King Country Farmer (2024)

09/06/2022

Rough waters with plan changes
By Andy Campbell

WAIKATO regional councillor Stu Kneebone is arguably one of the most knowledgeable people in any council setting when it comes to the complex intricacies of the Essential Freshwater legislation.
The hard work he and the council team have been involved in for more than a decade, and which put them in front of other councils in terms of setting regulations and polices under required Government guidelines now looks to be set back as the Government abruptly changes the goalposts.
Andy Campbell talks to Stu about his personal perspective on what it all means.

BEING ahead of the field is not always an advantage, especially when it comes to water regulations as the Waikato Regional Council is discovering.
For 12 years the council has been pursuing Plan Change 1 (PC1), an environmental overhaul of its fresh water regulations and how they affect users – in line with the Waikato River Authority’s Vision and Voice, Te Ture Whaimana.
PC1 is legally robust as Te Ture Whaimana was enshrined in the Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Act 2010.
“In terms of fresh water and managing the effects of agricultural activities PC1 was first off the block in the Waikato/Waipā catchments, regional councillor Stu Kneebone said.
“Second was going to be Waihou/Piako and Coromandel and then the third one was going to be the west coast catchments.
“And we deliberately did it that way so we could manage our resources. It was just too big a project to do it all at once.”
In the 12 years PC1 has been through the whole process including public submissions, it has been ratified and is now at the appeals end of the process, but its been pipped at the post by the Government’s regulating Essential Fresh Water, basically a new plan making process under the Resource Management Act intended to speed up the process.

FRESH REVIEW
Now the council is required to do a fresh water policy review to give effect to the new national freshwater regulations, the NPS freshwater and NES freshwater, and the stock exclusion regulations and the fresh water farm plan regulations, and have them done by Christmas 2024.
“They have got the National Environmental Standards for freshwater 2020, NES freshwater they call it,” Stu said.
“They have got the Resource Management Stock Exclusion Regulations 2020. We still don’t know what the final stock exclusion regulations will include.
“I think the South Island issue was it set some pretty stringent regulations around winter grazing. Those guys do a lot of that cropping down there that we don’t really do up here.
“My gut feeling is that particular part of it is not such a big deal for us.
“And then you have got the Fresh Water Farm Plan Regulations, as well the NPS freshwater 2020 which is an update from the 2017 version.”
In rough terms, the WRC has been working away on PC1 only to have the Government step in and say they have to do it their way.
In the Waikato and Waipā catchments Stu said the WRC was well ahead of other parts of the country, driven by the Waikato River Authority’s vision and the voice, Te Ture Whaimana.
“It sort of obliged us to do a whole bunch of things as well. And I guess one of our biggest frustrations is we have done all this work with the community and the farming sector with PC1 to give effect to Te Ture Whaimana, which effectively is all about the mana of the awa – and now the Government’s come in and said ‘Hey. We’ve got a whole lot of other regional councils around the country that we don’t believe have been as proactive as they should be with regards to cleaning up fresh water. And so we are going to impose this hierarchy of obligations over all regional councils in the country’.”
The farmers in the region just want some certainty which would be given once PC1 came through the appeals process.
“But then all these other [regulations] have come in over the top which has just postponed our ability to give them some certainty.”
The appeals process only permits parts of PC1 that have been introduced as specific appeal points, which means the more recently introduced regulations cannot be introduced as part of the appeals process for PC1.
“If you look at the stock exclusion regulations they have been made under section 360 of the RMA - that particular part of the RMA specifies that if regional plan rules are inconsistent with the stock exclusion regulations, then they can be withdrawn and amended to change those inconsistencies without using the schedule one process.”
Schedule one is the where the regional council drafts a new set of rules, notifies them for public feedback then amends and adopt the rules.
The last avenue of redress for submitters who aren’t happy with the final look is appeal through the Environment Court, which is where PC1 is at now.
Stu said section 360 of the RMA allowed the regional council to effectively bypass that process.
“We don’t know if freshwater farm plan regulations will be able to use that process when they come out. We are still waiting to see what the fresh water farm plan regulations will look like,” he said.
“We’ve been told an exposure document will be released about August 2022, and they are going to finalised them at the end of this year.”
There’s also a question mark around whether the regulations are going to be nationwide or regionally specific.
“We’ve been inputting through the submission process I imagine once they are finalised that would be it,” he said.
Similarly the council won’t know what is in Fresh Water Farm Plans until they see them, as each one is unique.
“The whole concept was to help a farmer individualise his farm to look after the environment,” Stu said.
“The way the Government is talking, the fresh water farm plan regs will go quite a bit further than the ones proposed under PC1. A broader range of outcomes and broader range of contaminants to be considered.”
Also expected are a more detailed risk assessment, greater requirements for risk assessment and auditing in terms of when they need to be changed or recertified.
They were hoping to get the details before the end of the year.
“It’s just a lot more complicated and frustrating in the Waikato/Waipā because we have already done a broadly similar process,” Stu said.
The Vision and the Voice Te Ture Whaimana is an 80 year strategy to restore and maintain the Waikato/Waipa catchments.
PC1 encompasses the first ten year of that 80 year journey, Stu said.
“If you think about where we are going to be with water quality after the first 10 years of PC1, obviously we are looking to get a 10% improvement in water quality because we will be about 10% of the way.
“And then you think about if we alternatively just implemented the Government’s Essential Freshwater rules, I would suggest the water quality improvement would be not that much different after 10 years.”

