SIX years after being diagnosed with stomach cancer, Esperance farmer Chris Reichstein passed away last Friday morning, surrounded by family, leaving behind a legacy worthy of his generous life.
His brother, Ash Reichstein, who also farms in Esperance along with his four kids, said Chris lived and breathed farming.
"He always said that there wasn't enough good news about farming and because he was so passionate about agriculture he always wanted people to know how great it was," Ash said.
"At the age of 30 he was very determined to go farming by himself and he took on one of the family farms - we helped set him up in that and get all the equipment to get going.
"He expanded from there and bought more land - he was all about building the health of the farm and always implemented best practice, as a result he's developed an amazing farm."
In 2020, Chris created the Mt Burdett Foundation, a charitable organisation that would use the profits from his 2800 hectare farm to fund community projects and invest in regional people.
Speaking to Farm Weekly in June, Chris said the idea was that the farm would conduct research which would ultimately increase productivity and in turn generate an income stream which will go back into the foundation.
"When you're confronted with your own mortality you think really hard about what's left behind and what your legacy is," Chris said.
"Your legacy shouldn't be about ego but I suppose we all like to think that we've done something decent while we've had our time on this planet, and this is just about sharing some of my good fortune while I'm here and into the future."
The foundation is broken up into three separate arms, the first being the Esperance Community Foundation which is focused solely on Esperance and its development.
That first element will focus on the things that Chris thought were really important in the community - health, education, youth, arts and public amenity, along with human capacity building.
The second arm is the Rural and Regional Advancement Foundation (RRAF) which will work on a State level and is about empowering people to have an impact on their communities.
While the final element, the Mt Burdett Farming Trust, will be responsible for the farm itself which going forward will have a two-pronged approach - production and research.
"I've always been passionate about agriculture and learning more about research which can benefit the area," Chris said.
"So I thought rather than the farm being sold post-Chris, wouldn't it be great if it could be run by an organisation that could use it to accommodate researchers, undertake validation of innovation and become a centre of best practice for the benefit of agriculture in the district."
Ash said as a family, they wholeheartedly agreed and supported Chris's decision to start the foundation.
"We're all old enough and big enough to look after ourselves and thought it was a really worthwhile idea," he said.
"He's been my confidante my entire life - I would always go over there to chat and he'd run his crazy plans past me and I'd run my crazy plans past him.
"I knew I could always talk to him about stuff, I would tell him my woes and troubles, or about my successes and how well I'd done, so losing that connection is really difficult."
