Family farming secrets on record

Recording those familial stories by the current generation is as much an act of veneration to those who made the great leap and established a life in a new place, as it is an attempt to understand the future.

Because, if you don't know where you have come from, you have little idea about where you go from here.

All farming families have a wonderfully unique story to relate, but few sit down and extend those back verandah yarns into a book.

Colin Seis is most well known in the pastoral industry for his ground breaking ideas in restoring the land for its aesthetic appeal and at the same time maintaining agricultural productivity.

He is the fourth generation of his family at Winona, Gulgong, where he has a Merino stud and a Kelpie stud.

He has previously written about his Kelpie enterprise, so he had some prior experience in writing when he determined to record his families experiences on the land.

"I started writing a long time ago because I was interested in our farming history here at Winona," Colin said.

"When I started the book, I found that my four-times grandparents had been convicts who owned a farm in western Sydney in the early 1800s.

"And that was interesting because it had never been talked about in my family.

"Dad had never talked about it when he was telling me the stories of his grandmother."

Indeed, when Colin's sister Helen, also began to look into the origins of the Seis family in NSW, she also hit a "brick wall", when delving into their convict ancestors.

"We didn't have any access or knowledge of the convicts, but I did eventually find out enough to form the beginnings of my book," he said.

With our current understanding of the founding of NSW as a penal colony and respect for those who built this state through their physical strength, it is hard to appreciate the social stigma attached to having convict heritage.

Now that we have overcome that sense of shame, authors like Colin Seis can write with admiration for their ancestors.

"A lot of my early knowledge of my family came from my father," he said.

"And he could remember the stories his grandmother, who recalled life on the land in the 1860s, told him."

Indeed, those remembered anecdotes formed the basis of Colin's latest book, Custodians of the Grasslands.

"It was almost like I had something in my mind for a long time because my father had told me all of those family stories," he said.

"And when I sat down, I did enjoy writing it."

Colin's great grandmother comes through this book as the true heroine of the family.

It was Granny Seis who set the family farm at Gulgong on its successful path, after her husband Nicholas had lost his leg in an accident.

It was fortunate that she was the daughter of a shepherd, because Granny Seis took on the management of the property and sheep, while Nicholas looked after the house, their children and the house garden.

"It was her experiences that Dad heard and remembered which he passed onto me," Colin said.

"Dad was her first-born grandson so she obviously wanted him to know her family history.

"My great-grandmother had a wonderful memory and could recall of lot of detail."

There is, however, more to Colin's book than his family history.

This is a story about one family's various management practices in making a living off the land.

"We must accept that each generation has had a significant impact and they have done a lot of damage, but not deliberately," he said.

"Each in their way did what they thought was the accepted course.

"It is interesting that Granny Seis might have been the most conscious in that she had a totally different way of looking after the land.

"Females are more nurturing, and she was looking after the environment as well as the sheep."

This is the story of how mid-20th-century agriculture failed, inflicting severe ecological damage on the land.

For Colin Seis, the turning point in the way he thought about his management practices, was a bushfire in 1979.

It devastated his family farm, destroying 3000 Merino sheep and the farm buildings; but it set him on a path of renewal and restoration.

Out of the ashes came pasture cropping, a unique method of growing crops that also restored native grasslands, as well as farm and soil ecosystems, and brought financial profit.

This is a publication which should be prescribed reading for all who want to stay on the land and wish their farm to stay in the family for many future generations.

It is available for purchase through https://winona.net.au, and although it not yet available through The Land Bookshop, Colin is hopeful it may be placed there.