09/06/2022

Wool down - but not out
By Paul Charman

JANETTE Osborne, the owner of the Briar Patch label and a long-time campaigner to retain wool processing capacity within New Zealand, has had to wave the white flag on efforts to keep producing one of her most popular export products.
Janette said she and her husband Kim have admitted defeat on their efforts to process high-grade Perendale lambs’ wool into skeins prized by craft knitters the world over.
The reason? Following the closure of a processing facility in Levin they are unable to obtain the “super wash” treatment which made this product capable of machine washing.
Janette and Kim have no shortage of keen customers for the brightly-coloured skeins, which are popular with knitters from the United States to Iceland, but after their considerable current stock is sold, they will be unable to produce more. The company will continue to produce a range of other h**p and wool products, the latter including high-end Corriedale black wool grown on their Te Toko Station property, near Waitomo Caves. Also, they will continue to supply merino products from Lammermoor Station.
As a former chair and director of Primary Wool Cooperative Ltd and having served on the Government Wool Working Group, Janette is no stranger to primary industry politics. She also previously joined with business groups that sought unsuccessfully to retain wool processing factories in the South Island.
“I was born in Balclutha and went to school in Milton. I can remember when we had factories processing cross-bred wool products in Milton, Mosgiel and Timaru. New Zealand used to manufacture the full range of wool products in quantity - socks, garments, blankets, you name it.
“I joined with a group of merino farmers which tried to resurrect a factory in Timaru that closed following 120 years of operation. We wanted to bring some of that processing of super fine merino back to New Zealand, but we couldn’t get any funding; we couldn’t get sufficient support.”
The Briar Patch skeins which will no longer be produced were popular because of the growing conditions at Waitomo, which could involve the sheep getting “washed” by rainfall and then drying off again up to three times a week. This, combined with Kim’s breeding refinement, had provided the intense white coloured lamb’s wool which amplified the brightness of later dying.
“Oddly enough, they seemed to love it in Iceland, because craft knitters there prefer wool with a bit more loft than what you get with merino,” Janette said.
“Yes, the country is still losing out by sending wool overseas for processing, without added value or design. It’s the equivalent of exporting logs overseas instead of finished tables and chairs. It’s like killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”
Does Janette still have hope that the country can add value to its wool?
“I now see the answer through having really smart design in future. A top designer Liz Mitchell came out here and looked at our Corriedale wool recently.
“Liz is applying her design flair to felted products with the vision to make beautifully designed products that are commercially scalable. This is the direction we need to head in, in my view.”

KIM and Janette Osborne with the brightly coloured skeins made from Perendale lambs at Te Toko Station near Waitomo Caves.

