Article Source: Farmers Weekly
Running a big station with 3500 owners is a big challenge. But Parengarega Station’s new farm manager Kathryne Easton is adding to the task, with her vision of starting with the environment then working back to the farm with her best-use-of-land philosophy at the same time as coping with pest, pasture and weather issues. She told Andrew Stewart her environmental and biosecurity plans include not just the farm but the entire Far North.
It’s fair to say many Kiwis forget how far the country stretches north past Auckland.
The reality is they can travel another six hours before reaching the tip of New Zealand at Cape Reinga and the further north they go the more diverse and challenging the land becomes.
Just half an hour south of the Cape lies Parengarenga Station, a diverse, nearly 6000-hectare operation that stretches between both coasts of the country.
Northland is a deeply tribal region with strong links to the whenua and Parengarenga Station is no different.
This mainly sheep and beef farm is part of the larger corporation of the same name that also owns some 11,000 hectares of forestry, has an extensive manuka planting programme and has strong interest from its 3500 shareholders.
Farm manager Kathryne Easton started her role just six months ago but is already putting her stamp on this significant property.
Though born and bred on a farm, Easton studied agriculture at university before working overseas in various farming roles. When she returned to New Zealand she spent most of her career working as a rural professional for the fertiliser industry, core agricultural producers, environmental agencies and consultants.
She had worked with Parengarenga Station as an adviser but admits she was still surprised when she was approached to apply for the manager’s job. She also runs her own small landholding of 160 hectares near Maungatapere but knew she would never own a farm anywhere close to the scale of Parengarenga.
So, she decided to throw caution to the never-ending Northland wind and loves her new life on the station.
One of the big attractions was the chance to improve all aspects of the station’s performance. She could see the potential.
Now she has changed from consultant to game player, as she puts it, the environment is a key focus.
“I just see there’s so much potential here to be achieved. There’s the opportunity to subdivide paddocks down, get better control of pastures, to grow better quality and more quantity of pasture and be able to actually run a high stocking rate.
“There is huge potential just in the land itself through the basics of fencing, subdivision, fertiliser and pastures with the key focus being best use of land for the longevity of the station.
“Just by doing those few things we’ve got options without doing anything too fancy just yet.
“When I was rural consultant with WSP Opus we worked closely with a number of iwi around best use of land studies and that’s really identifying a property and what are its strengths, its weaknesses and its capabilities and identifying what are the opportunities,” she said.
The width of the farm between the two coasts is about 7km at the narrowest point, with most of the forestry along the western corridor and a smaller block to the east.
The farm surrounds Parengarenga Harbour and Easton takes responsibility for what flows into the harbour from the farm very seriously.
So, she begins planning with a much broader vision than just farm production.
“Let’s look at the environment and work backwards. So, what is the harbour looking like? What is our potential impact on that harbour and how can I mitigate it? We’ve got a lot of peninsulas that run down into the harbour. So we are looking at what we can run down those peninsulas with the least impact. Sheep are an obvious choice with a smaller all-round footprint and have our cattle further up the catchment and manage these areas so there’s less impact,” she said.
Farming in such an environment is not without its challenges.
Being so far north on a narrow part of the country there is little to protect from any weather rolling in from the surrounding stretches of ocean.
Hot, dry summers can also be windy ones and the farming calendar is split between two sixmonth seasons – growing grass and not growing grass.
The latter normally starts around Christmas so lambing starts early in winter to get all lambs away before the New Year.
The station runs about 30,000 stock units with about 9000 breeding ewes and 1800 breeding cows.
The sheep are Texel/Dorset, which grow lambs fast and early and the cattle are primarily Angus with a Hereford/Charolais cross. They have grown numbers of Friesian bulls on the farm in the past but with Mycoplasma bovis purchases have stopped with more focus on growing their cattle progeny out to heavier weights.
Easton must be very organised with any stock movements because the nearest processing plant is nearly five hours south.
Parengarenga Station, similar to many Northland farms, has a mosaic of different soil types.
“We’re dealing with the absolute white silica sand on the east coast to a coarse sand on the west coast. In between we’ve got the combination of sand, peat, clay, an almost ash soil combined with a very heavy, hard pan at varying depths.” There are about 24 different soil types on the farm with eight in the main soil group. Such diversity makes farming challenging but Easton’s background makes her the perfect person for the job.
In the Far North the main native pasture is kikuyu, which takes some managing.
“It can be a blessing and a curse but it’s actually knowing how to manage it and keeping it in that vegetative state and not letting it get away,” she said.
In her experience kikuyu can grow anywhere from 30kg/dm/ day to 130kg/dm/day, which is a huge variation. She is working hard to make sure her team has the skills to manage the grass and uses professionals to run staff training days to give them the knowledge needed.
Easton has her fair share of unwanted guests.
“My biggest bugbear at the moment would have to be the Canadian geese followed closely by the turkeys, paradise ducks and the pigs.
“Thankfully the black swans, which are a significant pest in the harbour, do not venture on farm.”
She estimates there are thousands of geese eating the new grasses and crops she is trying to establish. Despite attempts by willing hunters to shoot the geese the numbers have remained high and she is now looking at employing professional pest controllers to cull them.
Being such a big farm Parengarenga relies heavily on human resources.
“Parengarenga is a Maori incorporation managed by the trustees with the structure being a chairperson, the committee of management, a general manager, myself and then the team on the farm.”
Easton manages 15 staff, of which 12 are full time.
“Additional to that we also have a forestry division now because we’ve moved into doing our own forestry in terms of harvesting. We have a full-time workshop that looks after both farm and forestry machine servicing needs.”
She also relies on a trusted group of specialists to provide advice from accounting to agronomy and everything in between.
Easton admits the shareholders like to keep an eye on what is happening.
“Every day there’s people driving up and down the road because the main road intersects the station. You soon hear the jungle drums beating if they’re not happy,” she said.
Development work on the station is clearly visible and has been great advertising to show the progress being made. Despite a dedicated plan to plant 80,000 to 100,000 manuka stems a year, Easton would also like to see a plan to plant more natives. She believes with careful planning and co-operation with other like-minded landowners they can build an environment in the Far North that will not only rekindle the bird life but provide a biosecurity corridor to encourage greater biodiversity.
Her new role means she has had little time to stop and really enjoy her new surroundings to the full.
But Easton grew up on a farm from day one and admits she has always loved farming and the outdoors.
“You’ve got it in your bones really and you either love it or you hate it. And I really love it. There’s nothing better than being out on the farm with the animals and being able to see an achievement or an outcome which is good for everyone.”
