NO sooner has Mark Killen stepped out of his vehicle in a wind-bashed paddock just outside Merriwa, NSW, than more than 1000 animals rush towards him.
“Here they come,” the farmer says, as a smile erupts from within his neatly trimmed goatee.
The ground doesn’t shake; rather it looks as though it is wobbling.
A wave of feathers flutters over the grass, accompanied by the frenetic sounds of clucking and chortling.
Within seconds the wave is swirling around Mark’s feet.
His legs are being swamped by Bond Black chickens.
“The way they live their lives, it’s fascinating,” he says above the chook din. In turn, the chickens have helped him change the way he lives.
They have made the grass greener, both on his property and in the way he has viewed his world as a farmer.
And in answering that conundrum of what came first –the chicken or the egg – in the life of Mark, at least, the sequence is clear.
First there were the chickens, then came the eggs.
Connoisseurs and chefs seek out the eggs, and recently those eggs won a gold medal at the delicious. Produce Awards.
Like the product itself, the eggs’ name fills the mouth and holds a direct link to the land where they are created: Papanui.
Mark was born into farming. He is from a line of farmers dating back to the mid-1800s.
In 1964, when Mark was about five, his father, Richard, moved the family onto the property called Papanui.
There were chooks out the back of the house, but young Mark didn’t like them.
“I thought they were horrible things, I wouldn’t touch them,” he chuckles. “I knew nothing about them. Mum took care of them.”
Richard spent less and less time on Papanui as he moved further into the politics of the land.
He became a senior member of the National Party and was a member of the NSW Upper House for a decade.
His son effectively took over the running of the 900-hectare property, which produced crops and beef cattle.
Yet Mark’s life and livelihood were making him sick.
"I'm allergic to wheat dust," he said.
Years of being miserable brought on a "mid-life crisis”.
- See story page 11