09/06/2022

Around the world with Clydesdales
By Brianna Stewart
WHEN Pirongia couple Nick and Jill van der Sande got behind the reins of their first Clydesdale horse they did not imagine the experiences that would follow.
They’ve been the face of brewery advertisements, became regulars at horse events, featured in movies, became local legends and eventually wrote a book about all their experiences.
Nick and Jill stumbled on their first Clydesdale early in their marriage when they also got into their first dairy farm in Northland.

RESCUED
The manager of a station near their Kaipara farm was ordered to shoot an old horse named ‘Molly’, but didn’t want to do it.
Nick said the manager contacted him and Jill and they decided to take her on.
“She had foundered, which is a problem where they go bad in the feet and they’re very lame, but we worked on that and we knew a good farrier who worked on her too.
“We got her so we could put shoes on the front, didn’t have to worry about the back, and we got her sound-ish so we could use her.
“And we found out that she knew it all and we were green.”
‘Molly’ became a staple in Nick’s farming work.
“It was very heavy wet clay hill country that we were on. We had to leave the tractor in the shed – it made more mess than it was worth.
“But ‘Molly’ was ideal.
“Initially I pulled a sledge with her, fed all the hay out and also brought the newborn calves in a pen on the sledge with the cows following.”
Nick spent the better part of a week in Nelson at a course in draughthorse management and on his way home heard about a purebred Clydesdale stallion just out of Te Kūiti.
“I went in there on the way back and ended up buying him, brought him home and still had to break him in.
“He did a lot of work around the place and then was used for breeding.”

TEAM UP AND RUNNING
Before long Nick and a friend had a team of horses and would do forestry work with them.
And it just grew from there.
Their farming fortunes began to change and a cousin of Jill’s suggested they approach New Zealand breweries to see if they were interested in using their horses and skills for promotional work.
With a door shut in their face at one brewery and an uninspiring offer from another, they continued farming.
But Nick knew an Australian horse master who did a lot of training of horses for films and had worked for him before.

AUSSIE NEED
Nick said he got a call from him one night and was asked to get across the ditch quickly because someone had let him down for a big film with lots of horses and lots of cattle for the American market.
“So we thought about it for about 20 minutes I think, and rang him back.”
Nick set himself up on set outside of Bourke, New South Wales while Jill tied up loose ends and followed him over with their one-year-old daughter.
Just before filming wrapped, Nick said they got a call from New Zealand.
A friend told them DB Breweries was starting up a Clydesdale team and needed people.

GOT THE JOB
When they got back to New Zealand Nick went for an interview and got the job.
“And the rest is history.”
Nick and Jill filmed three advertisements with DB Breweries in some hair-raising scenarios.
They crossed the Dart River in Queenstown, rode across a breaking bridge and trod through virgin snow, all without special editing.
After the pin was pulled on the Clydesdales at DB Breweries, Nick and Jill set up as the Pirongia Clydesdales.
They would interact with all sorts of people through their offerings of a café, wagon rides and weddings, with whom they would share stories about their experiences with the horses.
Together with the horses they travelled the country.
“We’d go into schools, race meetings, Canterbury A&P show, Fieldays, Auckland Cup, Easter Show, NZ Trotting Cup, Queenstown,” Jill said.
They would also look after sponsors at the annual Horse of the Year show.
They were asked frequently by visitors if they were putting those stories down in a book.

10 YEARS
“That got said so many times I thought we’d better get down to it,” Nick said.
Jill estimated it likely took close to 10 years for them to actually get the book finished, including Nick writing 80,000 words by hand and her typing 80,000 words with two fingers.
It took them a few goes to find an editor they gelled with and they had difficulties getting a publisher on board, so after Nick attended a seminar in Te Awamutu they decided to go the self-publishing route.

ROARING SUCCESS
The book has proved to be a roaring success and has one particularly special fan in England.
Nick and Jill were stoked last month to receive a letter from Her Majesty the Queen saying she had received a copy of their book and was looking forward to reading it.
While their memories are still sharp with several lifetimes worth of experience behind them, Nick and Jill have significantly reduced the amount of horse work they do.
In 2017 they hosted a reduction sale where they sold most of the gear used in public appearances.
Since the sale Nick has been focused on teaching and mentoring horsemanship and carriage driving. He said coachman style driving in particular was a dying art.
“But if people learn it and practice it, it is the safest and most efficient way of handling the reins.”
He also works on healing and starting horses, while Jill said she enjoyed breeding young sport horses.
They’re actively subdividing their property and a move is on the cards.
But Jill said she and Nick would always keep busy.
“Our plans are not to retire as such, we never will.”

