Farmstrong: Meet Laura Koot, the driving force behind the Fairlight Foundation

Laura Koot is the woman behind the Fairlight Foundation.

Content brought to you by Farmstrong

Monthly here on The Country, we catch up with a Farmstrong farmer, someone who is doing the right thing when it comes to looking after the top paddock.

Laura Koot runs an agritourism business, is busy raising a family and is also the driving force behind the Fairlight Foundation, which trains young women in farming.

She shares how she manages the challenges of her busy life with The Country’s Jamie Mackay.

“Today, I’m really looking forward to yarning to Laura Koot, to find out how she runs her busy life. Laura, you have one child, one on the way, and your fingers in so many pies, how do you do it?“ Mackay asked.

“Everything I do, I’m passionate about and when you’re passionate about it, you just make time, and you prioritise it,” Koot said.

“I’m grateful that I get to do everything I do, because six or seven years ago I had a very different life, and I definitely wasn’t passionate about it.

“I had a fantastic southern upbringing and I credit everything I’m doing now to growing up in rural New Zealand because although I didn’t have a lot of confidence in who I was as a person, I had a lot of confidence in my abilities to just get stuff done and that comes from that practical mindset and growing up on a farm.”

“But, Laura, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re a very vivacious young woman. I would have thought life would have just landed in your lap,“ Mackay said.

“I never learned at an early stage how to keep my mouth shut. I think that was the problem, Jamie. As a young girl growing up, I certainly said what was on my mind,” Koot said.

“It didn’t go well with the popular girls, and I just always felt a little bit like a round peg in a square hole and never really, truly embraced who I was at a young age and sort of always tried to be someone else.

“And you’re right. I’ve always been outwardly extroverted and outwardly vivacious, but that inner confidence was just not there. So, there was a lot of faking going on.”

“Why did the corporate world not suit you? Were you faking it until you could try to make it in the corporate world?” Mackay asked.

“It was just not me,” Koot said.

“I never once sat down as a young adult and said, ‘What is it that I want? What are my values? What spins my wheels? What brings me satisfaction?’

“Instead, I went into hospo and after a Bachelor of Science, I did an MBA because someone pointed me in that direction. My first job was amazing, I worked for Deloitte in Corporate Finance in Wellington, a great team.

“That’s as corporate as you get, that’s suited, booted, and sitting behind a computer all day.

“And although the work, any work is stimulating when it’s new, once I’ve got my head around everything, it just never seemed to fit and I didn’t have the awareness enough to understand why.

“From there I travelled overseas and had lots of different roles in lots of different industries always trying to find that thing that just worked.

“When I was 29, I finally sat down at my desk and asked myself what am I passionate about, what do I want in life, what are my values and when I finally did that, that’s when everything changed.”

Listen below:

“You set up this agritourism business called Real Country based out of Kingston, and everything was going along nicely, and this is one of the reasons we’re talking to you on behalf of Farmstrong today. Then along comes Covid and along comes a whole lot of obviously physical, mental and environmental sort of challenges for you and your business. How tough was it?” Mackay asked.

“I am not going to lie, there were quite a few bottles of whiskey and tears over that period, and I think because I was so busy head down, bum up, working in the business, it happened so suddenly for tourism,” Koot said.

“So, for other businesses, it was a bit slow, but overnight, 99 per cent of my income was just wiped out, and there were some pretty hard decisions that I had to make.

“I remember it was a phone call that my dad gave me, and he just said, ‘You’ve got to look at it like I do farming, in 10 years’ time, this will be a blip on your balance sheet.’

“You have to think long term about this, and it was then that I decided to just pull my socks up and get on with it.

“So I got a job, teat sealing cows to pay the bills because although there was no income, business bills still had to be paid, and it was at that time that an incredible opportunity came to set up the Fairlight Foundation, with the owners of Fairlight Station.

“So it was that period that taught me that if you focus on the opportunities you can’t see when things get uncertain, it can be quite exciting. But in the beginning, certainly, I was focusing on all the pitfalls that I thought would really affect me, like losing my business forever.”

“Talk to talk to me about the Fairlight Foundation and the family behind it. The Wright family. So, this is a farm just down the road from you, effectively. But they’ve opened their farm gate for you to bring young women onto the farm. Do they live on the farm? Because you certainly train them on the farm” Mackay asked.

“Yes, they do,” Koot said.

“So, Simon and Lou Wright [are] minor shareholders of the station, they’ve been running the station for two decades, and the Harpurs, who are the majority shareholders, they’ve been wanting to set something up at Fairlight for years - a farm training programme that creates well-rounded, proficient, confident shepherds.

“Holly Wright, their daughter, was working with me at Real Country full-time prior to Covid.

“I met Simon at the dog trials a couple of times, and they just sort of thought well with my business slowing down, I might be just the right person to help get things off the ground for them.

“It was really exciting coming on board. We had the opportunity to create not just a practical proficiency programme, but a 12-month well-rounded internship where our interns gain professional and personal skills alongside their practical development.

“It is something that is completely different and there’s nothing like it in New Zealand. There are no female-only farm training internships in New Zealand, and we’re really proud of where we’ve got to just in the first three years.”

“A final question for you, because we’re talking to you on behalf of Farmstrong, of course, rural mental health is a real issue. You’ve had your challenges and hopefully, you’ve beaten them. What’s the single best bit of advice to farmers or rural people, or anyone listening to this who’s going through a tough time?” Mackay asked.

“You have to always remind yourself of what your why is,” Koot said.

“Things do get really challenging and when you focus on why you’re doing what you’re doing - because I don’t know any farmer that does it for the paycheque - it’s for the lifestyle.

“It’s because they’re passionate about it. It’s because of who they are - not what they do. And it’s remembering the why and being grateful for all the things that you do have, rather than the things that you don’t. And then second to that is always rally around your community.

“The more community-minded you are, the more you get involved, and the more you have people who can support you when things do get tough - and that’s something the rural community and New Zealand has in spades.”