Rose Barnecut - Farmer & Director of FEAST
/
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Excluding my two amazing boys who are my best contribution to the world, you mean?
I’m going to cheat, as I really have two lives. My true number one achievement is that with my brother we have succeeded in holding onto the family farm, when so many others have been forced to sell or rent out. We are joined now in the partnership by one of my sons, and that is a real salute to the future. We have not only kept the farm, we have kept it unspoilt. Anyone transported through time from 3oo years ago would recognise the fields, the buildings, the lane. We even have a map from 1860 locating mature trees for a national survey, and those oaks are still splendidly there.
My second achievement is devising and then leading the FEAST programme for the last 12 years. Artists and Cornish communities are awesome. It’s been a privilege to have the means to put them together and watch the magic.
What motivates you to do what you do?
A love of life, a love of the natural world and a delight in the power of creativity. Why would you not want to be part of that?
What do you owe your mother?
My mother died when I was sixteen. I owe her an unshakeable belief that I am loved and deserve it, that you need to stand in the shoes of other people before you make judgements and that you must always make your own Christmas puddings. I have also learnt that the kindest, gentlest and most patient of mothers may have a daughter who doesn’t necessarily inherit those traits, but that you can be a half way decent parent as long as you hug a lot, laugh a lot and let them make camps with the furniture.
Which women inspire you and why?
I found this an incredibly difficult question. I would prefer to answer - who do I respect? To that I would say my great, great grandmother Jane Slade who, incredibly as a woman in the nineteenth century, took on and ran the Slade family boat building business in Polruan when her husband died. There is still a classic boat called the Jane Slade sailing the seas today. To the consternation of the family she was the inspiration for a Daphne Du Maurier novel in which the heroine is a bit dark.
This sounds amazingly old school, and I don’t have much time for the rest of the Royal Family, but the Queen is pretty formidable. We rightly applaud the almost centenarian for 100 laps of his garden on a walking frame but we have a queen doing a broadcast to the nation, listened to by 27 million people…and she is 94! I respect Nicola Sturgeon for being smart, Jacinda Ardern for getting it right, and Gabby Logan for providing a masterclass in how women can enter what has traditionally been a man’s world with apparent seamless ease and style. Perhaps I should use the word inspired after all!
What are you reading?
I am reading Stalingrad by Vassily Grossman. It is the War and Peace of the twentieth century. It is about Russia’s defence of Stalingrad against Hitler’s forces. It takes the enormous sweep of history and geography whilst providing the most moving, intimate vignettes of the lives of individuals caught up in it all. Amazing. It is 965 pages long, so will see me to sleep for a lot of nights!
What gender barriers have you had to hurdle?
Maybe incredibly I don’t feel I have had to counter any real gender barriers. I came home to farm with my brother when our father died. Of course farming has been, and still largely is, a profession very much dominated by men. But I truly don’t feel, - in all those markets I have been to, trades I have been involved with, conversations with other farmers about the low price of lamb or could we borrow the cultivator, - that I have been treated as anything but an equal.
Perhaps I would have had a different experience if I had chosen to climb the traditional career ladder, but as of the age 28 I have never had a full time job. For most of my life I have been self employed and had a temporary part time job to supplement this. When you can afford to walk away you can be pretty bold if you don’t like something or someone!
How can the world be made a better place for women?
My goodness! I don’t feel equipped to answer this. I think sorting out what we as women and what society more broadly wants from motherhood and how we collectively support women to make the best choices when they have children, would be massive. At the moment women are on a career/ parenting treadmill that is driven by economic necessity and often doesn’t make anyone happy. Maybe this whole lockdown may force some invention about the ways we all work and take responsibility for each other.
This is going to be contentious but I also think, as women, we need to be aware that there is a whole scale of danger that women can be exposed to. Let’s understand where real jeopardy lies and where we would be better placed to develop our antennae and stand our ground. I am very uncomfortable about the current ubiquity with which women are depicted as victims.
Describe your perfect day?
Wake to sunshine. Walk in the field with partner and discuss tadpoles, the geo politics of the Middle East and why the parsnips aren’t germinating. Eat breakfast in garden. Listen to bees in the wisteria . Go to the farm where no sheep have broken out. Do a bit of work. Eat a pasty. Do a bit more work, then have a little sit down in the hedge. Watch swallows going into the barn to nest. Go home. Eat asparagus from the veg patch. Drink too much wine and dance wildly in the moonlight.
I am beyond lucky that this perfect day happens to me quite often (apart obviously from the sheep not breaking out bit).
We've noticed there really aren't many (if any) statues of women around Cornwall - who would you see remembered?
I’m not big on statues.
Give us a tip?
If you have to ask yourself does my hair need washing, it always does
And seriously importantly - See the beauty of the world. Every day.
About Rose: I am Cornish, born on a farm in mid Cornwall which I still help run with other members of the family. Like many young people from Cornwall, I spent some years away at university and then establishing a career. For me it was an English degree and secondary school teaching. I came home in 1984 and have blissfully lived in the same house ever since. I brought up two sons here. One now farms and one teaches!
I gave up full time teaching when I was 28 and have run two part time jobs ever since – best decision ever. For a while it was farming and teaching and now it is farming and arts administration. I had the opportunity while Director of the Creative Unit at Cornwall Council (job share) to write a business plan for the Arts Council for a community arts investment programme. This became FEAST which I have run for the last 12 years. FEAST’s strapline is Making great art happen across Cornwall, and with funding and advice that is exactly what we do!
Links: https://feastcornwall.org/