ANNABELLE LATZ

IT WAS FRIDAY JULY 16 WHEN Hayley Pitts of Mount Gladstone up the Awatere Valley in Marlborough was at the Howl of a Protest in Blenheim. She knew the weather was turning so as the afternoon rolled on, she decided to head home. Just as well, because if she’d waited much longer she might not have seen the farm for a few days.

“The Awatere River was horrendous, you couldn’t get anywhere and even the little creeks were massive,” Hayley says. It started raining on Friday night and Awatere Valley Road was washed out before sunrise on Saturday. Weather warnings had allowed them the chance to move stock to higher ground, but they never quite expected what was delivered.

“We were thinking it will never happen. But 140 millimetres fell in that first big rain, that was massive.”

Waking up on Saturday, admittedly not getting much sleep as the rain fell hard on the roof, the road and river levels were the worst they’d ever seen, with many holes and slips and damaged culverts. About 20m of road had been washed away, and as soon as conditions allowed they dozed a track around the side of a hill. “We could get through, but it certainly wasn’t State Highway 1,” says her husband Jeremy. A mob of 1200 hoggets needed shifting from the flooded vineyards up the valley to the home block. The 12km trek from where the damaged road allowed stock trucks to reach them taking about five hours, including navigating one big hole in the road, crossing the Hodder Bridge and going past diggers and trucks. Reluctance was obvious, so out came the mob of pet lambs with their son Harry (13), and the Merino hoggets led the way for the skeptical mob. “It was pretty good having the lead lambs, it was very cute too. They’ve certainly earned their bag of pellets,” says Hayley. The weather was still not on their side even at shearing time, so they borrowed the neighbours’ woolshed at Glenlee, which meant having to cross a second big bridge. Once again, Harry used his pets to make this possible. The rain damage may well have been increased by the dry summer and very dry autumn this year, leaving the Pitts family an extensive list of repair jobs. This included a few smashed floodgates that needed fixing or replacing, and plenty of track repair work.

“But on the whole, we came out pretty good. It was school holidays so we put the kids to work, probably not the adventure they had planned,” says Jeremy.

An added stress was accessing sheep they had grazing in a vineyard on the Wairau Bar on the north-eastern side of Blenheim, and were very grateful for the help they received. “Our staff and Wairau Bar locals were a huge help in the clean-up and rescue of the sheep in the flooded vineyard,” says Hayley. It was a similar but two-storm tale of damage for farmers Ross Bowmar and Jess Ensor who live at Redcliffs Station on the south bank of the Rakaia Gorge. On Friday May 28 the rain started to fall. The biggest deluge of 174mm fell between Saturday evening and Sunday evening, with a grand total of 264mm recorded at the house by Monday. It added up to the biggest flood on record. Out the back of the 1935ha farm, creeks were more like rivers. They knew bad weather was on its way, so had stock in position as best they could. But Redcliffs Bridge that runs through the middle of the property was completely buried by shingle, making it impossible to reach some stock and shift break fences, which Ross admits was very stressful.

“We couldn’t feed them, we had to use choppers to fly motorbikes over,” he says, adding that the Merinos were in a state of shock, and struggled to eat any food for about 10 days despite it being put in front of them.

Their condition was knocked back quite significantly and in October they were still a bit lighter than they’d normally be. “As my father-in-law (Willy Ensor) said, it’s not the year to be criticising people for their stock condition.”

Ross said this storm was just “one of those things that has never happened before” and a buried bridge was certainly never part of their farm management plan.

It took a week or so to get the bridge open again, thanks to the work of a good local contractor and the district council. In mid July when the second storm hit, TB testing had just started and the bridge was buried again, only taking 12 hours of rain for the shingle to do its damage this time because conditions were still wet from May. It was another four days before this could be opened again, a major access point for all supplies to the farm.

“Back in 1983 when it was built it was root raked for four to five metres of clearance. Now it’s back to one metre.”

