Andrea Seechun is not one of those women for whom being a farmer means managing an enterprise from behind a desk, balancing the books, and not knowing one end of a hoe from the other. She is what we would commonly describe as ‘the real McCoy’.
She rises at ‘the crack of dawn’, dons her trousers, t-shirt and Wellingtons, and gets to her garden, even before the day has properly bestirred itself. By 7:30am she is heading back to the house to metamorphose into a wife and mother, preparing breakfast for her children – two boys and a girl, then seeing them off to school.
Afterwards, a ‘session’ of the customary domestic chores around the home precedes another visit to the garden. There is much work to be done there. The routine has persisted for twenty years and Andrea concedes that she is still to learn how to ‘turn off’.