Rob and Toni Auld hosted nearly 60 delegates from the New Zealand Grassland Association Conference at their business Auld Farm Distillery.
The business, believed to be the southernmost on-farm distillery in the world, was established on their 200ha Scotts Gap farm in 2017.
The history of arable farming on the property dates back to 1883, while the Auld family has been growing grain on the farm for three generations.
Mrs Auld said they knew they needed to diversify if they wanted their children to have a future on the farm.
"There is no land to buy around us so the only thing we could do was add value to what we are already doing."
The investigation for diversification options included milking sheep, making cheese and installing a wintering barn.
She recalled how she was feeding their baby when her husband told her he wanted to build a distillery.
Her response was "OK", but if she had known what she knows now, she would have responded "absolutely not".
The distillery business had diversified to include a range of gins from a base alcohol of grain.
Their gin brand Ocean’s Keep is made from an oat base, with a distillate of Bluff oysters.
Another change to the farm operation was starting to grow maize five years ago to one day make bourbon.
The first maize crop was a "cracker", so they increased the size of the crop the next season and the yield was terrible.
No maize grew in the third season due to terrible summer weather, around the same time of the Australian bushfires.
The fourth season was "absolutely phenomenal" producing enough maize for 11 weeks of bourbon brewing.
"It is exciting to be do a lot of different things nobody else is doing."
Long-term plans include building a new distillery building on the farm.
About a quarter of the grain grown on the farm was used in the distillery and the rest was used for stock feed.
The nine grains used in the distillery include black barley, black oats and malting barley.
When asked if she really wished she rejected her husband’s idea to launch a distillery, she replied no.
"I want my kids to have a choice to be farmers if that’s what they want to do. We want to do everything we can to give them a choice ... and what would be doing now? I don’t know, we might not even have a farm. When Rob left school a farm this size could look after two families and in a few years that won’t be the case — which is really sad — it shouldn’t be like that."
