Hill Country Farm Visit

The first farm visit was to The Acheron. This is a 'typical' hill country farm in number of acres (2000) and number of stocking units (they typically have about 5000 sheep). Unlike a lot of the farms down in the flat country, no irrigation of the pastures takes place up here. As a result, when things dry up, they have to get rid of animals because they simply do not have enough feed to support them, because they also do not import grain to feed them. As a general rule, livestock in New Zealand are not fed grain because they do not have the farming capacity to grow enough small grains to feed to them. The country operates at a deficit in small grains anyway, they have to import them from abroad just to feed the populace. Incidentally, this is also why you won't find chickens (except for barnyard flocks and some egg layers)here. Where chicken is the most ubiquitous meat back home, here it is lamb. Chicken is quite expensive in NZ! I digress.




This past year has been a tough one on The Acheron due to lack of rain and they have had to severely cut back their numbers. The Acheron is one of my very favorite stations to come to, Susan's class has been coming here on every trip for the past 9 years and we have come to know the owners, the McFadden's, as friends. Unfortunately, the father (Bob McFadden) passed away since our last visit and it was a little strange to come and visit without him. I'll never forget him saying "We'll head to the top of this wee hill and have a look around". He then proceeded to march straight up the side of a mountain. He in his late sixties or so, wearing an old pair of workboots and a woolen jumper, trailing a sparsely populated conga line of sweating, gasping twenty-something university students, in sneakers or $200.00 hiking boots and the latest high-tech hiking fashions. It was a riot really...We knew his health was failing, because on our last visit he had his son Scott drive him up to the top in the Land Rover. He stood in the pickup bed like some conquering Roman would have a chariot, but it was sad to know that he couldn't walk those hills anymore.

You see, what made The Acheron different than any other farm you might visit in NZ, was that the inhabitants were first generation farmers of this land! Other farms that we visit have histories going back hundreds of years, and most of them have been in the current owners hands for a couple of generations at most. One of them, Mt. Peel, is still owned by the same family who originally came to NZ to settle it, but they are on the 5th and 6th generation to live there now. But Bob and Isla McFadden bought an unimproved block of land in the hill country that had nothing on it but a small stone shepherds hut (about 8x12). They started clearing the native scrub land themselves, put in fence and pasture, built their livestock yards, a wool shed, and a house - bearing their children along the way. Of course, work like that is never finished - but when you come to visit them it all seems so peaceful and in such perfect order that you can't imagine the blood, sweat and tears that have been invested into this place. It is a stunning property, and the pictures do it no justice - you can not get the sense of scale and wonder that you feel when standing on that 'wee hill' and surveying the property. Nor can you feel the serenity in Isla's garden...it is so beautiful and lovingly tended that if you were to suddenly find yourself standing in it, you would insist that you were in the gardens of some old English estate that was 100's of years old and had several full time gardening staff.

The McFaddens are hardy folks - they sort of embody what kiwis on the whole are like... to me anyway. They have true grit, they see what needs doing - and they do it, they take great pride in their work, but won't tell anyone what they have done unless they are asked - and even then they do their best to make it seem as if it were nothing. Most striking of all, they are eternal optimists, even when facing such daunting prospects as clearing 2000 acres of hill country and trying to scratch out a living - they still are able to spend some time with strangers to talk about their experience, how they manage their stock, what their future plans are - and to answer hundreds of questions with a smile and a twinkle in their eye.



The farm is run now by the youngest boy Scott, who I would guess to be in his mid 30's. His older brother, Jaime, had already started a farming operation of his own (a native species nursery) prior to his fathers passing. So Scott has the reins now, and appears to be doing a wonderful job. The farm looks great, Scott and his mother look great, the gardens look great and the dogs are doing fine. We got to see Syd again, he is now Scott's top huntaway. I'll talk more about NZ stock dogs in a later post. When we first met Syd, he was just a puppy learning the ropes by following along with the other dogs. It was tough work, because on that trip they were dipping (insecticide treatment) sheep when we visited, and Syd was learning to work the yards with some awesome backing dogs (ones that will run on top of the sheeps backs). He was getting run over and squashed all day long, I felt so sorry for him. Now he is one of the top dogs, but his career will soon be at an end. He will only be able to work for another 2 years or so before he will have to be retired. Running these hills takes its toll on the dogs and 7-8 years is about all you can get out of them. Scott has seven active stock dogs, and then the old timers who come out and bark when they are sorting sheep in the yards, but who don't really work at all anymore. But it has been neat to see how Syd has progressed through the years, and to think that I have known him since he was just a pup! That's him leaning up against Aidan in the picture, the other two are handy headers, they might be hard workers - but they enjoy a good back scratching as much as anyone else...

The Acheron is located on the south side of the Hurunui river. The Hurunui is one of the five major rivers that comprise the alluvial system responsible for the formation of the Canterbury Plains. It is one of the so called "braided rivers" because its riverbed (which is up to almost a mile wide at the mouth) is comprised of shingle (fist sized to coin sized rocks) and the course changes almost daily. Within the wide riverbed, which acts as a self contained flood-plain during very large storms, the daily flows take place within intertwining channels that when viewed from above appear to be braided. These channels are very dynamic - constantly shifting and changing their course. We have taken jet boat tours where the boat driver informed us that finding his way was getting difficult because the river had changed its course since the morning and he didn't know which channel to choose. Incidentally, he made a bad choice and we crashed onto a rock shoal at about 30 knots! That hurt.

During normal flows, you can drive right down onto the shingle. We took the students down to see the Hurunui, and Aidan got to walk along the rocks. He really enjoyed seeing the river and throwing rocks into it.