In the May storm, their hydropower system built in 1983 was also buried and destroyed when the pen stock pipe was knocked out of alignment and buried under six metres of shingle. They could see the rain on its way, so sealed the pipe at the top, but it was buried by material backing up from the bridge which acted like a dam. Before fixing it, they were in the process of moving the hydro shed to a less flood-prone area, when they received another 156mm in the flood in July. “We had just dug everything out, then it all got buried again.” Ross says for that reason, the July flood was almost harder, even though it wasn’t as severe. “After the May flood, we carried on ourselves, but the July flood was harder to handle. Who would have thought it would happen again.”

The new hydro pipes are polyethylene, and buried deeper than the original 2.4m concrete pipes. At the beginning of October it was almost ready to go, which was a relief, after living off a diesel generator since the first storm with a running cost of $100/ day. Repair work also included fixing turbines, intake structures and investing in underground power lines in places. Fixing fences and flood gates was also a massive job, as was clearing the creek that got into the silage pit. Creating a resilient operation to future proof for flood events is top of mind, spending a bit more now to help down the track. “It’s not this never-ending list. I know the rebuild will come to an end, it may take us a year, but it is not forever…we’ve just got to chip away, that’s all we can do.”

They brought in extra labour, some thanks to local Facebook pages and job seekers relocating due to Covid-19. This helped significantly, as did the assistance from the local Federated Farmers, Rural Support Trust and Flood Recovery group.

“Every farmer has a ‘to-do’ list, but then it becomes extraordinarily big. It’s good to get it out on a bit of paper so it all becomes more digestible.”

ANNABELLE LATZ

IT’S OCTOBER 2021 AT MULLER Station up the Awatere Valley where shearing has just finished, they’re into their first week of lambing, and the grass has just started to grow. Back in April up the Acheron Valley, Muller Station owners Steve and Mary Satterthwaite, their two children Alice and Ben, and the wider mustering crew were out on the hills for the Muller Station autumn muster, taking the ewes back to the Awatere Valley for the winter months. At the time, Steve was hoping for a good spring after a two-year dry spell with just two months of growth. Spring certainly would have been welcomed a month earlier, but after the challenging winter they were served, it’s starting to come right now – at last.

“We are going to have a very good early summer. We missed out on spring but there is so much moisture around now so we just need the heat,” Steve says.

He’s positive the frosts have more or less finished which will serve well for 35 days (two cycles) of lambing. In fact, the first 10 days of lambing could not have been kinder. Spring coming a month late is not an isolated pattern. The clear message over the past few seasons is that autumns are getting longer, winters are going later and therefore spring is starting later which means a delayed summer. September served a record rainfall of more than 350mm. Put this against their annual rainfall of 500mm and that’s some serious precipitation. In July the Marlborough region suffered a severe rainstorm. Awatere Valley Road was closed for 10 weeks due to slips and damage, making it impossible to get to Blenheim which eliminated opportunities of getting feed in or stock out. Even now with the road reusable it will be closed to public use until at least Christmas while continuing repairs are made, Steve says. Due to the time of year, this road closure was more stressful for farmers than when the road was closed for 19 weeks after the earthquake in November 2017. The impact this time around on animal management and livestock was greater, he says.

“That (the winter storm) was a bit of a major, but we got through.”

Farmers talk about climate volatility and how to best work with it to suit their farming programme, he says. That conversation may need to include reconsidering dates like when to put the rams out or when to shear. “It is something we need to roll with and understand a lot more. We need to re-evaluate if we have it right.” Muller Station is 38,800 hectares, including 28,000ha of pastoral lease. The Satterthwaites operate a “fairly simple” system, due to having genuine summer and winter country. The Awatere Valley is good for lambing and winter grazing, and the Acheron Valley is great summer country. This absolutely minimises winter feeding and crop growing,” Steve says. The calves and studs get supplementary winter feed of ryecorn crop and lucerne balage but normally nothing else does. At baling time, they save cost by working in with neighbours Molesworth and Middlehurst Stations to get a contractor in from Blenheim. Muller Station runs 6500 ewes (including just under 600 stud ewes), 5500 hoggets, 100 rams and 2300 Angus-cross cattle. Steve and Mary first bought Merino genetics from Charinga Merino Stud in Victoria, Australia, in 2004. Their ongoing relationship with the stud has created a consistent breeding base, allowing them to focus on breeding the sheep they want. It began with selecting a commercial ewe mob of 200 reflecting what they liked – a good dual-purpose sheep – and they aimed for consistency from the outset.

