Strath Taieri sheep and beef farmers Gus Barr and Tara Dwyer are encouraging southerners to enter the 2025 Ballance Farm Environment Awards.
The pair manage The Wandle and live on the farm with their son Seamus, 5, and daughter Moira, 3.
The motivation for the married couple to enter the awards was to get constructive criticism and identify ways to improve their farm operation.
Mr Barr said they entered the awards "to see where we are at and what we could be doing better".
They were both surprised when they were announced the overall Otago winners at a ceremony in Dunedin Town Hall on April 12.
The judges said they were "hard workers, innovative and make a formidable farm management team".
The competition involved two rounds of judging on The Wandle.
Mrs Dwyer said during the first round, the judges had poker faces and never gave feedback.
"You might have an idea or a message during the interview but you don’t know if has landed so you just truck on with what you want to tell them," she said.
Feedback was given after the second round of on-farm judging.
The judges being impassive during the first round was to ensure any competitors did not act on feedback and make improvements on their farms between rounds to gain an advantage.
After the judging, a report was given to competitors with suggestions on how to make improvements.
The 10 regional finalists travelled to Hamilton for a final round of judging on June 19 and spent the following day together, sharing their farming stories.
"To me that has been the most valuable part — the networking and the sharing of ideas," Mrs Dwyer.
The Guild and Dunbar families, of sheep, cattle, deer, honey and tourism business High Peak Station in Canterbury, took home the top prize at the national award ceremony that night.
The families were great ambassadors for the sector, Mrs Dwyer said.
Mr Barr said the competition put both of them "outside their comfort zone", which was a good thing as it was a way to gain confidence.
Despite it being a competition it never felt competitive, Mrs Dwyer said.
They encouraged farmers to enter the competition and do the best they could at the regional level to try to get to the nationals so they could get the most out of the competition.
The couple will host an open day on The Wandle on November 13, the same date they began managing the farm four years ago.
They will showcase their livestock and the value added and how they have diversified and future-proofed the farm, including protecting soils, managing water risks and using technology for farm management.
Mr Barr said the business had a lot of data available, which allowed them to model outcomes and make farm management decisions.
A recent decisions included selling 400 store cattle after a hard autumn and winter, he said.
"We don’t usually sell any but that was the position we were in."
The prevailing nor’west wind on the farm was "horrific" and meant livestock could not be left to overgraze pasture or soil could be lost .
"The wind is a big factor in what we do."
Road signs near the farm were recently ripped out of the ground by winds.
Ironically, the signs warn motorists of strong winds in the area.
For the first time the couple had lambed stud Headwaters hoggets this season.
Both of them were interested in chasing genetic gains and continual improvement in their livestock, Mr Barr said.
"Some of our systems are operating at peak and that is something we can lift as it is in a growth phase."
Reasons for lambing hoggets included the farm owner being a majority shareholder in Headwaters and it giving their staff a new farming experience, Mr Barr said.
An aim was to give staff as much exposure to different way of farming as possible to build their skill set.
Mrs Dwyer said people development was a big part of the Lone Star business model, "which is great",
The staff on The Wandle were high-performing, and genuinely cared about what they did on the farm each day, Mrs Dwyer said.
Mistakes were an seen as an opportunity to learn, she said.
The Wandle is one of five farms owned by Lone Star Farms.
Every staff member on a Lone Star farm was responsible for the management of a part of farm to keep them invested in their work, she said.
"You definitely get buy-in from that," Mr Barr said.
The pair both hail from sheep and beef farming families in Otago and met studying at Lincoln University.
After graduating, they managed farms in Tasmania and Ettrick, Mrs Dwyer said.
"We have worked together anumber of times and we havedifferent skills and areasofinterest and seem to balance each other," Mrs Dwyer said.
"She brings stuff that I don’t and vice versa," Mr Barr said.
When asked if they wanted to own their own farm one day, Mrs Dwyer said being a farm manager was a "pretty good life".
"We have a lot of freedom to do things that are important to us but without the financial hardship and risk ...
"We love it and we behave as if the farm was our own."
Award entries close on October 31.
The Otago regional winners will be announced on April 9, 2025 and Southland regional winners the following day.
The Wandle
What: Sheep and cattle, breeding and finishing operation.
Terrain: Mostly terraced rising from the Taieri River to the Rock and Pillar Range.
Location: Ngapuna, 10km northwest of Middlemarch.
Farm owner: Lone Star Farms founder Tom Sturgess.
Managers: Gus Barr and Tara Dwyer.
Altitude range: 150m to 700m above sea level.
Farm area: 2500ha.
Irrigation: About 500ha by pivots, k-line and gun irrigators.
Cattle: 280 Angus cows, targeting Alliance Group’s Handpicked and AngusPure programmes.
Trading cattle: About 1000.
Sheep: 4200 Headwaters ewes.
Lambing: Staggered across four dates between August 23 and September 20.
Lambs supplied to: Alliance Group’s Lumina programme.
Wool supplied to: The New Zealand Merino Company.
Winter crops: Beet, kale, swede and ryecorn.
Staff: Eight.
