December 1, 2024 • 8 mins
The Resilient Farmer celebrates a great spring in Marlborough but has some good advice for farmers further up the country suffering drought and dry conditions. We also talk about carbon farming and the right tree in the right place.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every warmer, every man John the Caravan of Love sand
stand stand so, yes, the Caravan of Love. That's where
we find our next guest on the country. His name
is Doug Avery, the resilient farmer. He's on a roadie
with his lovely wife Wendy. Now, Doug, how did you
(00:21):
get and your leave on the morning or the afternoon
in your case, now that the weaning draft happens, how
come you weren't at home helping your son Fraser?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, good afternoon Jamie and the listeners. Yeah, I'm pretty lucky.
I'm hitting the Northwest Nelson for five days. The reason
I got there is I worked bloody hard for forty
eight years and you get to a stage where I've
done the most weak control out on the farm this
year I've ever done. I've been Fraser's weed bitch out
the day after doing Nashill of Blockdorn, Bloody Haowhound and stuff,
(00:58):
and I got my part of the bloody deal done
pretty much. So all they're all gone, they're just cleaned up.
So the boys just started weaning today and I'll be
weaning pretty much for the next fortnite, just slightly over
a fortnite every day. Getting up, bring them in and
seend the unit load away magnificently, ambs Jamie on the
(01:18):
back of one of the best springs that I've seen
in Marlborough. Fantastic spring after two of the bloody worse
years you could ever get. So we've had it. We're
a bit lucky. We've we've had a strung together a
few months that have been pretty good.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, I'm pleased to hear that because I'm looking on
my knee word drought index map as I do every
day now, and some of your mates in the east
coast of the North Island are faring nowhere near as well.
We'll come back to that one. But of course you
got sick of the droughts in the nineties, especially the
big drought was it ninety seven ninety eight, and you
decided there has to be a better way. You got
(01:51):
into growing looser, and you sent me a picture of
some of your lambs and a paddock, a couple of thumping,
big lambs. I don't know how heavy they'd be to
be twenty five k's at least by the looks of them,
and that they they've grown out on the looser.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, that's the Loosen's been fantastic for us, but a
lot of people can't do that, and there's times at
home when it gets so dry that not even the
loosen will save us. But the one rule a dry
is you have to cut your cloth to fit what
you can do. And I'll put a little plug in
for farm X. They're a great program. If you don't
(02:28):
do that sort of if you don't measure and monitor stuff, well,
then you probably won't realize how bad things are until
it's too late. And that was back in those years,
as well as planning looser, and we changed our technology
We've got farm IQ farm X, and those two programs
meant that we could run the place with forward view,
(02:49):
and we learned Phraser would always be the first person
to be dumping sitting stock down the road and cutting
his cloth to fit what food we've got, because you
don't go anywhere trying to run too much. And then
the other amazing thing about him is he's brilliant at
restocking before people have realized that the opportunity for the
(03:10):
go flag's gone again. So he went out a few
months ago bought a lot of stock in We've got
or seventeen hundred odd cattle on there at the moment,
and a hell of a big lamb crop and things
are pumping along and it'll be out there to go
dry again short, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I want to talk to you about carbon farming. Is
it an issue in Marlborough.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Phrase has put a lot of a lot of trees
in with the idea of them being for carbon. But
we had the viewpoint that southeastern Marlborough is a pretty
desolate looking place and we've got a lot of native plannings,
we've got a lot of We've we've put in a
big block of pines, we've got an awful lot of eucalyptus.
(03:54):
And what they end up being for I don't know.
But one of the things that I learned, you agos
doing your absolutely best on the farm day by day
is the best you can do. If you get guided
by some of these misfits that hang around the streets
of Wellington, you end up being behind the eight ball
because they actually don't very often come up with very
(04:15):
good ideas. They tend to chase the ep ball. So
we've always trusted our process. We've always believed that having
beautiful balance. We want to be good environmental citizens. We
also want to produce the world's best lamb and the
world's best beef.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Doug, I haven't got an issue you. No, sorry, I
interrupted you, and I apologize for that. I haven't got
an issue with carbon farming per se. There's plenty of
places on a farm, especially on big farms, where you
can plant some trees for carbon farming if you want to.
What I rarely find offensive visually and environmentally is blanket
planting farms and pine trees, especially farms that have really
(04:56):
good pastoral or even arable land on them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
No, I totally agree. I think I think well will
rue will rue some of the last seven six or
seven years for some of the decisions that were put
in grace because they weren't even based on good science.
