Jessica Knight’s success as a first-generation dairy farmer

For someone who is a first-generation dairy farmer, Jessica Knight has accomplished a lot in a short space of time. She’s a director on the GippsDairy Board, sits on the Victorian Young Farmers Advisory Council and has a high community involvement dedicated to finding pathways for young women in the industry. Perhaps surprising, given a school career adviser told her, agriculture wasn’t for women. Jess, or the Grounded Farm Wife (as she’s known by her online following) found her way into agriculture eventually, even though the path was a little longer than expected.

The farming seed was first planted for Jess when she would visit her grandpa on the family farm during weekends and holidays.

“I got to do the fun stuff, not the day-to-day life of farming. And I thought, I think this is something I’d really be interested in. I queried it with the careers adviser and was told, ‘No, girls don’t do ag. Get yourself a nice office job’. Being 15, you take the advice you are given,” says Jess.

Jess went on to earn a law degree, studied overseas, before returning home broke to live with her parents. There, she met a man, who had just returned from working on farms in Canada. He was a dairy farmer.

“As we know, you can’t move the farm, so my plans of going back to the city and doing law went out the window.”

Life working on an actual farm is different to her childhood memories of feeding lambs, chickens and calves. Now, it’s milking twice a day, fixing fences, being a mum and running her popular blog, The Grounded Farm Wife, which speaks to other women making a go of life on the land.

Jess is passionate about supporting other women in the industry. Even though, we all hope no career adviser would be giving the same advice today, there’s still room for improvement.

“I think that we’re very open to women coming into the industry now but moving up through the ranks of agriculture to those leadership positions, we’re still seeing that is very male dominated.”

“There are those trailblazers like Fiona Simson, who show that it can be done.”

Roles in agriculture for women don’t necessarily need to be limited to the more obvious choices. There are so many new opportunities in agronomy, statistics, and technology.

“There are also jobs that I don’t even know about and understand. Someone will tell me, and it makes me go, wow.”

Jess is proud to be a farmer’s wife, she’s also proud to be a first-generation farmer in her own right.

“I didn’t know anything about dairy farming when I got here. We purchased our farm nine years ago.”

With a young child, Jess did a crash course in bookwork with the family accountant, and the rest was up to her. She now works collaboratively with her husband and regularly brings new ideas to the operation. One thing she hasn’t managed to get used to is the 4am alarm clock.

“I’m honestly not a morning person, so I don’t know how I ended up doing this!”

Jess also has a unique skill set with her law degree, and her ability to communicate. She decided to step up into leadership roles after witnessing farmers suffer in silence through the drop in milk prices as well as drought.

“I saw so many farmers who had things to say but didn’t necessarily have the time or the want to step forward and say them publicly.”

Jess says her biggest advice to other rural women is to find balance. That means not being hard on yourself if it’s cereal for dinner during calving or other periods that involve long hours. She shares much of her journey and advice on her blog.

“It’s just me as a mum, a farm wife and a farmer.”

“Just” seems to be massively underselling herself. But if you’d like to see how Jess ‘just’ manages to do it all, join her online community for more tips about finding your own individual place in rural Australia.

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