The Tribe I Made on Purpose

As I wrote about in Calf Chronicles last month, every Friday, we have lunch with two other farming couples.

We usually take turns hosting at each other’s homes. It is not elaborate, yet it has been one of the greatest gifts in helping me properly settle and thrive in farming life.

I often say I am lucky to have found my tribe and experience that level of connection. I am, but some of that luck was actually intentional.

I met one of the ladies at a course. We shared a bond over what was happening in our lives, but it was also like being a child in the sandpit. I looked across, thought, “She seems pretty cool,” and decided I was going to make her my friend and invited her to lunch.

The other lady and her husband were accounting clients, I’d only met them twice. My husband and I were in Taupō, they farmed in South Waikato. In a moment of social courage, I thought, “stuff it,” phoned them up and invited them to dinner. And they came!

And we went from there, eventually the South Waikato couple moving to Taranaki. The husbands did not get much choice in their arranged friendship, and they appear to have accepted it remarkably well.

Those awkward initial invitations became weekly lunches, shared food, borrowed equipment, emergency favours and somewhere safe to release steam. During calving, these may be the only people outside our farms we see regularly.

One year, when we were really struggling on farm, one of the husbands used a long-awaited day off to turn up and milk for us. No fuss. No grand announcement. In his usual nonchalant way, he was simply there. And I don’t think I can ever say how grateful I am for that day. We were spent, and he just turned up when he should have been enjoying his day off and really saved our bacon.

That is what a tribe looks like.

These are the seen-and-be-seen relationships. We can celebrate the good without shrinking it and talk about the hard without polishing it first.

After more than a decade volunteering in suicide prevention and community wellbeing, I know this to be true, that people need people.

The science agrees. Strong social relationships are linked with better mental and physical health. Social support helps buffer stress, and a sense of belonging improves our ability to cope. The quality of our relationships matters more than simply how many people we know.

It’s too easy to say or think:

“We don’t have time.”

“That’s all very well for you. I don’t have those kinds of friends.”

“I wouldn’t know who to invite.”

Fair enough. Farming is relentless, and friendships do not arrive fully formed. Rome was not built in a day, and neither is a tribe.

Perhaps the real question is not whether we have time for these lunches, but whether we have time not to. If we do not spend time practising the things that keep us healthy, we should be prepared to spend time dealing with what happens when we become unwell.

Eventually, the body wins. Every time.

So, risk being awkward. Then keep turning up until it becomes normal. A good tribe brings practical help, honest perspective, empathy on the terrible days and people who are genuinely pleased when things go well.

Together, we share the load, learn from each other and grow through it, becoming stronger farmers, better people and far more capable than any of us would be on our own. That’s a tribe.

LeAnne Blakelock is a Taranaki based dairy farmer and accountant, and founder of the social media platform, the Calf Chronicles.