And as more and more people there was a point
where if you didn't want to go and hug a tree,
(05:20):
you were seen as some environmental vandal. But of course
there's another thing about feeding people, about being a balanced
citizen in the world, rather than being some lunatic steering
off on a wild engine when you don't even really
know what you're doing. So at Vonavarie, I'm proud of
our if that other people might come in and say, no,
(05:41):
you haven't done well enough, or you've done the wrong way.
But we we worked on the sort of the middle
ground of trying to please those on one side and
please once on the other side. That's a bit of
a tight Grothe.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Final word of advice from you to the farmers, your
farming counterparts in the North Island. We're going to be
chatting hopefully to Steve whin Harris, another old mate yours
shortly on the show. I'm looking at the Kneewa Drought
Index map and Hawk's Bay is read so it is
the epi center of this dry but that dry now
stretches from wier Wrapper right to the tip of the
(06:17):
est cape. And I know these are probably repeating messages, Doug,
but you've been there, You've done that. What's your word
of advice to these farmers who are under the pump
right at the moment.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The most important thing is keep getting time away and
after you've planning Christmas and you're going to have a
good one, make sure that you stick with that because
you and your family are the most important ingredient in
that business. And you know, everyone's position varies varies a
lot but my memory back to the terrible times that
(06:52):
I had was I didn't look after myself. That was
the biggest mistake I made. And looking after yourself means
still having time out, still doing some of your favorite things,
not committing to overburdening yourself by cutting back on the
wrong things on your farm. If you're used of having
a bit of labor coming in and helping you keep
(07:13):
that coming. And even if it means you might not
be building new inspiring things on the farm, if it
means that you can have some days out where you
go away, you walk into a bush area, a green area,
or out on the sea fishing or something. Manage your
own brain, treat yourself. Yourself becomes the most important process
(07:33):
because if you don't do that well, a lot of
us know where people can easily go. So take care,
have a great Christmas. And it'll rain one day. You're
talking to the guy that's probably been through more drought
that you care to imagine. But you know, we've worked
progressively on mitigating the damage that they do. And we've
(07:54):
had two horrible years here in Marlborough and we've managed
to go straight back into who are supercharged income earning
time stop and spend the time to think how you
can create that kind of environment on your farm.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Hey Doug Avery, thank you very much the resilient farmer.
And talking about treats. You know how to treat a woman.
My best to Wendy and the caravan of love. Will
see you later.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
He's listening to that. She's given me a week. I
will see what happens later on.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Good on you, Doug.
Every warmer, every man John the Caravan of Love sand
stand stand so, yes, the Caravan of Love. That's where
we find our next guest on the country. His name
is Doug Avery, the resilient farmer. He's on a roadie
with his lovely wife Wendy. Now, Doug, how did you
(00:21):
get and your leave on the morning or the afternoon
in your case, now that the weaning draft happens, how
come you weren't at home helping your son Fraser?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, good afternoon Jamie and the listeners. Yeah, I'm pretty lucky.
I'm hitting the Northwest Nelson for five days. The reason
I got there is I worked bloody hard for forty
eight years and you get to a stage where I've
done the most weak control out on the farm this
year I've ever done. I've been Fraser's weed bitch out
the day after doing Nashill of Blockdorn, Bloody Haowhound and stuff,
(00:58):
and I got my part of the bloody deal done
pretty much. So all they're all gone, they're just cleaned up.
So the boys just started weaning today and I'll be
weaning pretty much for the next fortnite, just slightly over
a fortnite every day. Getting up, bring them in and
seend the unit load away magnificently, ambs Jamie on the
(01:18):
back of one of the best springs that I've seen
in Marlborough. Fantastic spring after two of the bloody worse
years you could ever get. So we've had it. We're
a bit lucky. We've we've had a strung together a
few months that have been pretty good.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, I'm pleased to hear that because I'm looking on
my knee word drought index map as I do every
day now, and some of your mates in the east
coast of the North Island are faring nowhere near as well.
