with rain I love going out to feed my calves. But I generally do, I love going down there and feeding them. They all love seeing me. But you've got to say 'no' to some things, otherwise you'll overload yourself.