Through the Farm Gate

Told with wit and honesty this is a heartwarming memoir that reveals the pain, the joys, the fears, dedication and complexity of life on the land.

From a childhood spent yabbying and riding horses on friends' farms where the sun always shone, Angela Goode has always wanted to live on a farm of her own. With the handsome cattleman her friends set her up with, she finds her romantic illusions of country life under challenge.

From one large cattle stud Angela and her cattleman husband Charlie move to another, this time with city partners. Here she is caught in the divide between city and country values, her past and her present. Land and animals are pushed hard, as farmers battle the drought under escalating interest rates.

Angela and Charlie's dream of becoming start-from-scratch farmers is at last possible when they find the run-down 'Field of Mars', a former sheep and onion farm, and home to endangered wildlife and rare trees. Slowly, they integrate cattle with rare wildlife, business with conservation, and make a life on the farm raising cattle and growing lucerne seed.

Through the Farm Gate takes us through the pain, the joys, the fears, dedication and complexity of what it takes to live on the land. Angela's honesty and her enduring love affair with the farm shines through every page of this funny, heartwarming memoir of dreams and determination.

About the Author

Angela Goode works on a farm near Naracoorte, South Australia, where cattle graze and bush stone curlews call. She has spent her writing life bringing the images and issues of rural Australia to a wider audience in books, newspaper columns, and on radio. From 1981 to 2008 she wrote a country column for the Advertiser in Adelaide. The many editions of Great Working Dog Stories and Great Working Horse Stories, alongside For Love of the Land, celebrate working lives beyond the cities - where animals and humans are expected to pull their weight. In 2008 she was inducted by Rural Media South Australia as a Rural Media Icon.

Angela spent many years in the saddle-mustering buffalo, trail riding on bullock tracks, hunting, jumping logs, and sometimes falling off. Her horses know little about hard work these days.