We'll come back to that one. But of course you
got sick of the droughts in the nineties, especially the
big drought was it ninety seven ninety eight, and you
decided there has to be a better way. You got
(01:51):
into growing looser, and you sent me a picture of
some of your lambs and a paddock, a couple of thumping,
big lambs. I don't know how heavy they'd be to
be twenty five k's at least by the looks of them,
and that they they've grown out on the looser.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, that's the Loosen's been fantastic for us, but a
lot of people can't do that, and there's times at
home when it gets so dry that not even the
loosen will save us. But the one rule a dry
is you have to cut your cloth to fit what
you can do. And I'll put a little plug in
for farm X. They're a great program. If you don't
(02:28):
do that sort of if you don't measure and monitor stuff, well,
then you probably won't realize how bad things are until
it's too late. And that was back in those years,
as well as planning looser, and we changed our technology
We've got farm IQ farm X, and those two programs
meant that we could run the place with forward view,
(02:49):
and we learned Phraser would always be the first person
to be dumping sitting stock down the road and cutting
his cloth to fit what food we've got, because you
don't go anywhere trying to run too much. And then
the other amazing thing about him is he's brilliant at
restocking before people have realized that the opportunity for the
(03:10):
go flag's gone again. So he went out a few
months ago bought a lot of stock in We've got
or seventeen hundred odd cattle on there at the moment,
and a hell of a big lamb crop and things
are pumping along and it'll be out there to go
dry again short, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I want to talk to you about carbon farming. Is
it an issue in Marlborough.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Phrase has put a lot of a lot of trees
in with the idea of them being for carbon. But
we had the viewpoint that southeastern Marlborough is a pretty
desolate looking place and we've got a lot of native plannings,
we've got a lot of We've we've put in a
big block of pines, we've got an awful lot of eucalyptus.
(03:54):
And what they end up being for I don't know.
But one of the things that I learned, you agos
doing your absolutely best on the farm day by day
is the best you can do. If you get guided
by some of these misfits that hang around the streets
of Wellington, you end up being behind the eight ball
because they actually don't very often come up with very
(04:15):
good ideas. They tend to chase the ep ball. So
we've always trusted our process. We've always believed that having
beautiful balance. We want to be good environmental citizens. We
also want to produce the world's best lamb and the
world's best beef.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Doug, I haven't got an issue you. No, sorry, I
interrupted you, and I apologize for that. I haven't got
an issue with carbon farming per se. There's plenty of
places on a farm, especially on big farms, where you
can plant some trees for carbon farming if you want to.
What I rarely find offensive visually and environmentally is blanket
planting farms and pine trees, especially farms that have really
(04:56):
good pastoral or even arable land on them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
No, I totally agree. I think I think well will
rue will rue some of the last seven six or
seven years for some of the decisions that were put
in grace because they weren't even based on good science.
And as more and more people there was a point
where if you didn't want to go and hug a tree,
(05:20):
you were seen as some environmental vandal. But of course
there's another thing about feeding people, about being a balanced
citizen in the world, rather than being some lunatic steering
off on a wild engine when you don't even really
know what you're doing. So at Vonavarie, I'm proud of
our if that other people might come in and say, no,
(05:41):
you haven't done well enough, or you've done the wrong way.
But we we worked on the sort of the middle
ground of trying to please those on one side and
please once on the other side. That's a bit of
a tight Grothe.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Final word of advice from you to the farmers, your
farming counterparts in the North Island. We're going to be
chatting hopefully to Steve whin Harris, another old mate yours
shortly on the show. I'm looking at the Kneewa Drought
Index map and Hawk's Bay is read so it is
the epi center of this dry but that dry now
stretches from wier Wrapper right to the tip of the
(06:17):
est cape. And I know these are probably repeating messages, Doug,
but you've been there, You've done that. What's your word
of advice to these farmers who are under the pump
right at the moment.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The most important thing is keep getting time away and
after you've planning Christmas and you're going to have a
good one, make sure that you stick with that because
you and your family are the most important ingredient in
that business. And you know, everyone's position varies varies a
lot but my memory back to the terrible times that
(06:52):
I had was I didn't look after myself. That was
the biggest mistake I made. And looking after yourself means
still having time out, still doing some of your favorite things,
not committing to overburdening yourself by cutting back on the
wrong things on your farm. If you're used of having
a bit of labor coming in and helping you keep
(07:13):
that coming. And even if it means you might not
be building new inspiring things on the farm, if it
means that you can have some days out where you
go away, you walk into a bush area, a green area,
or out on the sea fishing or something. Manage your
own brain, treat yourself. Yourself becomes the most important process
(07:33):
because if you don't do that well, a lot of
us know where people can easily go. So take care,
have a great Christmas. And it'll rain one day. You're
talking to the guy that's probably been through more drought
that you care to imagine. But you know, we've worked
progressively on mitigating the damage that they do. And we've
(07:54):
had two horrible years here in Marlborough and we've managed
to go straight back into who are supercharged income earning
time stop and spend the time to think how you
can create that kind of environment on your farm.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Hey Doug Avery, thank you very much the resilient farmer.
And talking about treats. You know how to treat a woman.
My best to Wendy and the caravan of love. Will
see you later.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
He's listening to that. She's given me a week. I
will see what happens later on.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Good on you, Doug.
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