Bringing families closer to farmers

Leading a successful beef business, you'd assume Ms Kelliher - who was born and raised in Essex, England - would have plenty of prior experience in cattle.

But before meeting Mr Kelliher and moving to Australia, she was an insurance broker in London.

Despite growing up around farms, she'd never had any practical exposure to agriculture.

None of her life now would have happened had she not decided to apply for Desperately Seeking Sheila, a 2004 Australian reality TV, dating show.

The show paired four 'bush bachelors' living and farming in rural WA with 12 British metropolitan 'sheilas', as well as six women from Perth, in a bid to help them find long-lasting love.

Mr and Ms Kelliher were paired with other people for the majority of the show, but met - and fell in love - off screen, building their romance during the show's thank you party in Fremantle.

In an article published in the Daily Mail, UK, Mr Kelliher said Ms Kelliher took to farm life easily, unlike some of the other contestants and transitioned well to life at Wandering - where his family has farmed for generations.

One year later, the two were married, and had their first child David, now 17.In 2013, Ms Kelliher initiated Wandering Clover Fed Beef, on the family's 1600-hectare farm.

Additional farms at Ravenswood and Darkan, which belonged to Mr Kelliher's grandmother, feed a further two herds on lush green pastures.

In the early days, Ms Kelliher noticed a complete difference in her meat, coming from happy free-range cows, to what she could buy at the supermarket.

But her premium product came with a premium price - and needed good marketing to create demand for it."The way we're doing it (farming) is valuable, you have to value yourself," Ms Kelliher said.

Clover-fed beef was a way of providing a point of difference from grainfed and grassfed beef.

She said it was about giving customers options and compared her approach to wine-making.

"Wine isn't just red or white, you've got merlot or shiraz, chardonnay or riesling, so you can choose the type of wine you like," Ms Kelliher said.

"Grassfed can be on kikuyu, from down south, all the way to scrubland up north, it's a massive State and has all different varieties."

Clover-fed beef results in meat which is higher in omega-3s and has a sweeter taste.

"You've got a different flavour, a lot of people say it tastes the way beef used to taste," she said.

"Our methods are pretty old-school too, for-old school flavour."

Clover was chosen as their selling point because it fixes nitrogen and allows the soil to grow other crops.

Their pasture programs also include a range of ryegrasses, oats and barley.

"The clover leaf absorbs the sunlight and stores the energy and light into omega-3s which, when the cows eat the clover, goes into the meat muscle," Ms Kelliher said.

The inspiration for Wandering Clover Fed Beef came from the family gifting it to neighbours and friends every now and again as a thank you.

The beef became so well-loved, the recipients started asking how they could buy it.

More recently, they've also started to background cattle from another beef producer, as a means of diversifying their income streams.

"The idea of backgrounding cattle is to help us understand the process, because then if we had to pivot, we could then agist cattle," Ms Kelliher said.

"We're trying to make sure that we're experienced in different areas, supporting the ideas of pivot, either for my brand or others."

Ms Kelliher has always wanted to reach a point where she could export their product.

"My family at home wants to eat our beef," she said.

"But you've got to make sure each footing is solid before you take your next step."

Ms Kelliher said she was interested in educating people on the complexities of food production and is the chairwoman of Farming Champions, a volunteer-led organisation aiming to do just that.

She has also just been selected as one of three finalists in the WA Rural Women's Awards, with an opportunity to win up to $15,000 to put towards a plan of action and professional development when the award winner is announced in March.

Ms Kelliher said Farming Champions aimed to uplift and advocate for farming families, at a time when land is being bought up by large companies, reducing populations in small towns.

The organisation invites consumers to understand the processes behind their foods.

"Because I don't think people know about what the methods of food production are, you don't know what to look for," Ms Kelliher said.

"You could go to the supermarket and have a good steak, how do you get that same steak again?

"By the time you go back and get more, the grass has changed," she said.

Partially homeschooling two of her children, Ms Kelliher has been heavily involved in advocating for the education and wellbeing of rural kids.

She's spent hours in regular conversation with law makers and industry bodies to propose recommendations to the Department of Education.

Her children, David, Annabelle, 15, Lucille, 13, and Johnny, 8, attend boarding school in Perth, but it hasn't always been smooth sailing.

Ms Kelliher said it was difficult being isolated and not having all the information on homeschooling.

Combined with being a mum and running a farm business, there were some challenging times.

"I was homeschooling, breastfeeding Johnny, I had a dairy cow in the backyard, Shane had been sick with pneumonia and so I'm looking after him and then David, Annabelle and Lucille were doing gymnastics,'' she said.

"I was driving a thousand kilometres a week, I wore myself out a little bit."

David was skilled in reading from a young age, but through the school years became bored and disengaged with learning - and faced a lack of support.

Johnny regularly tells his mum he "just wants to be a country boy" and is often homeschooled.

The farm has been a great place for the kids to get involved in science, doing their own research and experiments - recently on the best methods of applying fertiliser.

David has shown a real interest in engineering and Ms Kelliher encourages him to work on practical projects for use on their farm system.

Ms Kelliher said her kids were happiest when they were learning in a practical way.

"You do what you think is best at the time," she said.

"Education, for me, is the main thing."

Want to know more?

Wandering Clover Fed Beef

Farming Champions