Sheep school:
The couple who are training New Zealand’s young shepherds.
Shepherding is one of the oldest occupations on Earth. But the reality of the modern-day shepherd is far removed from the image of a robed figure at rest in a flower-filled meadow.
From fencing and shearing to training that most invaluable of four-legged apprentices, the sheep dog, there is no lying down on the job for the 21st-century shepherd.
At Otiwhiti Station Land-based Training School near Hunterville, teens aged 16-18 years train in the skills of this ancient vocation.
Husband and wife Charlie and Jo Duncan partnered with a tertiary education provider to create the school 13 years ago.
They were motivated by a lack of quality candidates for this essential work and have since seen around 140 students graduate.
“We just didn’t have young people working in and around our community or coming in with the right skills,” says Charlie Duncan.
The Duncans’ approach to their dilemma was, “Don’t moan about it, just get on and try to fix it”.
While the school takes a hands-on approach to learning, there is a classroom component too. The Duncans teach life skills and how to live “together in a community”.
The school, one of just a handful of its kind in New Zealand, started out with nine students but now takes 16 a year.
“We basically say, ‘Here’s 16 positions available and we’ll take the 16 best people’.”
This year, four of the students are female and Charlie says that the girls can more than hold their own against the boys.
“At that age they’re more mature than the boys. You give them a set of instructions – they listen, they take it and they execute it well.”
For the Duncans, being able to give back to their community and instil valuable skills and a good work ethic in their cadets makes all the hard work worthwhile.
“Jo and I enjoy what we’re doing,” says Charlie. “We enjoy the results when the cadets graduate and get jobs and the employers come back to us and go, ‘That’s a great kid. You’ve done a good job there’. That’s where the real reward is.”