There is something wonderfully reassuring about talking to Kaitie Nash. Perhaps it’s because the woman thousands of people know online as ‘First Time Farmer’ has never pretended to have everything figured out.
In fact, much of Kaitie’s story has been about figuring it out as she goes.
Long before the farm, the cattle and the very funny exchanges with her husband Will that have become familiar to her social media followers, Kaitie was a young woman from Perth who bought herself a one-way ticket to Darwin. She planned to stay for three months. Within weeks, she met Will. She stayed for eleven years. At the time, Will’s family farm barely featured in their plans. Kaitie had worked as a flight attendant, lived in Melbourne for a period and built a life with Will in Darwin. It wasn’t until their children came along that they began asking a question familiar to so many parents: ‘What sort of life do we want to give our kids?’
Eventually, that question brought them back to the family farm in NSW.
Kaitie arrived at the end of 2018 with two tiny children and, by her own admission, absolutely no understanding of what lay ahead. Australia was in the grip of a devastating drought.
She laughs now about Will warning her before the move that things were bad.
Her response? “Yeah, it’ll rain.”
It didn’t. Instead, Kaitie discovered dust storms, feeding livestock and the realities of agricultural life. She also discovered gratitude. Going through drought changed the way she saw something as simple as water coming from a tap.
Perhaps that ability to find humour amongst the hard things is why ‘First Time Farmer’ has resonated with so many people.
When Kaitie eventually began sharing her life online, she wasn’t trying to create a polished version of rural Australia. She wanted to be the person she wished she’d been able to find when she was struggling – the woman showing the arguments, mistakes, bad angles and ridiculous moments, while reminding someone else that perhaps they weren’t the only one finding this farming business difficult. Her own website describes that philosophy as embracing the failures with humour and authenticity.
But in our conversation for Letters from Home, I wanted to talk to Kaitie about another role entirely: being a rural mum.
Kaitie loves raising her boys in the country. She loves the life and the community she has found. But she also recognises the trade-offs that come with distance – particularly when you want to give your children access to sport, activities and opportunities that aren’t necessarily waiting on your doorstep. And now another decision is looming.
Boarding school. Unlike Will, Kaitie wasn’t a boarder. In fact, until last year she hadn’t seriously considered that boarding school might become part of their family’s story. Sydney certainly wasn’t.
“I remember saying to him, ‘No, I’m not gonna send the kids to Sydney. That’s too far away.’”
Then Kaitie attended one of our Boarding School Collective Expos.
She walked out thinking: “maybe Sydney is an option.” What changed her mind wasn’t a brochure or a sales pitch. It was conversation.
Meeting the people who would potentially care for her boys allowed her to ask the questions that mattered to her as a mother. Would they know her children? Would they genuinely care when they were lonely? Would Kaitie be able to build a relationship with the school?
This year she returned to an Expo with her eldest son and did something I wish more of us remembered to do when researching schools: she let him have a voice.
After all, as Kaitie told him, “You’re the one that’s going to the school.”
He wandered the Expo, gravitating predictably towards any school displaying something resembling a rugby league ball, but also asking his own questions. Where would he sleep? What would his day look like? What did the school offer? He even discovered a school Kaitie had never considered.
That’s the beauty of research. It doesn’t commit you to anything. It simply allows you to discover what might be possible. Kaitie is still at the beginning of this journey. She doesn’t have all the answers yet – and that’s precisely why I wanted to share her story. Because there are thousands of rural parents standing in exactly the same place. We’re researching transport and distance, pastoral care and opportunities. We’re thinking about whether a school will suit siblings who may be completely different people. We’re asking what happens when our children muck up, whether somebody will notice when they’re struggling and, ultimately, whether we can trust another community to care for the people we love most.
For Kaitie, those questions carry another layer following her diagnosis with Functional Neurological Disorder. Her boys have seen their mum struggle and, at times, have had to grow up a little faster than she might have chosen for them.
Yet she can already see what those experiences are building in them: kindness, empathy and an ability to put another person before themselves.
And when I asked what she ultimately hopes her boys take from growing up in their family, her answer was wonderfully simple. Work hard. Appreciate the little things. Be grateful. Give 100 per cent. And have integrity.
Perhaps, in the end, those are the things we’re all looking for when we’re making these enormous decisions for our children – not simply the school that offers them the most, but the place that will help them become the people we’re raising them to be.
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