Callie Fitzpatrick spent her childhood on a farm in Narrabri in New South Wales before the family moved after years of struggle, only for Callie to meet farmer Dan on Tinder and move straight back to the land ten years ago.
Dan is a fourth-generation cattle farmer in Dulacca west of Brisbane.
“We’re mixed farming, so we grow grain, like grain crops, like wheat and barley, and we run cattle,” Dan tells 9honey.
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It isn’t an easy life, the past few years proving particularly challenging for the couple.
“You feel that it’s just you and your husband and your kids and even though there are people around you in the community going through exactly the same thing,” Callie tells 9honey.
She admits to wondering how they would survive.
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“How are we going to get through this?” she recalls thinking.
“The money starts to run out but everything keeps chugging along and you’ve got to wonder how you’re going to tackle everything if you don’t have that thing that makes the world go round,” she shares.
The blended family has three children: Cooper 16, Jada, nine and Poppy, six.
”You’d sit down and let the next day just go and then you’d realise, oh, the problem’s still there, isn’t it?”
There is a community hub where farmers meet up, including a sports club and a pub, but Callie says most conversations are “fleeting.”
“No one gets into the details because obviously that would probably get them quite down when they’re trying to get away from it,” she says.
Callie describes Dan as a “typical male” who struggled to ask for help.
“We bought this place in 2008 and we only had two inches of rain to plant on before we whipped it into shape,” Dan says.
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“2022 was our best year ever, we got all the right rain at the right time and then those [next] couple of years were pretty bad,” he says.
When they have a good year they used the extra funds to pay off debt and make improvements around the farm.
“And because last year we bought eight loads of water and at $1,500 a load, it adds up after a while,” he explains.
It wasn’t until Dan came home to a letter in the mail from the local council about $500 in overdue rates, leading to the potential loss of the farm, that he realised they needed help.
He rang and asked for an extension but was told “no.”
Later that week while driving home Dan saw a sign that read Drought Angels (now called Farm Angels).
“I’d ring and then I’d hang up and then I’d think about it for a minute and I was wondering how I was going to approach things,” he says.
It was the sixth time he rang when he was about to hang up, again, when a person came on the line.
“We were relieved to talk to someone on the other end of the phone and they were genuinely worried, wanting to know how we were and then I told her my problem and she goes, ‘I don’t know what we can do there,’ and then I told her about the letter I’d received in the mail and about them wanting to take me to court or whatever they were going to do and she said, ‘Give me five minutes.””
He wasn’t expecting to hear back from them but sure enough, she called back in five minutes and told Dan: “I’ve spoken to my boss and we’ve read your letter. I think we can pay those rates for you today.”
Dan says he “just about fell off the chair.”
But that wasn’t the end of their help for Dan, Callie and their children.
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“They bring boxes and gifts and a bit of food and tea towels and just stuff that you sort of needed,” Callie recalls. The family also received fuel cards and vouchers to local shops.
“They always come over the big smile a big hug and the kids would always yell out as they saw them come that the angels are here, which was pretty cute,” she says.
Dan recalls Farm Angels staff taking the time to sit down and chat with them about their concerns.
“This volunteer was here one day, he said, ‘What can I do for you around the farm or the house?’ And anyway, I just didn’t know what to say.”
Their youngest Poppy was two years old before she saw rain for the first time and she began “jumping around like a frog” before a thunder clap sent her running back to her parents.
Dan and Callie are sharing their story in the hope that more people will become aware of the important work of Farm Angels.
”It wasn’t the material items, it was just the warmth and the friendship and just being humans to us,” Callie says.
Dan is determined to keep his family on the farm “because that’s where all my kids will grow up and I want their kids to come here too.”
He urges farmers who are struggling to reach out for help.
“Just make the phone call,” he says. And like I said, don’t be too proud. I made the call and that’s where we’ve ended up, without making that phone call, I wouldn’t know where we’d be.”
Callie and Dan are ambassadors for Farm Angels’ upcoming campaign Flanno for a Farmer on August 23, which calls on Australians to don their best flannelette shirt and raise money for farming families in need.
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