From a small village in rural England, Olivia Charles didn’t grow up on a farm, but all the same she has an enduring interest in agriculture. How she went from there to living in Co Clare, making a DVD about female agri-contractors across Ireland, well that’s an interesting story.
She was first introduced to farming through childhood friends and when the time came to choose what she would do after her GCSEs, Olivia decided to attend agricultural college to study animal care. While she enjoyed the course, the highlight of each week was always the day spent on the college farm and she wished she could do more of this.
The southern hemisphere
“I went over, did two weeks on a horse trekking farm and didn’t really like it, so I went down to the South Island and I was milking cows down there. I loved the milking, but I hated the early mornings,” Olivia smiles. “The farm I milked on was about half an hour away from where I lived. I would start milking at 4am, so I would have to be up at 3.30am to get down there.”
Evening milking would start around 4pm and usually she would catch 40 winks in-between these. The farm Olivia worked on milked 800 Jersey cows in a 50-unit rotary parlour, with two or three people milking at the one time.
After six months, Olivia moved back to the UK. Her intention was to return to the boarding kennels, which she did, along with doing morning milking for a farmer and waitressing in the evening. After some time she found this workload unsustainable and just kept up the milking, until she packed it all in and moved to Co Clare.
The question on the tip of Irish Country Living’s tongue is of course, what brought you to Clare?
“It was a man to begin with. I came over with a man and stayed for the craic,” she laughs.
Having moved to the Banner County, Olivia further expanded her interest in photography. “My ex-boyfriend worked for a contractor and I was always interested in taking pictures. I got a camera one Christmas. I wasn’t really interested in taking pictures of anything other than cows and tractors.”
Olivia’s next purchase was a GoPro. Between this and her phone, she began making short videos, mostly of silage, which she would post on her social media channels. Getting noticed from this, she started to make videos for both machinery companies and contractors. The video side of things was and still is a side enterprise for Olivia (although one she loves), her day job is working in a bank.
A new venture
“From the videos I got a bit of a fan base and a few different guys had been on to me saying that seeing as I knew a good few women in farming, would I not do a video highlighting women? I was like, ‘I’ve hardly got the time’. But one of the friends who suggested it said, ‘Sure you would actually make time if you decided to do it’.
With this seed planted, Olivia began producing Queens of the Field, an hour-long documentary focusing on women in contracting, which was released last December. It centres on interviews with Louise Carroll form Carlow, Anne Marie Kearney from Kilkenny, Laura O’Connell from Cork and Maeve Coyle from Roscommon; all of whom are working in contracting and farm either at home or independently.
“I would love to be able to operate a machine the way some of these women can. I can drive a tractor,” remarks Olivia, “but I’ve never really had the opportunity to figure out how to operate any machinery.”
A significant factor in Olivia eventually deciding to make the DVD was to highlight the work women do on farms.
“At the beginning of last year I was contacted by a radio station, because they knew of the work I was doing. They said, ‘Did you know Ireland has the lowest percentage of women in farming in Europe?’
“A point I made was that this was in relation to women who owned farms,” she explains. “It doesn’t factor in women working on farms, women who are farmers’ wives, who do just as much if not more work behind the scenes. A lot of people don’t realise the amount of work women do on farms.”
Our final question for Olivia on the marriage of her two passions is of course, which does she prefer, farming or photography?
“I suppose photography is a little bit of an easier job,” she deduces. “The hours farmers put in are phenomenal. They don’t get the respect they deserve either.
“You can go online every day and see a new article about how farmers are killing the world; we should stop producing beef because of the carbon gases, how they are abusive and how they take up the road. People are just so naïve to the fact they are putting in twice the amount of work to get everything right.”
For more information on Olivia’s agri-photography work and Queens of the Field, see www.ocharlesphotography.com.