Southlander Kim Spencer-McDonald knows a number of women who, like her, fell in love with a farmer but not necessarily their farm.
Over the years she's had to create her own opportunities to earn an income.
Kim Spencer-McDonald Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
When design ideas come to Kim in the middle of the night, she gets up and makes a pair of earrings there and then.
"Because I think I'll remember them," Kim says, laughing. "And I don't. I've learnt the frustration of thinking 'that's a great idea'...and then it just being gone."
Kim lives on a 650-hectare sheep farm deep in the Caroline Valley between Dipton and Lumsden.
Her latest business venture is one of the many jobs Kim has created or had since moving to the farm when she married.
Kim admits she's really more of a 'city girl'.
"Sometimes you fall in love with the farmer and not necessarily the farm."
Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
Kim has worked as a community worker in her district, has been a relief milker, has made candles and offered home-based massages.
She also bought an Invercargill health shop with two other women and, twice a week, made the two-hour return trip to work in the business.
Recently Kim spoke to an Invercargill women's group.
"It was from a rural focus and I just looked at the jobs that were advertised locally and if you are not into farming...if you don't want to milk, if you can't be a herd manager then there are very, very few jobs available.
"You've got a bit of childcare sometimes. There's often cleaning and the odd cafe job. It's a real challenge to find meaningful, stimulating work."
And she says there are barriers to people working from home in rural New Zealand.
Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
Her internet is patchy, limited and expensive, her mobile phone doesn't work at home and, because of power cuts, she relies on a plug-in landline.
Kim's latest enterprise started quite by accident during lockdown.
She admired a set of earrings worn by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a televised Covid briefing. Unable to buy them because they were not deemed essential items, Kim had a go at making similar earrings herself.
She posted her creation on Facebook and orders started rolling in.
The earrings are made from punctured tyre inner-tubes she picks up from an Invercargill bike shop or that are delivered into her letterbox by her friendly rural postie.
"I get really excited when I see a good fat bike tube versus, no offence to your road racing people out there with your skinny little tubes, but no, give me a good fat mountain bike tube any day."
Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
