“Blessed to get to…

...care for the land

…tend to the animals

…work alongside my family

…watch new life begin

…carry on a legacy

Be a farmer.”

Legacy. It’s a heavy word. For some, legacy can be a burden too hard to bear but for others, it can be a comfort and a huge influence on how you navigate the world.

When talking about family farms, legacy is ingrained from birth. For farming families, the land is never just an asset; it’s livelihood, history, identity, and responsibility – often carried across generations. The seasons leave their mark not just on the paddocks but on the people too through unspoken family rules, quiet loyalties, long memories and stories that echo through the generations and run as deep as the fences and as old as the sheds.

The farm is home, workplace and legacy all at once.

Welcome to The Bigger Picture; a blog that is all about building NETWORK and CONNECTION. Each month, I feature a woman in small business within my community with the sole purpose of showing support, building solidarity and sharing stories of passion.

I am so fortunate to be surrounded by incredible small businesses in the South West run by mums in their spare rooms or out in their gardens and they each have a unique story to be told; a BIGGER PICTURE to be discovered.

In rural and regional communities, stewardship matters. So does continuity. Decisions made today, echo through the years ahead and that is why, by far, the most important resource on any farm is its people. Nothing gets done and no soil or animal is cared for, if there are no farmers to do it. Farming really is a generational career. But putting motivation aside, the economic realities of farming today are making it very difficult for many family-run operations to find a viable path to continue. That is why we need to nurture vibrant and energetic young people into the agricultural sector.

My feature for July is a young woman who is passionate about continuing her family legacy and building a business that honours the past while moving confidently into the future on her own terms. Please welcome the very lovely…

Clare Porter

Winfield Angus

Tell us about your business and what services you offer.

Winfield Angus is a family-run beef farming operation, currently running around 200 breeders, with plans to continue growing the herd.

At present, our steers are sold either straight out of the paddock or through the market to feedlots. We retain selected heifers for our breeding program, while others are sold through the market.

Looking to the future, our long-term goal is to build a strong reputation for quality Angus females, with producers choosing Winfield Angus heifers to help grow and strengthen their own breeding herds.

Is there a story behind the name you chose?

Oh, I LOVE this question!

The name Winfield Angus means a lot to our family. We chose it together after Nan passed away in late 2021. She had a funny saying whenever someone was getting frustrated and clearly needed a moment to regroup — she’d say, “Have a Winfield,” meaning go and have a smoke!

The funny part is that Nan never smoked a day in her life, but the saying stuck with all of us over the years. “Have a Winfield” eventually became Winfield Angus, and now the name proudly honours both Nan and Pa and the values they passed down to our family.

Where does your inspiration come from?

Inspiration for Winfield Angus definitely comes from Nan and Pa.

The little “J” on my pinkie finger you might notice in some photos is Nan’s handwriting — J for Joan. The word “PRINCE” tattooed on my wrist is for Pa, inspired by a beautiful photo of him riding his favourite horse, Prince, in his younger days.

They were incredibly hard workers who rarely took a holiday because there was always something to be done on the farm — but more than that, they truly loved the lifestyle. That passion has definitely been passed down to us: always striving to improve, grow the business, and keep learning. There is so much to learn in farming — once you start digging into it, it really opens up a whole new world, and I absolutely love that.

In their later years, we’d sometimes avoid telling them when we had jobs on, like drenching or running steers through the yards, hoping to give them a bit of a break. But somehow, they’d always sniff the work out and turn up anyway — usually with morning tea and a thermos packed for us. Those are the kinds of memories that stay with you forever.

What is your favourite part of your job?

My favourite part of the job would definitely have to be calving season. Even though it’s the busiest time of year, it’s also the most rewarding. Seeing the new genetics coming through is exciting, and the new calves are always so beautiful.

My phone gets absolutely filled with photos — calves learning to walk like Bambi, getting baths from their mums, or drinking milk with little milk-covered noses. Those moments never get old.

It never ceases to amaze me how instinctive motherhood is in cows. They’re incredibly tough and resilient animals. And don’t even get me started on the heifers — as first-time mums, they are amazing to watch. Most of them just know exactly what to do: cleaning their calves up, protecting them, and looking after them straight away.

Of course, every now and then you get one that needs a little help or forgets which baby belongs to who, but overall, I think they are truly incredible animals.

What do you offer your clients that no one else does?

We’re very lucky to have access to several farms across Southwest Victoria, and while we don’t claim to offer something no one else does, we do pride ourselves on our attention to detail and the standards we set for our cattle.

We’ve only recently started retaining our own heifers, but we are being incredibly selective in what we breed and keep — focusing strongly on structure, temperament, and longevity. Our goal is to produce females that will go on to perform well and add real value to the buyer’s operation for years to come.

We’re constantly learning and improving as we go, and we’ll only ever offer cattle that we would genuinely be happy to keep ourselves. Even before moving further into genetics and heifer replacements, that same mindset applied to our steers sold through the market or out of the paddock — we were never interested in selling animals we weren’t proud of ourselves.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learnt since starting your business?

The biggest thing I’ve learnt since starting our business is that resilience is absolutely essential — not just in farming, but in life in general. The last few years have highlighted that, and anyone living on the land would tell you the same.

Farming is incredibly dependent on the weather, and you simply can’t control Mother Nature. You learn very quickly to focus on what you can control, trust the process, and keep moving forward even when things don’t go to plan. Building a business from the ground up requires patience, resilience, and a willingness to keep learning.

Good genetics don’t happen overnight either — they take time, education, and experience. I’m always looking for the next course, field day, or opportunity to visit another farm and learn how others are doing things.

One of the best parts of the journey has been the people I’ve met along the way. The farming community is amazing. It’s not about competing against each other — it’s about helping one another succeed, sharing knowledge, and supporting each other where we can. It’s a pretty special community to be a part of.

My afternoon with Clare was simply wonderful. Her dogs have to be the best jumpers I have ever seen – they climbed a haystack in one giant leap! (One has also claimed fourth position in ‘highest jumper’ at the Casterton Kelpie Muster). And when explaining her enterprise to me, her face lit up with pride. It’s so inspiring to hear Clare talk about her plans. She is a woman firmly rooted in her family’s tradition and legacy but she also realises that she needs to define success on her own terms because farming today is a lot different than it was for her grandparents. And that’s the beauty of family farming – because of how ingrained farm, land and legacy are, no matter how the generations evolve, the legacy will always endure.

Edwina xx

If you are interested in the agricultural industry and would like to follow Clare’s journey @winfieldangus as she raises her herd, please give her a follow (and your support) on social media…

Instagram:@winfieldangus