Pru Cook may be well known to many in the Wimmera, but she shares a bit more about life, work and the family farm in this edition of On My Farm.
Tell us about your background: where are you from?
I was raised in Diapur, in between Nhill and Kaniva. My sister, brother and I were fourth generation Cook’s growing up in the farm house. My brother Tom now farms the land, which is predominantly around Diapur, with some country out at Yanac. The Diapur end produces oats, wheat, barley, faba beans, vetch and we’ve reintroduced canola (after a 10+ year hiatus) and introduced lentils in the rotation this season. Out at Yanac the focus is on cereals and vetch. Tom also runs a self-replacing flock of SAMM’s.
What is your role at BCG? What are you working on at the moment?
My official title is project officer and corporate relations manager and I work within the communications and extension team. At the moment, I’m currently busy filming case studies on how farmers use social media for an online training package. I’m managing a new GRDC project ‘building capacity, skills and knowledge for the pulse industry in the Southern Region’. This project looks to encourage chickpea and lentil production in new areas of Victoria and South Australia by developing a series of discussion groups – If anyone is interested in finding out more they can contact myself or Linda Walters. I’m also the communications coordinator for the Managing Climate Variability program and I look after BCG’s corporate partners and social media channels.
How has your career evolved to now work at BCG?
I started my career at the Department of Primary Industries working in the Grains Extension team at Horsham. Here I developed workshops for growers, advisers and researchers on using smartphones, tablets, apps and social media. From there, I spent two years in Canberra with GRDC as their Manager Online Communities implementing their first social media strategy and looking after all of their social media channels. I came back to live in the Wimmera and work with BCG in February 2016.
What have been the biggest challenges in your career and for your family farm?
Last year, my father Mark was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away six weeks later. He was only 59. Losing Dad was difficult enough, but the challenges of what this meant for the farm made things so much worse and created a huge amount of pressure for Tom. I took a fair bit of time away from BCG to give him a hand, particularly over harvest and cropping. Tom is doing incredibly well – the farm looks amazing, but we often reflect on conversations we wish we’d had that might have relieved a lot of stress at an already very difficult time. Succession planning comes up so regularly as something the farming community struggles with – getting it wrong can have profound and long lasting consequences. I’m very lucky that I have a very close and supportive family.
What do you enjoy most about living in a small community?
The support we’ve received from the local and agricultural community after Dad’s diagnosis has been phenomenal. I also love not being surrounded by people and the low cost of housing! I live in Dimboola and the Wimmera river is pretty spectacular too.
What do you enjoy about working at BCG?
As a small team, there’s such a diversity in projects. I get to work across a huge range of topics and with a huge range of people which keeps things interesting and challenging. I also love BCG’s values – everyone here has benefits to farmers front of mind, plus the team has a lot of fun inside and outside of work hours. There’s such a sense of community and support here that you don’t get in corporate/larger organisations.
As you are the BCG social media guru, what is your favourite social media platform and why?
When your work involves a lot of social media, it sometimes takes the fun out of using it outside of work! That said, I probably get most of my information from Facebook and Twitter – they’ve become my predominant news source. Twitter is all about agriculture for me, but Facebook is a hodgepodge of both my work and personal interests. I’m a sporadic Instagram user – mainly for interior design ideas and to spam people with pictures of my puppy!
