Artist Statement
The ideas for this piece developed after 2016 and 2018 trips to my childhood friend I hadn’t seen for 63 years. She runs a 6,000-acre cattle ranch in Come by Chance, NSW, Australia and has lived on her land her entire life. The property has been in her family for over 130 years and has undergone many changes since it was first settled. What totally dominates her present life is an 18-year old drought that has parched the land and all vegetation, reduced the number of animals and forced her to hand feed the animals with hay donated to drought-stricken farmers by the people of Australia. I was impressed with her resilience and positivity in the face of overwhelming problems and her desire to turn things around. Earlier this year this property had considerable rain and new growth has broken the cycle.
I was fortunate to have a ranch residency in the Porcupine Hills in 2012  and 2019 as guests of couple who operate a 10,000 acre mixed farm with livestock in joint tenancy with the Alberta Conservation Association. Their focus of the last decade has been to use the practice of regenerative agriculture to keep the land continuously planted in a diversity of mixed crops and to keep all their water sources fenced and clean from animal pollution. They have gone through a 4-year drought which has recently broken.
Lyndal Osborne, 2020