Otago Peninsula sheep farmer Edward Ellison has been farming his ancestral land for more than 50 years.
He was born and raised on his family farm in Ōtākou, about a five-minute drive from Portobello when travelling towards the headland.
Since the issue of land titles, he was the fourth generation to farm the land of his ancestors, which had been part of the Maori Reserve.
The 250ha farm had helped him support his hapu and iwi, work that often took him outside of Otago.
"That’s been more my life than anything. Farming has been important and I’ve enjoyed it but I’ve been heavily involved in other stuff and farming has allowed me to do that."
The other stuff included him being a negotiator in Ngāi Tahu’s Treaty settlement in 1998. His off-farm commitments now include being chairman of the New Zealand Conservation Authority.
When he was away from the farm, he always enjoyed returning for some physical stock work and fencing, saying it was not a bad lifestyle.
The hills on the farm kept him fit and he enjoyed being close to Otago Harbour.
"You can see the sea and smell the salt air."
In a bid to reduce his workload, he leased about 100ha of the farm in April this year.
He now runs about 1000 Romdale ewes.
He once ran beef cattle but removed them from his system to simplify it when his life had got busier with tribal matters.
"I didn’t want to be in Christchurch or Wellington and get a phone call my cattle were on the road."
He also did not want to have to rely on someone else having to feed his cattle when he was out of town.
The farm was prone to erosion and removing cattle from the system helped combat the issue.
Another solution was planting production pine trees on potential slip sites.
There were better places to farm than the peninsula, which was also prone to drought, but he could not imagine farming anywhere else.
"I’m really attracted to this place .’’
The farm name Erihana translates to Ellison and its homestead, Te Waipounamu, which was built in 1878, translates to "the place of greenstone waters".
Many of the wider Ellison family were brought up in the homestead, he said.
When he was a child the family converted the farm from dairy and horses to sheep.
He had worked on the farm since age 10, when his father took it over in 1960.
"We worked as kids on the farm because that’s what you did in those days."
His childhood dream was to become a marine engineer and enter the fishing industry.
"We are a fishing family more than anything. I love the sea."
He contemplated starting an apprenticeship at Hillside Engineering but a visit to the workshops in South Dunedin prompted a change in career path.
"When I went to look at Hillside I couldn’t bear the sight of the place."
He secured a farming cadetship and studied at Telford and farmed in Owaka and Clinton before returning to the family farm in 1970.
"I’ve never been away."
— Shawn McAvinue