NICK and Jill van der Sande with 'Lucy'.

09/06/2022

Fast growing fodder on trial
By Paul Charman

BEING both drought and frost-resistant, tagasaste trees, otherwise known as tree lucerne, also can provide an excellent source of fodder for farm animals.
The trees are being trialled on the Awakino Station, North Otago, a property farmed by rural influencer Jaz Mathisen, who claims King Country farmers among her Instagram followers.
Jaz said the trees were an easily-propagated, fast-growing, frost-tolerant species that could reach full potential in just three to four years, providing shelter, shade, and a high protein evergreen fodder source.

KING COUNTRY INTEREST
“Judging by the response I’m getting there’s quite a lot of interest in tagasaste trees round the King Country. I’ve heard there was a particularly dry season there which has sparked an interest in fodder trees or fast-growing trees to be used for shade purposes.
“And the one great thing about us farmers is if we experience a tough season it creates an opportunity for researching and thinking outside the box.”
Farmed by Jaz and her husband Dan, the 7500 ha Awakino Station, runs fine wool sheep, Hereford cattle and red deer, wintering around 24,000 stock units and finishing all progeny.
“Dan had a bit to do with tagasaste when he worked in Australia. Then in the 2020/2021 summer we experienced the driest year in roughly 30 years. There was no silage in the pit and we were nearly at the point of having to buy in feed for the autumn/winter period.
“So, we decided to look at our on-farm food sources.
Dan thought tagasaste trees could help but no-one could give them much information on it, so the couple talked to their local agronomist who did most the research for them using Australian websites.

HIGHLY PALATABLE
“It is a relatively fast-growing tree and well known in the permaculture world as an ideal all-rounder and highly palatable to livestock. It is a legume, so fixes nitrogen. It produces flowers in the winter providing a crucial food-source for bees and kereru love it as well.
“It makes great firewood. And being a fodder tree, you can graze it directly or grow it like a hedge and trim it back, feeding the offcuts to stock.”
Jaz said tagasaste trees could withstand extremely dry conditions due to their large taproot.
“From memory their taproot can grow up to 10m to find underground water sources.

FROST TOLERANT
“They are also frost-tolerant once established. Hence why I am using sheep dags as an insulator around their bases for these winter months until they are a little older and more established,” she said.
“This winter will be the real trial period but so far most of them are flourishing. I do need to recheck them in the coming weeks now that winter has really turned up – and top up their manure.
Jaz said she had germinated 120 seeds from King Seeds. This demanded soaking them in near boiling water until they had swollen and doubled in size. They had a hard outer casing which needed to be softened or scarified for the seed to be able to germinate.
“Once swollen, I planted them in seed raising trays and grew them in our second lounge over the winter months. I had 70 seeds successfully germinate. When the spring warmth hit, I transplanted the seedlings into individual tree bags and transferred them to our back porch. In early autumn, when the trees were at 40cm high (optimum transplanting height) we started planting them out on the farm.
“We chose various places on our farm for different trials/reasons.
The first rows were planted near the riverbed on a free-draining paddock, which was the ideal location and growing conditions for them.
“The second row was alongside lucerne to see if the two plants could grow and flourish with one another – a bit like growing carrots and parsnips side by side. “Will they compete for nutrients or catch the same diseases etc.
The final row is up high on an exposed south facing face which gets battered by the wind.
“ A bit mean,” she said, “but this site will really test their capabilities. Ideally, we would like to be able to grow them on our summer dry faces, which get scorched by the summer’s heat.
“They would provide shelter and shade for under growing grasses as well as a food source for our stock."
Jaz said the trees were also a great companion or nursery plant, as they were fast growing and provided the protection natives needed to become established.
So they were popular being planted in shelter belts along with native species.
Jaz said she had a few followers who were buying their own seeds now, germinating them this winter which was great to see.
“I have a lot of invested followers who cannot wait to see how they survive this first winter of harsh frosts and snow. I believe it is important to share this kind of knowledge, otherwise trees like this slip under the radar and with increasing drier summers different fodder sources are becoming more and more important and crucial in this modern farming age. It is about sharing information and helping one another out.
“If just one farm grows tagasaste, finds themselves in a tough situation and can fall back on this tree then that’s a job well done.”

