Some of the Verry Farming Ltd team gather on farm including, from left, Taylor Lincoln, Rameka Edwards, Reon Verry and Wendy Verry.
Taylor Lincoln loves working on Reon and Wendy Verry’s King Country farm.
“It’s really good here,” said Lincoln, 19, of Maihihi, near Ōtorohanga.
“I’m learning different stuff about sheep and beef farming every day without heaps of pressure. No two days are the same.”
The former Te Awamutu College pupil joined the Verry farm, south of Te Kūiti, last year as a Growing Future Farmers student. She will complete her time with the Verrys later this year.
“We are trying to give back to the wider industry,” Reon said. “This is a pathway for people to get into farming.”
Lincoln is the fourth Growing Future Farmers student to benefit from living and working at Verry Farming Ltd alongside the Verrys and their staff, following in the footsteps of Teagan O’Shea, Tegan Sutton and Jodie Piggott.
The Verrys have been sheep and beef farming their own private 1900-hectare piece of paradise since 2007.
They employ farm managers Rameka Edwards and Tom Fuller and shepherds Ahuwhenua Young Māori Farmer of the Year finalist Grace Watson and Ethan Poppelwell.
The Verrys are King Country farmers through and through.
Reon was raised on a farm on Waipuna Road near Waitomo, while Wendy is from just over the hill.
“We started with a massive drought, the biggest since the 1970s, and have just leaned our business to not assuming it’s going to rain,” he said.
“Farms used to get advertised as ‘summer safe’.”
“I have not seen that on farm adverts for a long time,” Wendy said.
They farm about 5800 ewes, 1800 hoggets, 1000 bulls, 160 cows, 150 steers, and 550 dairy grazers.
The farm is in recovery mode following last summer’s drought.
“We had a feeling it was going to be dry and learned to make decisions early,” she said.
“We had to bring in 90 tonnes of palm kernel to feed our dairy heifers. We’ve not bought any for three years.”
They also planted 20 hectares in drought-resistant chicory to provide high quality feed for livestock.
“I feel like we have been on life support the whole year,” he said.
Before this month’s heavy falls, the farm has received a little over 200 mm of rain this year, around 100 mm of that in April, less than half the 430 mm of rain it usually receives by May.
Some parts of the farm have fared worse than others.
“If you have got steep north facing slopes, then you are buggered,” Reon said.
Many ponds and drains were still without water, but the feed situation had improved with Aprils rain.
“The pain has been eased by un-drought like meat prices, “he said,
Lack of rain meant lack of grass and the Verrys sending lambs to the saleyards much earlier in the season than usual.
“Half of the lambs have gone store,” he said.
“We’ve sold no store lambs for the last two years. As far as droughts go, this has been a good one, it improved prices. Our lambs have gone to Hawke’s Bay and mid-Canterbury. Store lamb prices were better than works lamb prices last year when there was a widespread drought in the rest of the country. There’s a bit of recovery in the wind. What did not come together for us last year came together this year.”
As immediate past chair of King Country River Care, Reon is passionate about improving water quality.
The organisation gained $1.4 million funding from the government one-billion trees campaign for riparian planting on multiple farms in the catchment.
It’s a project that has set those farms up well for achieving the goals of improving freshwater quality set out in the Waikato Regional Council’s Plan Change One.
“Farms need good water. Everyone needs good water,” he said
Since 2014, he has worked with other farmers – such as Graham Pinnell and Graeme Gleeson – to represent the sector’s concerns on the workability of the plan to the council.
He is awaiting the outcome of an Environment Court appeal with anticipation.
“The regional council needs to have a lot of tools to be able to make that easy for farmers,” he said.
These should include tools to calculate total and winter stock units, waterway identification at farm level, slope calculator at farm level to 10 or 15 degrees and a flow chart to help farmers identify their activity level.
“Also required will be a hefty dose of pragmatism from the council… we need to be involved with any farmer meetings to re-socialise Plan Change One, ´ he said in his annual report to Waikato Federated Farmers.
“The longer all this regulation takes to land the better off farmers are. It gives us more time to prepare, inject some commonsense to make rules practical and if you know nothing about it, enjoy farming in ignorant bliss.”
