By RUSSELL BENNETT
THE term ‘hobby farmers’ doesn’t really suit Longwarry’s Jim and Jo McGuire. ‘Passion farmers’ suits them far more, as RUSSELL BENNETT explains.
“It’s changed a lot over the past 50 years, but Australia’s a great country.”
JIM and Jo McGuire love life – it’s etched across both of their faces. They love their family and friends, they love to travel, and they really love to laugh. Particularly Jim.
And they’re the first to admit how relatively stress-free life is on their Limousin cattle farm.
“I suppose the good thing about it is that we’re not dependent on the farm making money,” Jim said.
“It has to make money because I like to make everything I get involved in work, but it’s not everything in this case.
“On a property this size you really couldn’t be dependent on it for your survival.
“But we’re very self-contained here. We do enough silage and hay and everything on the land to feed the best part of 100 head of cattle.
“It’s a hobby, but that said if the grass isn’t right I’m going to plant more grass. I like everything to be as good as I can possibly get it.”
Jim and Jo run around 90 head of cattle on the 85-acre property they’ve gradually built up since their 40 years in the construction industry.
“After running a business for 40-odd years, it sticks with you to do things properly,” Jo said with a smile.
“Jim and I were both brought up on farms in Ireland but the construction industry was what we made our money out of.”
Jim grew up on a cattle farm in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. As the only boy alongside three sisters, much of the responsibility for the physical farm work rested on his shoulders.
But he was just 16 years old when he left his homeland because of the political conflict.
Jo, meanwhile, grew up on a farm in Tipperary in southern Ireland and was one of nine children. Having lost both of her parents when she was a toddler, her older siblings raised her and kept the farm going.
The pair met in London, where they were both working at the time, and came to Australia in 1967.
“In London at the time they were advertising constantly for people to come to Australia, on that $20 thing,” Jo said.
“I already had a brother and sister out here and Tony was 11 months old and we’d just started family life, so we thought we’d give it a go.”
Jim said they’d seen all the TV ads of sunshine and people surfing on beaches, but quickly added: “They’d shown us Queensland of course!”
After 40 years in the game, Jim and Jo handed over control of their construction business, McGuire and Ryan, to their boys Tony and Allen.
“You’ll find most Irish people like machinery, moving earth and using their hands – all that kind of stuff. Our two sons Tony and Allen are still involved and they’re very good at it,” Jim said.
Tracey, Jim and Jo’s daughter, is the only one of the family not involved in her own company. But one wonders if it’s just a matter of time, given her upbringing.
“The boys were running the business while we were still in the background, up until we retired out of it,” Jim said of his sons.
“They still wanted us to stay in the background when they started their development business and I said no – it’s all yours, because if we’re in the background they’ll have their own ideas and they’ll always ask me what I think.
“They’re young, or younger, and their ideas are completely different to the way I would think so I thought they should find their own way.
“Then if they made a blue they’d appreciate it and if they came to me for advice and I could give it to them, I would. They’ve been really good – they’re too shrewd. They got that from their mother!”
Bottom line, Jim said his family owed a lot to their adoptive country.
“It’s changed a lot over the past 50 years, but Australia’s a great country,” he said.
“If you want to have a go at something, the opportunity is there and nobody is going to stand in your way.
“It’s a great saying: “She’ll be right – give it a go, mate!”
Jim and Jo headed straight to Emerald after arriving in Australia, and within five days Jim had a job with a water company putting in pipelines. It was that fast.
They eventually sold their property in the hills and moved to a one-acre block in Berwick. To say that didn’t suit Jim is a slight understatement.
“We bought a one-acre joint in Berwick with a beautiful home but I couldn’t stay any longer there,” he said.
“I’d come home to the beautiful houses beside me and the people were all nice people, but to me I’d come in and have a shower, sit down and watch TV. There was just nothing to do.
“We have to stay busy – so we bought this place here with a little old farmhouse on it.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
After farming a range of British-bred cattle, Jim and Jo got into Limousins in 2006.
“That’s when I discovered by crossing British-bred cattle with a Limousin bull your vealers were worth a fair bit more, so then we started looking into that side of it,” Jim said.
“But if you come into something like this without the backing we had, you probably wouldn’t have been able to put that sort of effort into it.
“When we got into Limousins, the first sire I bought was $10,000. I didn’t believe in anything less than top quality. So, unless you had another business behind you, you couldn’t do that.”
Jim said the biggest challenges he and Jo faced on their property, Parkdale Willows, was price.
“The cattle prices are coming up at the moment but they fluctuate from day to day, week to week,” he said.
“Really and truly I don’t know how really big farmers exist because it’s a hard wicket.
“We’re virtually hobby farmers – we’re just working after our retirement – but there are more honest men in jail than some of those meat suppliers!”
As for the climate – Jim and Jo have no issues there.
“Even during the 12 years of drought we were still OK – we weren’t bad,” Jim said. “We were complaining but we’d talk to professional farmers living in different areas and it was day and night.
“We’re not the sort of people to say we had too many problems. Everything has been pretty good.”
The pair said their biggest enjoyment with their farming came through new breeds and genetics.
“We love going to shows and seeing what other people have developed in this country and what’s been brought in from overseas,” Jo said.
“We look at it and think we’d like to try something like that and see where we go. “You’re not successful every time you try but we do get a lot of enjoyment out of new genetics.”
Really, it’s little wonder that Jim says: “While I’m still here, I’m going to run with cattle”.