“We were lucky that our ewes really clicked with the original two rams we brought in.” Since then, they’ve used several sires from other studs from Australia and New Zealand. “It’s about muscle, fat, conformation, the quality and quantity of the wool and trying to produce the ideal dual-purpose sheep. And with that comes fertility,” he says. “Being on the same page as our ram clients is huge, sharing with them our breeding direction, listening to them, and taking on board their feedback.”

Steve says Covid-19 has changed the way farmers buy genetics. Going to Australia to look at rams is not currently an option. Because of that, Muller Station started using artificial insemination over some ewes. This year, 100 out of the 550 mated were inseminated artificially. “It’s always exciting seeing how that goes; how many lambs we get, what they look like and how they grow.” The Satterthwaites are clients of neXtgen Agri, and Steve says the advice and logistical help they receive is invaluable. Despite Covid-19’s impacts, Steve says commodity prices are near all-time highs, with contract prices with the New Zealand Merino Company (40% of their income) and high beef and lamb schedules looking the best they have ever seen.

“In fact, commodity prices for the past three years have been some of the best I’ve experienced in my farming career.”

The wool boom in the 1950s is regarded as a great era in NZ farming, but the difference now is all commodities (fine wool, lamb, beef and mutton) are really strong. Steve says the farming sector must seek to build stronger relationships with urban NZ. He believes the NZ Merino industry is an exemplar of environmental management standards for farming. “If we can portray that unity with our New Zealand partners and the integrity that goes into these relationships, the potential has never been better.” He’s a strong supporter of quality assurance programmes like ZQRX, introduced by The New Zealand Merino Company, because they are independently audited.

“It’s about focusing on the environmental issues that we face, which is why we have to be so constructive and positive in the messages we portray.”

Wind the clock back to the days of high country field days which started in the 1980s. In the early 2000s it was hosted by Muller Station, a few hundred farmers and industry partners stood around chatting about the concept of sustainability in the high-country. “It really was a topic. Today the term regenerative agriculture has become the buzz- phrase, but simplistically we’ve been doing that for the last 50 years.” Steve says farming today is about being aware of change, and the need to change, industry wide. The challenge is finding the balance to farm productively and profitably, in a sustainable and biodiverse way.

ANNABELLE LATZ

Farmers used to lose entire herds to TB in New Zealand. This is one recollection Rob Corboy has of his 47 year career in the TB game. He has recently hung up his syringe, and has plenty of stories to tell. From his extensive work with vector surveying to giving tips on how to catch ferrets, life has always been interesting. Originally from Nelson, Rob cut his teeth with the Department of Agriculture on the Brucellosis scheme in 1974. Later that year he trained as a TB technician, qualifying in early 1975. He was transferred to Westport, where TB was what Rob described as “rife.”

“Farmers were losing whole herds.”

There were 120 infected farms in the Buller and Inangahua districts at the time. From then and into the 1980s, TB technicians used to test herds three to four times a year, and in the early 1980’s freezing works would not accept TB reactors. “So we’d slaughter them ourselves. We did a lot of slaughtering, and we got pretty good at it.” The TB testing scheme used to be Government owned. Once it was discovered that possums carried TB, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) employed the New Zealand forestry service to kill all possums throughout the country. “We had five three-man teams in Westport, and five three-man teams in Reefton.” Their job involved laying poison bait, night shooting and trapping. “And it worked. By the early 1980s there were less than 10 infected herds in the Buller and Inangahua.”

