This is a YouTube video titled "Meet the Brooks Family | Join the Family 2022 (New Zealand)" created in June 2022. It features a monologue by David Brooks describing his family, their rural lifestyle near Ballarat, Victoria, and their experiences managing their property and animals. The content focuses on their daily routines, use of farming equipment, and the close relationship with their John Deere dealer, Stuart. There is only one speaker, David, sharing a personal and promotional narrative about family life and farming.
We're the Brooks family. My name's David. There's my wife Deb and my daughters Carly and Taylor. And my mother in law Jane. Two donkeys, Ally and Angus. A rabbit called Theodore and a cat called Millie. And then of course there's the newest members of the family, Little John and Wally. So we're just outside of Ballarat in Victoria. Typical morning here starts at 5am to feed Ally and Angus normally kick the day off with a nice cup of tea or coffee, listen to the kookaburra sing their dawn due and watch the countryside come to life. My wife and I had always dreamt of living in the country once our kids were through school. We found this property about 15 years ago and have been working on it ever since. The property when we first got here, it is fair to say that it was a fairly neglected and dilapidated block. We've spent nearly every weekend for the last few years cleaning things up to get it to the state that it's in today. We bought Little John just over 12 months ago. Little John has just been the change that I needed to protect my body as I move into my mid-50s. Little John has been incredibly stable on the undulating ground here. I had moments on the old tractor that were very scary. I'm sitting lower to the ground so there's a lower centre of gravity. It just has made all the difference on our place. Using the four in one bucket is very intuitive. The way the joystick control works, you can see everything in front of you just a little mate that's just easy to get along with. So at the moment we have two donkeys on the place. We plan to expand the amount of area on the property that we can use for grazing and increase the number of donkeys that we have. The Stickrake's just been fantastic in helping us maintain healthier passes by spreading and breaking up the donkey manure and also opening up new areas for us to increase our grazing area. We do have a newest member of the family still on his first tank of fuel, which we've called Wally. He was bought specifically to help ferry my mother in law around the place. And so it's been great for her to be able to jump on board the Gator and stay involved with everything that we're doing on the block. I've always been the sort of person to work hard and wear myself out. Wally's just been really adaptable and capable of anything we've asked him to do. The old adage, work smarter and not harder. Wally certainly allows me to do that. From the moment I walked in the door at John Deere, it was a different experience. Meeting Stuart for the first time gave me all the confidence in the world that I was in the right place for what we needed to do. My relationship with Stuart now would be more as a mate. Stuart's been there to answer any query that we've ever had. Wouldn't matter if it's day or night, seven days a week. He's always there to talk about John Deere stuff, but he's there to just have a quiet beer and chat, just as mates. I've always dreamt of having a big family, and I guess it's fair to say that we've got that big family now.
