We are Tash (that's me)& Pete and our 4 kids, Tyler, Kianhi, Lily & Ella.
pete and i ^
l-r kianhi, tyler, ella & lily
We are 3rd generation farmers on the Piggott Family Farm, Lauriana, a 2000 acre grain and sheep enterprise in Esperance Western Australia. We also sharefarm 2000 acres up the road a bit, with a German family. (We do the work, they pay for seed, fertiliser, chemical etc and we pay them for agistment. At the end of harvest, we split the proceeds - which works for us!)
My husband's Grandparents brought the farm in 1980 and moved over here from South Australia, along with my husband, his older brother and his parents; and another of my father in law's brothers, Ian and his wife Julie. Ian and Julie only stayed for a few years and then they moved back to South Australia, leaving Nanna and Papa, Barrie and Judy to run the farm.
Nanna and Papa retired to Esperance town in the early 90's and Barrie and Judy took over the running of the farm from them.
Pete and I moved down here in 2004, with 2 year old Tyler and 6 month old Kianhi - a pretty damn sharp learning curve for a townie girl like myself. I'd gone from being able to walk to the shops, to the closest shop being 50kms away; to being surrounded by people and houses, to isolation (my nearest neighbour was about 10kms down the road) & from a parent with help galore in the form of sisters, friends and my Mum, to being a fulltime SAHM, most of the time alone because my husband was now flat out learning the ropes of a 4000 acre farm! Pretty full on to say the least!!
Also, in the town where I lived, I'd seen snakes only on the roads out by farms...suddenly they were EVERYWHERE!!! I learnt to deal with them pretty quickly too!!
We settled in and then along came Lily in 2005 and Ella in 2007. Our little family home would have been bursting at the seams, but luckily in 2005, the family we sharefarm with from Germany, decided to buy more land and that land had a whopper 5 bedroom house on it!
In 2005, Pete proposed to me and we began planning our wedding day for April, 2006. Sadly, my father in law lost his battle with depression a week before we were due to get married, but we went ahead with the wedding and in front of 100 family and friends, we got married. To say the day was bittersweet would be the understatement of the year. We both had tonsillitis from the stress and the day after, we had to go and help with funeral arrangements.
We soldiered on and continue to run the farm, making improvements to fencing, upsizing machinery, getting a good bloodline into our sheep and pretty much loving every second of this life we've created.
I hope you enjoy the journey of our "life on Lauriana", with us.
A little bit on the history of the boat, Lauriana, that our farm was named after & below,
the boat herself.
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