Learning from YouTube and the upsides of first-gen farming, with Tom Cosentino

Six years ago, South Australian accountant Tom Cosentino ditched his day job and bought a cattle property without ever having touched a cow before.

 “I didn’t even have a pet growing up,” he laughs. 

“I didn’t know what a heifer was… I had no idea.”

 Using YouTube to learn basic skills, Tom reckons his naivete has helped endear him to other farmers willing to teach. 

 “I owe so much of my farming knowledge to that dairy farming family [we leased to] and neighbours, who I just learned from through osmosis,” he says.

 “To this day, when I get into bed, I just pump YouTube and learn how to do this, how to do that.”

Without ‘generational inertia’ behind him, Tom feels great freedom and perhaps less pressure than those who’ve inherited a family businesses.

“There’s a whole heap of different levers and buttons and settings that you can’t do if you’ve been handed a property; and maybe you’ve gotten on a treadmill that’s already going 100km/hr because your Grandparents started the show,” he says.

Hear Tom share his rollercoaster experience as a first-generation farmer, alongside his wife Aimee, tractor-obsessed son Ted, and daughter Daisy, on their 200ha property in Victor Harbour, South Australia.

 “There was a time a chain strainer became part of the fence because I didn’t know how to get it off.

 “I’ve mentally sold this farm seven times,” he jokes.

 As well as the usual cattle markets, Tom has partnered with his neighbour to sell direct to consumer grass-fed beef under the Gum Park brand, supplying the local farmers market between November-April.

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