JAZ and daughter Ida beside a line of tagasaste trees which are part of her trial. Jaz uses FiberGuard biodegradable tree guards and sheep dags around the base of the trees. PHOTO / Victoria Rutherford

12/05/2022

Necessary niche for lifestylers
By Vonny Fowler

THE struggles of small-block and lifestyle owners in sourcing the expertise, knowledge and skills they need is part of what’s colloquially known as “small block syndrome”.
One of its characteristics is those who operate specialist services only do it on the large scale – the small amount of work a lifestyle owner requires is simply not commercially viable, notwithstanding the fact that the work still must be done.
Christine Hartnell has been the solution for any number of Waipā and King Country lifestyle blockers for some years.

FILLING THE GAP
By dint of both training and experience as a shepherdess, years of growing up on a farm and a passion for animal wellbeing, she fills the knowledge and skills gap in both paid and unpaid capacities, online and in person, doing for them the things they can’t do for their animals – drenching, shearing, stock selection and more.
The passion for working with animals was born early in Christine. Growing up on the family cattle and deer farm in Owairaka Valley suited her down to the ground and has kept her tied to the land ever since.
“I’d lie about having done my homework and follow Dad around, helping where I could and watching what he was doing – it was cool.”
Instead of following the family’s main farmstock interest, she took a real liking to the few sheep on the farm and followed through with a cadetship at then training farm Aratiatia. Three years as a shepherd in Southland followed, then when the cold got to her it was back to Aratiatia for 18 months of training others.
Then down to Dannevirke for close to a year and up to Kerikeri before a job came up at home in 2016, working for and then becoming assistant manager at PGG Wrightson’s store in Te Awamutu.
Four years on, she shifted her focus to the relatively new dairy sheep industry and now does a fulltime job in farm genetics for Spring Sheep Milk Company.

UPPED STICKS
She even tried living in town. But while she and fencer husband Luke Hartnell sort-of got used to living in Ōtorohanga, it didn’t feel like home, so they upped sticks and went back to a 1ha lifestyle block of their own just south of Kihikihi.
Shearing is still the main thing she does for lifestyle block farmers, and while the sheep are in for shearing anyway, she treats for flystrike, does a foot trim and drenches.
“They don’t usually have a huge worm burden, because of how they’re grazed.
“Most are living the life of Reilly – often they’re pets or former school and kindy pet day animals.”
She loves the contact, the education side of it, the animals and the kids, who always get have a go at helping her shear if they want.
But sadly, like the large specialist farm service providers she’s had to face the facts – her work for lifestyle blocks is less than financially viable. It has to be just a hobby.
“The issue is, you don’t make money and the cost of time and fuel is so high. And I’m gutted about it, but my work life – we just can’t be that busy all of the time.
“If you could make it full time, doing extras like putting in water troughs and water lines and be a kind of small-block handyman [it might work] – but that would be kind-of a later life thing.”
In the interim, she’s decided to give it a little less time, focus in on the job she loves as genetics and livestock co-ordinator for Spring Sheep and running the couple’s own lifestyle block better.

BREAK EVEN
“They never make you money, but they need to be cost efficient. Something has to come off so you can break even, reduce the costs.
“Yes, I recommend living on a lifestyle block, absolutely and especially if you’ve got kids. They’ll learn about the circle of life and this is how the world goes round.
“Occasionally I just go out and brush the pet cow. She doesn’t need it, but I enjoy the company of animals. We mothered a calf onto her, so we have two calves this year and we’re watching them grow up – might eat one and sell the other.
“Our aim is to provide meat for our freezer. We’re also running six lambs on at the moment.”
The trick to sticking with the goal is not to name the animals, she said.

