"I’ve always said, if you live in a small town, you’ve got to do your bit."
The couple have been involved with a raft of local groups and organisations; at the moment, Andrew is treasurer of the Strath Taieri Collie Club while Lynnore is heavily involved with the pony club — daughter Ellie, 16, is a keen show-jumper, on the board of the Strath Taieri Connect Charitable Trust, a member of the Beef + Lamb New Zealand Central South Island Farmer Council and the Mid Taieri Wai catchment group.
Then there was the other "stuff", like auditing the bowling club’s accounts, things that might benefit from Lynnore’s skill-set. Usually it was around what she was passionate about — farming, sport and horses.
Both were Lincoln graduates, Andrew with a commerce degree and certificate in wool and Lynnore with a first-class honours degree in agricultural science.
With a longtime passion for wool, Andrew worked in the wool industry for 10 years before joining the ASB rural banking team in Otago. Lynnore had a background in animal husbandry and parasitology.
Andrew always had a goal of farm ownership and farming fine wool sheep and, in 2003, they bought their first 80ha block at Middlemarch, adding more land over the years.
For Lynnore, it was about the challenge; she loved the idea of producing a quality product and also testing the boundaries "and doing stuff a bit differently". That was what she found exciting.
Spending time in industry before going farming had been the biggest benefit, both for the contacts they made and to give them confidence to ask for help when it was needed.
Andrew and Lynnore won the Otago Ballance Farm Environment Awards in 2019 and the environment was front of mind every time they made a decision on-farm. They were engaged in a wetland project with mining company OceanaGold to monitor and understand best practice on their property.
The Templetons’ nominator said the couple went the "extra mile" to support young people wanting to enter the farming sector.
With a good understanding of people management, that was also reflected in their team on their property who also possessed a broad range of different skill-sets.
They are Gateway farmers for Taieri College. Pupils travelled to The Rocks on the school bus, stayed the night with the Templeton family, spent the next day on the farm, before spending a second night and returning home the following day on the bus.
They became immersed in the family and many spent holidays on the farm and became friends. Some had gone on to pursue careers in agriculture. Lynnore said the couple loved to give those young people an opportunity to learn about farming and it was also about convincing people that farming was not just for those who were struggling to learn. There was a place for the brightest as well as those that were more hands-on.
The couple supported the Primary ITO programme with their staff and took every opportunity to bring learning into the valley both for their staff and for others.
They had a "really good team" working for them and they were both still full-on hands-on farming, their different skillsets complementing each other.
Andrew was a "big picture thinker" who saw outside the square and they could not have achieved what they had without his vision. She tended to be "the nuts and bolts of it — and handbrake sometimes".
Born and bred in the Strath Taieri, Lynnore described it as a "bloody awesome place". She was thrilled to see the number of young people in the area — "Young Farmers is going from strength-to-strength" — and she loved seeing young people stepping up and taking the reins of things that she might have done a decade ago.
— Sally Rae
