Bass Coast Landcare is starting its Women on Farms series

Communications manager Lisa Wangman said the group would meet in the coming weeks and would involve a theory component and a farm walk.

"We thought it was a good opportunity to start a group that just is of women and the focus being to connect local women on farms with each other to allow them to build a network of support," she said.

"And also just to give them the opportunity to have access to really good speakers on topics that are of interest to them on their farm."

The group will be funded through Southern Farming Systems via the Australian Government National Landcare Program and the Bass Coast Community Foundation.

An expression of interest was put out last week and 12 people had already signed up, she said.

The program would be co-designed with participants to make sure it was relevant.

"The form is designed to capture information of who would like to have the session on their property, what sort of topics are they interested in hearing about, and what sort of time would they were interested in meeting," she said.

Farming was already an isolated occupation and it had been exacerbated by the pandemic restrictions, she said.

The network already hosts a number of farm discussion groups, many of which started through Meat & Livestock Australia's BeefCheque program.

The groups, which are now funded through Smart Farms as part of a bigger program, met every two months and were held in an informal setting to allow participants to network and ask questions, she said.

"They wanted to continue meeting because they'd built up this whole peer-to-peer learning that comes from these sessions," she said.

"It's a good chance to share successes and even failures - that's probably just as important.

"That's anywhere between 12 and 20 people that will be at those days, so they're kind of smaller groups but then there's more opportunities to connect with each other and build that support network."

Once the Women on Farms group was underway it would look for more long-term funding so it could continue to run alongside the existing farm discussion groups, she said.

Women involved in any kind of farming and invited to get involved with sessions due to start in July.

For more information, visit the Bass Coast Landcare Network website.