Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Efficiency proves key
High country farmers Steve and Mary Satterthwaite have shown how to farm sustainably on difficult land through dedication, innovation and efficiency.
Steve has farmed Muller Station, in the upper Awatere Valley, for the past 37 years.
The 38,000-hectare high country station carries about 14,500 merino sheep, and 2000 angus cattle, and is self-sufficient with well-stocked gardens and freezers.
When he first arrived on the farm it was overrun by rabbits and scabweed, he said.
‘‘Between rabbits and scabweed, you could see a mouse run across the property,’’ he says.
The couple are entrants in the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards farming category.
They have devised their own methods of farming to improve production, using rotational grazing rather than set-stocking while alternating grazing between summer and winter paddocks to allow the land to recover.
Developing more productive country has meant stock pressure can be reduced on marginal high country, and provides drought resilience, and helped raising stud sheep.
Intensifying farming operations is not economic but increases farming options and is efficient in reducing weeds, such as hieracium, from developed areas, he says.
A lot of money has been spent to control broom and wilding pines, and rabbit numbers have dropped from better ground cover.
The focus has been on developing the front paddocks while saving the fragile back country from large numbers of stock.
Seasonal rotation gives the stock better feed year round and keeps them off snow prone areas.
Wethers are being replaced with ewes to take pressure off a 20,000ha leasehold land which will be now grazed for only 10 weeks during autumn.
- Mike Watson