Western Australian YouTube sensation John Carmody, a farmer from Cascade near Esperance, is taking extraordinary steps to help bridge the city-country divide and share his passion for agriculture.
He is a modern day farming "influencer", with his 4500-hectare property Tom's Brook Farm setting the stage for vlogging activities outlining his daily life three times a week.
Using a Go-Pro, he is giving media-savvy viewers a front row seat to watch his life on the land unfold.
The Tom's Brook Farm channel has had more than two million views and attracted 11,500 subscribers.
Most views are from an Australian audience, with a fair slice coming from urban centres, as well as attracting people from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the US and Canada.
"I can see people in cities are watching and commenting," Mr Carmody said.
"Some farmers are also linking in, but it is not really targeted at them."
Mr Carmody produces an even split of wheat, barley and canola crops with his father Paul, wife Rhiannon, daughters Felicity and Elaina and workman Henry Johnston.
He is the third generation of the family to farm at Cascade where his grandfather took up the current property in the 1970s.
Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the Go-Pro comes out and Mr Carmody films whatever he is doing that day.
Cascade can be quite a challenging area to farm in, with variable rainfall in recent years and widely varying soil types - from sand through to gravels and clays.
The Carmodys use a no-till seeding system and their John Deere equipment is fully equipped with guidance technology.
They do some claying and apply lime and gypsum each year to build soil health.
They sow Scepter wheat, Rosalind and Cyclops barley and Bonito and Renegade canola varieties.
Spraying involves the use of pulsing technology to optimise droplet size and coverage and the family is investigating the use of cameras on their spray rigs.
"We go in and spray when we have weeds, which are our enemy in dry years," Mr Carmody said.
He said YouTube viewers were responding well to learning about the family's farming systems and posed many questions.
"I am doing nothing unusual, just going about my daily activities and recording what I am up to," he said.
"From the anticipation during seeding, to the angst of navigating a wet harvest, the natural seasonal drama of farming provides unique content that transcends beyond the farm gate.
"I believe the vlogs are providing a valuable opportunity to help bridge the urban/rural divide."
Mr Carmody initially became interested in vlogging when he had an English backpacker working for him who watched a lot of farming YouTube content.
"He suggested people would love to see what we were up to in WA," he said.
"Now I aim to show city people that our State's farmers are not the enemy and are striving to be as sustainable and productive as possible.
"There is still a great divide between the city and country in WA, with families no longer having ancestoral ties to the land.
"I just want to show these people the life of a farming family that is using industry best practice to grow grain that is exported around the world.
"It is also a way to promote how well we are looking after the land."
Mr Carmody said the key to his vlogging success was keeping the messages simple and explaining what he was doing in some detail.
"It is also important to explain why we are doing what we do," he said.
The focus at this time of the year is spreading gypsum and carting gravel to build farm tracks.
This will morph into seeding and spraying once the rains arrive to break the season.
"I will follow the crop growth over winter and keep up the three vlogs each week as the season unfolds," Mr Carmody said.
"This will go through to harvest."
Mr Carmody follows some of the many American farming vloggers out of interest.
"I enjoy seeing how they farm, and realised this could be something we could leverage here in Australia to help educate people about farming and food production," he said.
"We take our lifestyle for granted.
"But for someone who has no access to agriculture, what we see as a mundane every day task can be absolutely fascinating to them."
With most of his viewers from urban areas, Mr Carmody said the feedback had been terrific, and he said he believes the medium could be a valuable tool helping to attract young people into agricultural careers.
"I notice a lot of high schoolers view my vlogs, and I recently had a teacher from Cunderdin High School reach out and let me know they follow his syllabus so well that he was encouraging all his students to subscribe," he said.
Prudent about occupational health and safety across his property, Mr Carmody said YouTube was also a powerful tool in promoting the strong farm safety messages out there.
While his vlogs are helping educate the public about life on the land, they are also a valuable keepsake documenting this special time in his life.
"I have a lot of fun making the clips, filming and editing them, and my daughters always get excited watching them and seeing what's happening on the farm," he said.
"I hope I can look back on these clips when I'm old and reflect on my family and my farming career, and help consumers join a few dots on where they're clothed and fed in the meantime."
The vlogging idea runs in the family, with Mr Carmody's cousin showcasing station life in his vlog Jacks Outback.
