It started with gaining first-hand experience, then deepening her understanding of life on the land by having conversations with like-minded females.

Then it expanded into the public forum on a podcast, now a conference, and eventually Katja Williams wants to operate a not-for-profit called Harvest Her Power.

A two-day conference in Dubbo on Monday and Tuesday (April 7-8) will hopefully raise enough revenue so Katja, a farmer and mother of four, can further explore her deep passion to help empower women in agriculture.   

Harvest Her Power is a farm wives' empowerment and skills conference to be held at Taronga Western Plains Zoo.

Katja has put the impressive program together herself with a wide variety of guest speakers.

She already has a podcast and social media platform The Ultimate Farm Wife.

The podcast already features around 90 episodes, with Katja conducting interviews with women in agriculture about the hurdles when they move to the farm and integrate into a family farming business.

Katja, who grew up on a small sheep farm near Orange, moved to a large-scale beef and cropping farm in the Dubbo region 11 years ago.

Katja said marrying a farmer is often daunting because there are a lot of aspects of life you are supposed to automatically know.

“There are a lot of assumed skills when you marry a farmer and move to the land,” she said.

“It is a lot of knowledge you are supposed to have, but isn’t covered under like business planning and business training that is normally rolled out. The conference is aimed to fill the gap.” 

Katja moved to the greater Dubbo region as an adult to go on the land with her partner Ned.

The pair are now married and have four small children aged five, four, two, and a three-and-a-half month old.

Graduating from university in 2013 with a Bachelor of Criminology, Katja formerly worked in juvenile justice and has always had a deep interest in understanding human behaviour.

Within life on the land, she discovered that future farming strategies tended to be based around males.

“A lot of the time, females on farms, be it daughters or farmwives, they often aren’t included in any succession planning,” Katja said.

“A lot of time they are not included in the business planning for the farms even when they do integrate into the family farming business.

“There are a lot of skills and space we need to work on to give them confidence and empowerment, and to teach them what they still can have control over.”

Katja said she could see “a gap in the market” so explored that further, starting the Instagram page and podcast.

“Speaking to rural women across the Central West, as well as in Canada, America, and the rest of Australia, there are unique challenges of integrating into a family farming business,” she said.

“That’s where the podcast really started… sharing their stories but also, more than that, it’s about giving tips, tricks, and advice that they found really helpful over the years in building a successful farming relationship.”

Katja also has an Instagram page which started as The Rural Mum hut has been re-branded to The Ultimate Farm Wife. She is also co-host and founder of the Agsolutely Fabulous podcast.

“From then, wanting to do more than the podcast, wanting to workshop, and then the conference,” she said. “It’s really part of my passion to be able to do more education in the space and really make a higher impact.”

The April 7 and 8 conference will feature guest speakers like Shanna Whan (Sober in the Country), Safe Work NSW, Malinda Guest (Boundless Psychology) and Grace Larson (The Sisterhood Project) on day one.

A networking cocktail party will feature two contestants from Farmer Wants a Wife (Hannah Gracey, season 12, and Clare Hocking, season 13). Mark Mudford from agribusiness firm LAWD will conduct a fundraising auction.

Day two has Diana Fear (Chief Executive Officer of Central West Farming Systems), Gillian Fennell (Suck-Session podcast), Steph Borowski (building a personal brand), and Annabel Sheehan (Royal Flying Doctor Service – Rural Mental Health Program) among the speakers.

“It’s a conference like no other,” she said. “It’s not working on inspiration, and it’s not working on the business, it’s working on the personal development behind the people in the business to build resilience from there.

“There is no point in just having a resilient farm business plan... if the people behind it aren’t resilient and are not being taught those skills to be resilient. It’s (about) supporting them before the cracks starts to show.”

Katja has put countless hours into getting this conference together.

If the event is success financially, Katja is hoping she will have Harvest Her Power registered as a not-for-profit to help to expand her work with team members and a board.

“I wanted to make sure there is a community for it,” she said. “The aim is we continue to support and empower women in ag... especially farm wives and female farmers.”