“We’re fortunate to keep this place through droughts, floods, and just every five or six years we get a bad year and we, being a farmer, you just know how to get through those bad years.
“And so, it’s just meant everything to me. All my life, that’s all it’s been, the farm.”
Mr Hepworth said farmers were the ‘greatest naturalist people in the world’ because if they did not look after their ground, it would be gone.
“It’s the same as if you don’t look after your wife, she’ll be gone too, won’t she?” he said, with a chuckle.
Mr Hepworth acknowledged that some landowners wanted windfarms, while others did not.
“Then they don’t tell each other what’s going on, and then they’re squabbling and fighting,” he said.
“It never happened years ago. The farmers always went to their neighbours before they did any-
thing, and it’s all gone out of the back window.”
Mr Hepworth said money being offered by the energy companies was driving a wedge between neighbours.
“They’re not thinking about the friendship that over the 100 years that they’ve been there. They’re not thinking about the friendship that their forefathers brought together,” he said.
“Now this family’s not talking to family members and it’s bad. It’s bringing a big division in amongst the population.”
“And we can’t afford to have too many people not being friends in the country because that’s what it’s all about.”
Mr Hepworth said neighbours needed to get along and communicate, not avoid each other at the supermarket.
“That’s not the country way of life,” he said.
“They’re ruined them in that country way of life. But people have just got to be wary that you want to talk to your neighbours and your friends before you do anything like this because it’s going to wreck the whole community.”
The entire November 27, 2024 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!
The entire November,27, 2024 edition of AgLife is available online. READ IT HERE!