RESOURCES
“The cow has a name, the calves don’t, the sheep don’t. They’re resources, it’s why we got them or we wouldn’t have them.”
And of course, there’s a dog.
“When I was shepherding, there were always many working dogs. Now I have a springer spaniel – they’re great family and working dogs. I needed something that was trainable or I’d go crazy.”
‘Stella’ will be trained as a duck/retrieving dog.
Christine is not walking away entirely from service to other lifestyle blockers.
“I’ll keep some key customers and I will never charge people for advice. So I encourage you to ask questions. Often, it’s just a text message that’s needed – and I can do that from the couch.”

SHEPHERDESS Christine Hartnell has been the lifestyle block owners’ way to get around Small Block Syndrome for years – but now she too has found the small amount of work across a large geographical area is not commercially viable. PHOTO SUPPLIED

12/05/2022

Forestry numbers game slammed
By Andy Campbell

A STUDY claiming carbon farming will employ more people than regular dry stock and sheep farming has been criticised by Aria farmer Dani Darke.
The research from PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting (PwC) claims actively managed carbon forestry – supporting transitioning from initial exotic planting to indigenous forests – creates 25% more local jobs than sheep and beef farming on low productivity land.
The study was released to media in early May – two months after Forestry Minister Stuart Nash and Climate Change Minister James Shaw released a public discussion document on March 3 proposing to exclude future permanent plantings of exotic forests like radiata pine from the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
The PwC report focused on transitioning from exotic to indigenous forests created the most local jobs with an estimated 6.3 local FTEs per 1,000 hectares, compared to 4.7 for sheep and beef farming on low productivity land and 2.0 for permanent carbon forestry.
PwC’s report found the larger number of jobs created by transitioning from exotic to indigenous forests was as a result of the additional management activities required to achieve the regeneration.
“You can’t cherry pick an outcome - like employment, and pretend you are giving a balanced view of reality,” Dani said.
“Employment alone doesn’t take into consideration community impact. If the forestry sector was serious about caring for rural communities then they need to do research that takes into account a broader view of community outcomes.
“In real life, most of the large forestry blocks are run by a managing company like PF Olsen for example who are based in a central location like Rotorua.
“They bring in labour, by the van load to get the job done in as short a time as possible, and then they get the labour out and onto the next job, wherever that might be.
“From my experience these workers are often RSE workers such as the many Fijians who do a great job, and not locals who live in the community. This data set averages that high intensity of labour over the full year, which isn’t reality - and comes out with a number that is higher than sheep and beef.”
There might be on average fewer workers on the average sheep and beef farm, but those people lived in the community, Dani said.
“They have kids which attend the local school and provides employment for teachers. They get their hair cut in the village. Dad coaches the local footy team, mum hunts her horse in the local hunt club, and the kids attend pony club on the weekends.
“Without these people the community stagnates and declines,” she said.
“If we want vibrant, thriving rural communities then this latest report won’t be able to give an indication on that.”
Dani opposes the blanket planting of trees used as offsets for carbon.
“I am not against trees - on marginal land they are the right thing to do,” Dani said. “We need to fully understand the land use capability of any parcel of land and put the tree in the right place. This can be done through GIS mapping, and legislation needs to ensure that trees are not being planted on productive land. But this report at a glance doesn’t consider the reality of how labour is undertaken on forestry blocks.”
Climate Forestry Association spokesperson Dr Sean Weaver said one of the associations concerns is the Government’s proposal to exclude exotics from the permanent category of the ETS.
“Alongside the significant risks to the success of New Zealand’s climate change actions, removing the opportunity for active management to transition exotic forests to natives would undermine the opportunity for the industry to enhance rural employment across New Zealand while supporting a wide range of complementary economic benefits.”
Dr Weaver said the Association’s members, which represent a broad range of the carbon farming sector, are committed to the active management of their forests and already over-comply with the Government’s NZETS rules. This includes a range of long-term measures, including w**d control, pest eradication and continuous canopy cover forest management and timber supplies.
The PwC report highlighted that the process of active management for transition from exotics to natives was not only good for the environment but was also an important source of additional employment for rural communities, he said.

THE jobs created are not within the community, according to Dani Darke.

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King Country Farmer

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