Farming, Family, and Feelings: Life on the Land with Louise

Welcome to the new Lambscape column with Louise O’Neill –  a rural wellness expert and West Australian sheep producer.

Each month, the director of Farm Life Fitness – a counselling, fitness and wellbeing organisation – will share musing from life on the farm with some practical health tips for everyone on the land.  

Welcome Louise…. 

Like many of you, I wear multiple hats—a rural counsellor, a mum, a wife, and a farmer navigating the ups and downs of trading sheep. I want to start by saying: I get it.

Farming is something we do for love, isn’t it? But lately, it feels like we’re being hit from every angle. If it’s not the rise and fall of sheep prices, it’s policies and legislation that leave us scratching our heads. And then there’s the weather—why does Mother Nature seem to enjoy keeping us on our toes? 

We’re based in Denmark, WA. Some might assume we’re stress-free because we get rain. But rain alone doesn’t make things easy. It takes more than water to maintain animal health.  It takes healthy soil, smart land management, and hard lessons. Despite our efforts, we’ve watched sheep fail to gain weight, battled copper deficiencies, and fought foot rot, to name a few things. The impact on our bottom line has been real and painful. 

This season, like many, we’ve had to pivot. With sheep prices and legislation tightening the belt and increasing pressure, my husband now works off-farm all week, shearing. I stay back, run the farm, my business, and manage the house and kids. I’m grateful we both have other income streams, but this was never the dream when we sold our 5th-generation farm in the Wheatbelt 5 years ago. That feeling of failure? It sneaks in during those quiet, sleepless hours. 

But have we failed? No. We’ve adapted. We’re working to our strengths and doing what we need to do to keep going, for now. If you’re reading this, I hope you can appreciate my honesty and solidarity. Over the next few issues, I’ll be sharing tried and tested, research-backed tools that might help you navigate the hard times and embrace the good.  The challenges will keep coming but, we’re in this together. And with the right strategies, I believe we can do more than just hang on—we can move forward. 

More? Follow Louise on instagram @farm.lifefitness