It was in 1967 when a sick possum was found on a badly infected farm in Mokihinui on the South Island’s West Coast. Before that no one had really known how TB had spread to the cattle. The Government pulled the funding when numbers got low, thinking they’d “won the battle.” The numbers subsequently went through the roof again, at which time the Biosecurity Act of 1993 was set up, removing funding responsibility from the Government. Described as a ‘turning point’ by Rob, the Act changed TB control to an industry scheme, and TB was seen as a pest rather than a disease. When the Act was first set up, the control agency for TB control, the Animal Health Board, was very understaffed, so numbers rose again, in fact higher than they’d ever been, with 1800 infected herds nationally by end of the 1990’s. Thanks to the ambitious goals of the Animal Health Board, today less than 20 herds across New Zealand are infected. Despite his near 50 year career, Rob has only worked for one company which has gone under different names. After the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries became MAF Quality Management it was then split into two State Owned Enterprises – Agriquality and Asure, which merged 14 years ago to become what is now known as AsureQuality. Rob once read in an old report written by the Department of Agriculture, that TB has been known in New Zealand since 1898, in Banks Peninsula when dairy farming was big over there.

The antigen for TB testing was first used in the late 1950s, and all town supply dairy farms were initially tested. “Just prior to the use of the antigen, the stock inspector would run the stock through the yards. If a cow coughed, it was deemed to have TB and was slaughtered.” Rob’s job has seen significant changes. Paper to electronic systems being one, modifications to the test, TB testing deer as well as cattle to name a few. The short thermal retest finished in 1974 just as he started. “This was archaic. There was four millilitres of the TB antigen injected into the cow, (now it’s one tenth of a millilitre). They’d measure temperatures every two hours for a 10 hour period to see if the animal had TB.” In the late 1970s, the Comparative Cervical test was used as a retest. Two sites on the neck were clipped, one with a tenth of a millilitre of bovine TB antigen, one with a tenth of a millilitre of avian TB antigen.

“You can’t see avian TB, so we’d be able to see which if the bovine strain was present. ” TB is a family of mycobacterium, including the bovine, human and avian strains. Rob moved to Rangiora, North Canterbury in March 1990 after 15 years in Westport, along with his feral animal expertise. Possum surveying was a big part of his job, and in 1992 a TB infected ferret was found in the Mackenzie country, just after the 1992 snows.

“We then started talking about vector control, not possum control. In fact, up to 25% of the ferrets initially had TB, compared to 1:1000 possums.”

Instrumental in ferret control Rob was instrumental in setting up ferret control.

“I had to push for what I believed in.”

He was training farmers how to catch ferrets, they would ring him up and ask them to be tested. In response Rob set up two freezers in North Canterbury where farmers would drop them off for autopsy. “To catch a ferret you need to find a meat source, rabbit colonies works best. I’d tell the farmer not to put the trap off the track, because ferrets are lazy.” Rob created a feral animal TB database, which later proved to be very valuable for applying for funding for TB control. “It’s something I’m really pleased I did.” There were 50 farmer-run pest control groups in North Canterbury, Local Initiated Programmes with materials funded by the Animal Health Board. Agriquality staff including Rob were independent facilitators. What followed was extensive ferret and possum control work and a large number vector surveys throughout Canterbury. The idea was to “get in front of the TB, rather than chase it.”

That was part of the success story, and those North Canterbury pockets of TB infected pests never crossed to the south side of the Waimakariri River. Rob said Vector surveys, combining using TB testing, vector control and animal movement control, accountability for vector control through monitoring, and the use of 1080 (which Rob admits is very controversial) all contribute to the low number of TB cases in NZ now. He moved into management roles in early 2000s, at one point, managing all the field staff in the top half of South Island including Canterbury. A biosecurity manager and trainer as well as a TB trainer, auditor, animal welfare inspector, Rob’s career has been varied.

“I can even take blood from alpacas, which isn’t easy.”

Working with wildlife has been a major part of his career, and one he is passionate about.

“A lot of things we know now, is because of that (wildlife) research.”

The role of female TB technicians has increased a lot, and he has no doubt he is handing the reins over to safe hands when Oxford based TB technician Mel Brooker takes over his role as TB technician trainer and assessor.