The Toughest Day Letting Go Of The Farm

For those making impossible decisions this season, and for everyone who has stood at the gate knowing there were no easy options left.

There are days that stay with you forever. Not because you want them to, but because they shape you in ways you never expected. The toughest day of my farming life was not the first day the drought hit, nor the sixth year when hope was threadbare and tired. It was the day I had to let my cows go.

Seven years of drought wears a person down quietly at first. You tell yourself next season will be different. You tighten belts, make hard calls, borrow resilience from tomorrow and push on. You do it because that’s what farmers do. We endure. We adapt. We keep feeding stock, checking troughs, watching the sky and hoping for a break.

But drought is relentless, insidious. It doesn’t just dry up paddocks; it drains confidence, savings, relationships and sleep. Every decision becomes heavier than the last. Every calculation feels like a gamble with stakes that are deeply personal. The land that once sustained you and your family and becomes a constant daily noose around your neck .

On that hardest of days, the numbers no longer worked. There was no feed left to buy that wouldn’t push us further into a hole we could never climb out of. I stood in the dairy yard knowing I could no longer do the one thing that mattered most to me as a farmer: care properly for my animals. Because I believed I had 3 clear goals to achieve, Look after my Farm, Look after my Animals, and that would allow me to look after my Family. That realisation hurt more than any balance sheet ever could.

I managed to sell a small number of cows to other dairy areas. That brought a strange mix of relief, guilt and loss. Relief that they would have a chance, guilt that I couldn’t provide it myself. The rest had no other option.

They walked up the dairy yard like they had done thousands of times before. Heads down, hooves crunching, familiar sounds echoing across a farm that suddenly felt very quiet. This time, though, there was no return journey. It would be a one way trip.

The trucks were waiting. A two-kilometre trip to Greenhams. I remember watching them load, each animal stepping forward without knowing what the day meant. I knew. And that knowledge sat heavy in my chest.

As the trucks crossed the front gate, it hit me all at once. Years of care, love and breeding were leaving the farm in the back of those trucks. Meticulous decisions, which cows to join, which calves to keep, which bloodlines to back, gone in a moment. It wasn’t just stock leaving. It was history, effort and hope rolling down the road.

Farmers are taught to be tough. To get on with it. To not show emotion. But there is nothing easy or routine about watching years of work, care and connection drive away in the back of a truck. These cows weren’t numbers. They were animals I had bred, milked, treated and worried about. They were part of the rhythm of my days and the identity I carried.

As the trucks pulled out, the dust hung in the air longer than usual. I stood there longer than I needed to, unsure where to go next or what to do with myself. The farm felt empty in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Silence has a weight when you’re used to constant noise.

Losing the farm wasn’t just a financial loss. It was the loss of a future I had imagined, the loss of a role I was proud of, and the loss of a sense of purpose that had guided me for years. It felt like failure, even though drought is something no one can control.

What I didn’t understand then was how deeply that day would follow me. Not just in grief, but in growth. It cracked something open. It forced me to confront the reality that resilience is not about endless endurance. It’s about capacity. About knowing when the load is too heavy to carry alone.

That day taught me that farmers need permission to talk about the hard stuff, not just the heroic stories of survival.

I think now of pastoralists and producers across Australia who are facing their own versions of that day. Those battling prolonged drought, flood recovery, fires, market pressure and rising costs. Those quietly doing the sums at the kitchen table, wondering how much longer they can hold on. The weight they carry is immense, and too often invisible.

For anyone currently watching feed run out, water dry up, or stock conditions deteriorate despite their best efforts, I want you to know this: the grief you feel is real and valid. The bond you have with your animals and land is not something you can simply switch off. Making decisions to protect animal welfare, even when it breaks your heart, is an act of integrity, not failure. We need space to acknowledge loss, shame, anger and exhaustion. We need to know that stepping away does not mean we are weak or unworthy.

If you’ve stood at the gate and watched something you love disappear down the road, you’re not alone. If you’ve made decisions that broke your heart but protected your values, you’re not alone. And if you’re still carrying the weight of a day like mine, know this: it does not define your worth.

That day was one of the toughest of my life. But it was also the beginning of a deeper understanding of what it means to be unbreakable, not because you never fall, but because you find a way to keep going, even when everything you knew has changed.

This is for those making impossible decisions this season for the pastoralists, dairy farmers and producers choosing animal welfare over everything else, carrying grief quietly, and doing the best they can with what they have.