One of Jeanette McIntyre’s favourite memories of growing up on a Southland dairy farm was the ever-important task of collecting the cream off the top of the 44-gallon milk cans to go on the porridge her mother made on the coal range.
McIntyre is now 84, a spritely Southlander who has given, and continues to give, her all to her community.
“I’m a bit ordinary,” she said, speaking from her country home in the Waikaka Valley near Gore.
“I was one of those women who married and became a wife, mother and a gofer, the lot. But if I was needed on the farm, I was there to do it.”
McIntyre, MBE, has been married for 64 years. She has been part of Rural Women New Zealand (RWNZ) for 60 years, and has been a marriage celebrant for 30 years as a side.
There is one thing for certain about her – when she picks up a job, McIntyre won’t put it down until it is completed.
“The thing is if you join an organisation why do you say ‘I will be here for five years and then I’m off’? If you are there and see things to be done, don’t you stay there and work through things and keep on looking for things that need to be done?
“I think if you care about what you are doing, you don’t turn your back on it.”
Everything McIntyre gets involved with she cares deeply about.
Her biggest passion is family, followed closely by uplifting women, and keeping the community alive.
Born just down the road in Knapdale on an 80 hectare dairy farm with just 35 cows, she recalls fondly how simple farming was in the 1940s and ’50s.
“The changes have been incredible, when I look back to when it was just a small shed and milking six cows at the one time.
“Dad would put the lids on the 44 gallons of milk and we would take it down to the Otamita dairy factory. There was still one farmer there who brought his milk on his old horse and wagon.
“It is hard to compare. There was very little, but we were happy. We had the church as a centre for us and the local hall.”
McIntyre said that while many of those smaller country communities have disappeared over the years as metropolitan New Zealand grew, many see the value of turning back to the “simple life”.
“When I look back to Mum cooking, she cooked on a coal range. She managed with very little, nothing was new or flash. We kept a good veggie garden and that’s what we would use.
“You would go to town once a week maybe, and town was different then as you’d dress up. Mum would sew our outfits and we’d look our best.”
It’s one of the reasons she fronted the opening up of the local country hall every Tuesday during the winter months this year, to put on a breakfast for local farmers.
It has proved popular, she said, and will continue next year.
Living in the rural hotspot of eastern Southland, she married fourth-generation sheep farmer Jim McIntyre when she was 20 as “it’s what you did back then”. She has been farming ever since between Maitland and Waikaka.
“Our kids were all brought up on the farm and there is still a farm kid in all of them.
“They were able to get out on the vehicles and with the animals. I always remember them coming home from school and it was a dash to get off the school bus to see who was going to get out in the paddock with Dad.”
Leaving the farming side mainly to Jim, she made use of the small amount of spare time she had.
In the 1960s she joined what was then called Federated Farmer Women’s Division and later became Rural Women New Zealand.
This was a time when a married woman like McIntyre would be introduced as Mrs Jim McIntyre, which McIntyre can’t help but grin about.
“One of my friends up the road got her initials first ahead of his on the mailbox and, at the time, that was quite something.”
One of the biggest bones she had to pick was over the name of the women’s group, as it suggested it was just a subgroup of the men’s organisation.
“They were always separate and that has bugged me my whole life.”
When she became president, in 1991, she spoke up about the issue, but her suggestion of a new name was met with cries of “over my dead body”. However, six years later the name changed, and is RWNZ to this day.
“It’s important to have the women’s voice. Our rural women are about strengthening our communities and it is ensuring those communities have the services.”
When you meet her, McIntyre is anything but the “ordinary” woman she describes herself as, but as is often the case with women who light up a room, she suffers from a lack of confidence.
“There was always this overwhelming self-doubt. When I was elected on the National Council for RWNZ I thought how am I going to be anywhere near where they are? They are so intelligent and they have the finger on the pulse.”
McIntyre’s MBE for services to her community proves getting on with the job at hand never goes unrecognised.
“There are other ways of doing things, because if you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got.”
One of her more personal pastimes, as a marriage celebrant, has brought her plenty of joy.
“My middle daughter said, ‘Mum, you’re going to marry us.’ I said ‘I can’t, I am not a marriage celebrant.’ She said, ‘Well become one then.’
“I have taken so many weddings I have lost count.
“Everything is special when you are working with couples at a special time in their lives. Working with them is a privilege.”
McIntyre, who belongs to more committees than there is space to list, barely takes a breath when asked how she fits it all in.
“There’s always something going on, you can’t do things in just singular.”
“I just think I keep going because if you are interested in something, just keep doing it.”
More: The Farmers Weekly Rural Living series highlights the rich diversity and people of Aotearoa New Zealand’s rural communities, farming families and contributions to the food and fibre sector.
