Kerry and Trevor Braun fill their days with strawberries and cream and serving excited customers, but the rural couple’s life wasn’t always so simple.
As agricultural leaders prepare plans to help regions cope with another El Niño, the Brauns are glad the stress of farming in drought is behind them.
They decided in 2018 to sell Ms Braun’s family farm and focus on running a dessert food van in the South Australian Riverland town of Loxton.
“With farming you outlay your money 12 months in advance and hope that you get it back,” Mr Braun said.
“With a strawberry cart you outlay most of your money maybe two days before and the money is straight back in your pocket.
“It’s just so much easier operating this, and that’s not to say that I don’t still love doing farm jobs because I do love it, but I can pick and choose the jobs I want to do now.”
Droughts drive decision
The second-generation sheep and wheat farmers were no strangers to the challenges of making a living in the driest state in Australia.
“In drought you struggle to know where your money is coming from,” Mr Braun said.
“We didn’t actually know how we were going to feed our children some nights.”
Their family and finances were further strained during the Millennium Drought in 2001 when they moved from the South East town of Keith to Paruna in the semi-arid Murray Mallee region.
The rainfall in the region is so unreliable that a local historian titled her book Where it Forgets to Rain.
By 2002 the district that normally received up to 500 millimetres of rain was in the grips of the worst drought in Australia’s recorded history.
“Kerry’s mum passed away with pancreatic cancer, and [her dad] Ron fell in a hole and didn’t know how he was going to continue farming,” Mr Braun said.
“We came back [to the Mallee] and went half shares in a growing a wheat crop with him but it was complete drought again and everything we had saved in 12 years we lost in one season.”
With the bills piling while the land dried, Ms Braun’s stepmother Joan Schadow offered the couple a lifeline — running one of the dessert food trucks from her business Strawberries Galore.
“[Joan] said, ‘just take a van, operate it and generate some money’,” Mr Braun said.
“So that’s how it started and we’ve loved doing it.”
Mr Braun said he was initially nervous about dealing with customers.
“It was only when we had shearers come in that we had outside labour [to interact with],” he said.
“So I was happy to do the background work but over time I got confident and I love being up the front serving now.”
In sickness and in health
Mr Braun said they started out just running the van on weekends around their farming operations and immediately noticed the benefits to their wellbeing.
“Mentally, I felt better because I had been in amongst people, talking and generating some cash,” he said.
After watching her husband’s health deteriorate due to exposure to chemicals on the farm, Ms Braun said it was when he suffered a heart attack they decided it was time to sell her parents’ property.
“The specialists said he wouldn’t have survived if he had still been farming,” she said.
“So, it was a hard decision emotionally, but it also wasn’t hard at the same time.”
Mr Braun said working full-time in the food van had given the couple a better outlook on life, while offering them travel opportunities, including to Emerald Field Days in central Queensland.
“It has taken us places that we would never have gone to,” Mr Braun said.
With parts of Australia already experiencing another drought, and a hotter and drier summer expected, Mr Braun said it was important that people on the land had a strong support system.
“You have to be able to get things off your mind so that you can move forward,” he said.
“Kerry and I are lucky, we have always got along well and we love spending time together.”
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