In the Media – Blue Sky Produce

We’ve been lucky enough over the past month to be featured on a couple of different platforms in the media.  It has been an exciting time, but also very nerve-wracking and a definite learning experience into the ‘behind the scenes’ of how things operate in the media world.

To start with, the article we featured in and wrote about in this post, actually did make it to print and you can check it out here on the FoodTank website.

Next up we had the local WIN News team make a trip up to the farm from Cairns to have a chat about the upcoming mango season and our ‘tree change’ from the city to the country.  This was a bit of a high pressure visit as they were on a very tight deadline (only limited TV cameras around up here) and we weren’t really sure what they wanted from us.  I had assumed that they would just interview Matt, but had to quickly get dressed out of my daggy ‘house’ clothes when they said they just needed to throw a few questions at me too!  I didn’t bother to put shoes on as they assured me they were just filming from the waist up but Matt took a couple of quick photos and my bare feet stand out like a sore thumb!!!

I was mortified when the news reporter and camera-man requested to come into the house and get some footage of the kids as our house was a mess!!  I had dumped all the chaos from our office on the dining table as I was spending the day working on a website for the farm with a local web developer – I still had the breakfast dishes in the sink – eeeeek!  Anyway – here’s the news report that went to air on the 7pm news;

We also hosted a Field Day here at Blue Sky in the middle of all of this!  We didn’t have to do much other than provide the venue for the day and help set up, have the place looking nice etc, but it was still a little stressful having the farm on show and open to other farmers in the community for the first time!  Matt was worried about what people might think of the new farmer from the city who was a travel agent twelve months ago!  But it was a good day and the soil health session run by David Hardwick was fantastic – he managed to keep all the farmers interested which is no mean feat!

Lastly, we aired on the ABC Far North Radio last week, with an interview Charlie McKillop came out to the farm and did with us.  Charlie was really lovely and took the time to hear our story and get a good feel for what we were all about.  You can listen to the radio interview below;

Our interview also then featured on the country hour on the ABC Radio later in the day and you can read the article from the ABC Rural website here.

We did receive a little bit of a ‘towelling up’ on the ABC Far North Facebook page over our ‘naivety’ and lack of experience in farming, which did make us feel a little bit hurt/cranky upon reading it, but we had been expecting it – knowing that if we were going to stick our heads up then a few people were sure to take a shot and yes – we are still very new to this game!  But our philosophy is, and always will be, to get involved in our community, to do what we can to make things better, advocate to initiate change if it is required, to help lend our voices to the agricultural community and rural Australia.  We believe that you can’t sit back on the sidelines and wait for improvement, change or better outcomes.  If we want these things then we must get involved and work hard to make them happen.  If not us, then who?  Yes, we may make some mistakes along the way, but surely that is better than not trying at all?

Anyway – that is our month of fame done and dusted!  Stay tuned though, we have one more big Blue Sky surprise to come next month – fingers crossed we can pull it off – we are way out of our league on this one – aaaaargh!  Anybody got any useful ‘dealing with the media’ tips for us??