A Dunedin farmer is slower since a horror crash, but his hard-working mentality remains fighting fit.
Green Island Bush Farms owner Ross Smaill is having a clearing sale on Friday, on the farm where he was born and raised.
The 62-year-old is clearing out his shed in Blackhead due to health reasons.
‘‘I should have let go after the accident but I’m a stubborn old sod.’’
The accident happened in 2017. He was driving a 12-tonne truck loaded with bobby calves. He moved left to let a milk tanker pass and went off the sealed State Highway 1, near Edendale.
His truck rolled down a small bank and through a fence before coming to rest on its side in a paddock.
Passengers in his truck were his neighbour’s 4-year-old boy and the boy’s 6-year-old twin siblings.
The 4-year-old died in the ambulance, his cause of death ruled to be a cardiac arrest.
The death of the boy affected him and he often reflected on it, especially when he saw young children, he said.
‘‘It knocks you back but you’ve got to get up and get going.’’
He still displays a picture of the boy at his home.
‘‘He’s a wee angel, he’s still in your life, he’s still there.’’
Mr Smaill’s range of injures from the accident included a broken pelvis. His feet were badly injured because they got jammed under the pedals in the crash.
‘‘I ripped them out because I had three kids in the truck.’’
After being discharged from hospital, he remained in a wheelchair for about eight months.
He is still on crutches, has nerve damage and issues with his kidneys.
The physical strength he had before the accident never returned.
‘‘You think you’ll come right but you’re not, so you’ve just got to slow down and work with it but keep doing something to get you out of bed in the morning.’’
He was a self-proclaimed ‘‘workaholic’’.
One of six children, he left school aged 15 and took over the family dairy farm. About two years later he was milking about 50 cows.
The teenager’s working day would start at 3am to milk the herd, before he started his full-time job as a boner at Burnside Freezing Works - some weeks he worked up to 90 hours, until the plant closed in 2008.
During his time at the works, he bought more land and quadrupled the number of cows he was milking, a mix of Friesians and Ayrshires.
The farm produced part of the town milk supply.
‘‘It was milking twice a day, seven-days-a-week, for nearly 40 years.’’
‘‘That was my bread and butter.’’
After the meat works closed, he diversified his business interests, including fencing and completing three residential subdivisions in Dunedin.
‘‘It was all go.’’
The success of the subdivisions prompted him to stop milking cows about a decade ago. He wanted to stay in farming, so he brought in beef calves to rear.
‘‘Farming is ingrained in you.’’
He was selling all his heavy machinery on Friday to stop him being tempted to do work, which his body was not up for.
After the sale, he would continue to rear calves on about 12ha, he said.
‘‘I’ve got to have something to do, otherwise I’ll go nuts.’’
The plan was to stay living on his farm where ‘‘life was good’’, spending time with friends and family.
Memorabilia covers the walls of a ‘‘function room’’ on his farm, including a framed All Blacks kit, given to him by Ben Smith after he played his 39th test match.
Both men played Green Island Rugby Football Club, Mr Smaill as a prop. A photo on the wall shows Mr Smaill pouring a beer for All Blacks great Colin Meads, at a function in 2006.
He used to be a boxer and competed at tournaments.
A promotional poster for one of the tournaments - The South Island Golden Gloves at Mayfair Theatre in South Dunedin - hangs on the wall in the function room.
After the accident, there were days he doubted he could continue to fight for his life, so he got someone to make him a plywood coffin, he said.
His wife Kathryn had made him move the coffin from the living room to a shed outside.
‘‘I’m organised - I’m ready to go - but if any cheeky bugger wants it, I’ll offer it to them.’’
SHAWN.MCAVINUE @alliedpress.co.nz
