The five finalists have been decided for the Otago Daily Times and Rural Life Year of the Farmer initiative. This week, rural editor Sally Rae talks to the final finalists — Upper Clutha’s Stu and Sarah Jamieson about living in an "outdoor paradise".
"It's arguably the most highly anticipated game of cricket in Luggate’s calendar."
Concerned that many farmers in the area did not get off-farm as much as they should, local farmer Stu Jamieson decided to do something about it. Enter the "Farmers versus Tradies" cricket match, held annually on a Sunday in February.
The rules are simple; players must be over 40, it is twenty20 cricket and everybody has to bowl two overs. The victorious team receives a cup and players are joined by their families — including children who had heard their father talk about how good he was at cricket but had never seen him play — and enjoy an after-match barbecue.
It was during the Covid-19 pandemic that Mr Jamieson, who manages nearby Lake McKay Station with his wife Sarah, got talking to some tradie mates. They thought lockdown was great, whereas it was business as usual for the farming fraternity, rather than an unplanned holiday.
A longtime cricketing enthusiast himself, Mr Jamieson did a ring-around to gauge interest and no-one turned him down.
He saw it as a way for farmers to reduce stress by getting off farm and talking to others. Occupations were not strictly enforced; a fencer was part of the farmers’ team while a real estate salesman played for the tradies. Even the tradies said it was just what they needed.
The game was "competitive but it’s not" and there was a lot of fun and banter involved. The only down side was it was limited to 11 farmers in the team — and the farmers have not won it in three years.
So now Mr Jamieson was thinking about his next initiative; getting a group of farmers together to drive around various properties and talk about farming.
Once they were sitting in a ute, farmers tended to open up and, while they might take one or two things away from what they saw, it was "more than that" — "it’s a talk and a catch-up," he said.
There was no denying the next two or three years were going to be tough in the farming sector.
"A lot is coming at us, no matter who the government is. Just talking about it, seeing what other people are doing and getting ideas is going to become more and more important," he said.
He was happy to open up Lake McKay Station and show others what they were doing there.
"At the end of the day, it’s just mates looking after mates."
Lake McKay is about 6200ha, of which about 3000ha is productive land. It runs 4000 halfbred ewes and just under 200 cows.
North-facing, it was a "very tough farm to get your head around" — "we live on a knife edge most years," Stu said.
For Stu, farming was a "generational thing". His father was a farmer and he grew up on farms and had always been around farming, while Sarah grew up on a farm in Hawke’s Bay.
He used to work around the Upper Clutha area and always wanted to return. There were great people there and it was also a great place to bring up children.
"It’s an outdoor paradise," he said.
Lake McKay was also centrally located and handy to the things they enjoyed doing, like skiing and hunting. Schooling was also an important consideration.
Friends they had made since returning were not all farmers — the area attracted some really interesting people and it was healthy to have those interactions, rather than farming all day and then going to a barbecue to talk farming, Stu said.
It had been a "really easy shift", Sarah said, particularly as they already knew people, including ones with children the same age as their two.
Plus, as Stu indicated the expansive view from the couple’s home high on a hill, it was a "beautiful spot".
"Why would you want to be working inside?" he said.
The couple got a kick out of seeing a farm progress forward and they had been fortunate to have a first-hand involvement in progress at Lake McKay where they had been responsible for building all the key infrastructure including the manager’s house, woolshed, shepherds’ quarters, sheep yards and redoing the cattle yards.
While it was a hectic time they were delighted with the results and felt fortunate to have had the rare opportunity to have been involved in such a project.
Sarah has been heavily involved in an extensive planting project on the property — just over 5000 plants were grown off-site from eco-sourced seeds and then planted.
And, as well as the environmental gains, the practicalities of plantings and the need to work in with Stu’s farming system also needed to be considered, Sarah said.
"When we’re thinking about our environmental stuff, we make sure we’re not thinking about it in silos. If we’re doing something, it needs to cross into those areas as well," she said.
Lake McKay has 200ha under K-line irrigation and regular water testing was done. Being on top of environmental matters was not simply about doing it for regulations sake — "we want to do it because it’s the right thing to do, good for the property and good for the business," Sarah said.
The Jamiesons treated the property like they owned it and they wanted to ensure what they did went beyond them as managers, and beyond ownership as well.
Sarah set up the Luggate Catchment Group in 2019 as part of her role with WAI Wānaka as catchment co-ordinator. She helped set up all the catchment groups in the area, except for Wānaka, and resigned as farmer lead of the Luggate group this year.
She is on the Beef + Lamb New Zealand Farmer Council and on the environmental reference group for BLNZ. Until recently, she was on the Otago Catchment Community governance committee.
She also works around 30 hours a week in the facilitation and project management space for Wānaka-based McElrea Consulting. Being off-farm was "awesome".
"It allows me to broaden my networks and bring some of that stuff back to the farm as well. It’s really good to get off farm and have something else to think about."
Stu agreed, saying that it brought a business mindset to the farming operation.
Sarah is also involved with Holy Family School and helps organise the Aspiring Art Prize, the school’s major fundraiser. She enjoyed governance and had done some Institute of Directors courses. She was keen to get more into governance but said it was all about timing and her boys needed to be a bit older and more independent.
Stu, who enjoys supporting his sons’ sporting endeavours, is a member of the Wānaka Old Boys Cricket Club and his goal was to play a game of cricket with his sons before he got too old, he said.
Asked about balance in their life, Stu said they were "working on it" while Sarah added it was a continual work in progress. While they probably had not got it right yet, Stu said he was not scared to take a day off the week if work was not busy. Having been a shepherd in the past himself, he was also conscious of allowing the station’s shepherd time to get off the property.
Living so close to Wānaka and all that Central Otago had to offer, yet living out of the hustle of the ever-expanding town, Sarah reckoned they had the best of both worlds.
When it came to their own children, Stu said he would never force them into farming. While his generation was more "pigeon-holed" into careers, there were so many opportunities for young people now, particularly in a place like Wānaka.
Asked about the future of farming, Stu believed the next couple of years would be challenging but farmers should not be scared of that — "there is a lot of good coming too".
The couple had a motto of surrounding themselves with the right people and they had a great network of people whom they trusted.
"Farming’s going to be tight the next couple of years but not scary. Farming’s always going to be here. New Zealand needs farming to go well, it’s still our biggest money earner," he said.
Sarah said agriculture was an exciting industry to be involved in and she was also excited about the innovation in the sector, saying challenging times sometimes forced people and companies into innovation.
"I’m really optimistic about the future of farming and ag. I think there’s so much awesome stuff to come out of it," she said.
Lake McKay Station sold earlier this year after seven years on the market. Its new owner already had ideas and they would "jump on board with that". Because of its location, there was "always going to be something going on", Stu said.
