On a mixed farm near Trangie, NSW, the Ferrari
family is balancing feedlot lambs, shifting seasons,and the town pub.
Most mornings, Ross Ferrari is in the feedlot before the day has really begun. It’s usually just him and his kelpie, Baz, moving through the pens: troughs first, then hay, feed, gates and anything that’s decided not to work properly overnight. “When something goes wrong, I’m onto it,” he says. “There’s no big deal anymore.”
Ross runs 2,500 composite lambs on ten acres, fattening them over about 12 weeks—a practical answer to expensive land and limited time. “To run a couple of thousand lambs, you need a few acres,” he says. “So instead of going to spend a million, I spent half that on a feedlot.”
This morning, there’s a blockage in the automated feed system that pushes out a ration of lupins, barley and pellets. Ross finds it and clears it in minutes. The system is brilliant when it works, but lambs have a way of making things complicated.
Today, the whole family is there to help weigh them: his wife Amanda, daughters Amy and Annabel, son Ollie, and son-in law Wally. The lambs aren’t doing as well as Ross would like, and the wet weather hasn’t helped. Sheep go off their tucker. Weight gains slow. “When it’s good, it’s good,” he says. “But when it’s bad, it’s bloody bad. But that’s farming life.”
The feedlot is part of Galteemore, the Ferrari family’s farming operation near Trangie in the Central West of New South Wales. It’s been in the family for three generations, and the Ferraris have been in the district for five. Ross and Amanda run a mixed operation here: cropping, fat lambs, cattle when the season allows, and cotton when there’s water.
The season here has done a sharp U-turn. They were preparing for drought, then the rain came. “We hadn’t planned to put a crop in,” Amanda says. “Then all of a sudden the rains came and the tractors started and everyone’s madly sowing.” Through it all, Ross has kept pushing the place forward.
"You can prepare and you know you’ll survive it,” Amanda says. “That’s something I’m enormously proud of Ross for—hanging in there, keeping this operation going and developing it too.”
That same sense of responsibility stretches into town. Almost four years ago, Ross rang Amanda and told her he thought they’d bought the pub. “An interesting conversation,” she quips. The Imperial Hotel, known to everyone as the Impy, was the last trading pub in Trangie. With two other farming families, they stepped in to keep it open.
“It’s like an extension of people’s lounge rooms,” Amanda says. “If you lose your pub, you’re going to lose the very heart and soul of your community.”
Their three children have each found their own way into agriculture. Amy works for a family farming operation in north-west New South Wales. Annabel has her own career, but is marrying into another farming family. And Ollie, after years working away, is getting ready to come home. “It’s pretty daunting,” he says of taking over one day. “It’s a pretty big step, but it’s something to look forward to.”
He knows his father has done the hard yards. “Dad’s worked so hard to get this place to where it is at now,” Ollie says. “I’m going to move it to the next level, hopefully.”
For now, father and son talk silos, fences, sheep and machinery, arguing in the way of two people who are already planning the same future. Ross jokes he’s been saving up all the fencing for Ollie. Ollie laughs, but he knows what’s ahead.
“There’s only one way,” he says, “and that’s up.”
Kit Out The Crew
