A Century of Stewardship

 Recently my path crossed a farming family that have continuously farmed the same bit of dirt since 1914. With that long association comes knowledge of the land, its peculiarities, strengths, weaknesses - where it wants to give and where it'll fight you back. Maybe more importantly is the connection that comes with those historical family ties. Three generations have farmed here and raised the next on the same land.

When the family first arrived, on this bit of land most of the heavy clearing had already happened. Remaining parcels of bush were in areas of the farm that would have been difficult to clear or unsuitable for development. Covering 1700 acres, only half of that is effective farmland.

The current family patriarch, now retired, still remembers the smoke that hung over the district during the summer months of his childhood. Neighbouring farms were felling bush, burning it off to make way for pastoral land. With all that clearing came flocks of kaka moving through the sky, looking for somewhere to call home. They'd stop at the family's remaining bush, have a look around, then move on – as a refuge, it just couldn't give them what they needed.

With the slope and contour of the land it remained uncultivated until the 50s and 60s, when tractors and bulldozers opened up possibilities. TD6s and TD9s pushed the remnant bush into heaps for burning, then giant discs worked the ground before harrowing and then sowing it down in swedes.

"The first year we took a crop, and we got a good one," the patriarch recalls. "Next one was abysmal, but then the following autumn, we sowed it down in grass. I remember distinctly, it was absolutely beautiful, but it was so fine, it was just ridiculously fine. We would have got a beautiful thing, but we got a heavy shower of rain, about 24 hours after we finished sowing it. I reckon that probably half the actual soil ended up, if not in the creek, actually on the banks of the creek and it was a mighty disaster."

Of course, it was accepted wisdom to work the soil in that manner at the time. It's a reminder that there is important knowledge to be learnt from the past to avoid repetition of the same mistakes. Right methods for the right area are important, yet similar errors (with similar results) are seen throughout the country over half a century later.

With a farm rich in native bush, caves, and challenging geography, what stands out about this family's tenure is the relationships they grew from sharing their land with various groups. This eventually led to a large chunk of the farm going into a QEII Trust covenant – but not in the way you might expect.

Conventional wisdom back then was to push cattle into the bush in winter and bring them out fat and happy in spring. "I'd just been through the bush looking for stock. I ended up on a bluff and I saw these birds I didn't know what on earth they were. I'd never seen them before."

There happened to be a group staying at a caver's hut on the property doing a bird survey. "I said to this chap about these unusual little birds feeding upside down along this branch, and they pricked up their ears. They said, 'Well we've got a bit of time, we'll just go and check.'"

"I went back to that spot – really rugged with limestone and that sort of thing – and we popped out and there were the little white heads all feeding away. That was really interesting."

Afterwards, the farmer mentioned to the group that pushing cattle into the bush wasn't really working. With the caves and geography, the animals weren't faring well, and as a business they couldn't continue that way.

"We were at the stage where we were improving country around the block of bush, but without fencing it we couldn't really control where the animals went. They said 'Well just hang on a minute' – they said 'Get in touch with this chap.'"

That chap (a pioneer in NZ farming conservation) came out along with someone from the Forest Service. "They came out and we talked, and we walked around the block, and we thought 'God, how the hell are we going to fence this?' They said they'd put a proposition to the Queen Elizabeth Trust board – if they paid for the fencing material and did the survey, would that make it easier?"

Of course that would make it a hell of a lot easier.

The farmers did the manual fencing to keep costs down, and after a 3-4 year period around 1980, they completed the project. A real partnership in creating an approximately 500-acre covenant.

"It wasn't just the whiteheads – there were lists of things they said we had in our bush that were valuable, worth conserving," his wife adds. Over time, other parcels were added until today the farm has close to half its area under QEII Trust covenant.

Balancing profitability with sustainable land management remains a constant juggling act. The farmer's wife tapped into the possum market: "Just to keep the kids at school I had to earn a bit more money, so I got my poison license and went out trapping. In those days you could make a bit of money out of the skins. Now it's just the fur."

A generation later their son has a contraption where he can hold the possum by the tail – it's got a flail that takes all the fur off and vacuums it into a pack. "He makes more money out of the possum fur than he does out of the wool. Because we make nothing out of the wool."

With a willingness to keep building on the family's environmental legacy, the son highlights the struggles: "We're it – doing the fencing, doing the retirement, doing the planting. Unless you're rich, which according to Statistics New Zealand sheep and beef farmers aren't, there's a sense of hopelessness there too. Let's face it, even if everybody was on board, they don't have the money to be on board. I can fence – I've been a fencer, I'm doing it – but I can't afford to do it."

The family has 2 kilometers of fencing left to finish waterway protection work. Even with a proud history of environmental measures, timelines and aspirations imposed by councils can be frustrating.

"There's this punitive measure where they seem to be saying 'Bloody well do it otherwise we're going to bash you with a stick, but we're not going to help you unless you've got enough money to help yourself.' Don't worry the prices are shit, we're struggling to even stay on the land, but let's go for this euphoric goal – which is a great goal, it's a fabulous goal. Everybody wants it, nobody's helping us get there."

The benefits of environmental work go well beyond individual properties. Much of the district sits on heavy karst country (limestone) so the water you see above ground is only part of the picture. Most of it goes straight underground through the limestone and drains back out again.

A local catchment group has been going for over 30 years, stemming from the economic benefits that tourism brings to their rural community. "It was really outrageous the amount of topsoil, silt, sediment that was ending up in the waterways, buggering up the natural attractions and buggering up the community in the process. So there was plenty of incentive to do the right thing, and they did – the farmers tried to do what they were told, best scenarios with some sort of scientific advice."

Despite the challenges, the family will try to give the next generation the same opportunities and a reason to be proud of their stewardship.

"We're really proud of what we've done, absolutely 100%. I was looking at the land today after this shitty weather and our stream that flows through 4 kilometers of the farm is flowing clear at the other end – probably 3 times as high as it usually flows, but it's running clear."

Metrics never capture the sentiment and the meaning behind people's why.