Colin’s farming life
Colin was born in 1940 and raised on the family’s sheep and cropping farm near Duntroon in North Otago. He and his brother Neville bought the neighbouring property in 1964 and farmed it in conjunction with the original property. When Colin married Catherine Peart in 1967 they lived in a house on the partnership farm for three years.
“Then, later in 1967, just before the government-backed Lower Waitaki Irrigation Scheme was voted in, we bought a farm at Papakaio, at the Oamaru end of the Waitaki Valley,” says Colin.
“Papakaio was a wealthy farming community of long-established families who made us welcome. We raised four children there: Anne; Karen; James; and John, who died at age 16 as a result of a motorbike accident.
“The irrigation scheme meant more grass growth and within five years of coming in, about 50 per cent of the properties changed hands,” he says.
By the 1980s, although farming 4000 ewes and 2000 hoggets, it was more economical to convert to cattle fattening and dairy run-off because sheep farming was becoming marginal, and by the mid 1980s there was a significant shift from sheep to dairy farming, which meant investing in new systems.
“We looked at deer farming to diversify,” Colin recalls, “but it was hugely capital intensive and took two years before you could start to see a return, whereas with dairy farming, the income was immediate after you’d built the milking shed. In 1984/’85, the year we built the dairy shed, there were six others built in the area.
“We were still running 2000 ewes and grazing 150 bull calves and I was doing the tractor work as well, but one-third of the farm was in dairying at the time. Every three to five years we took on new share milkers and added more land to the dairy unit. We sold all the sheep until the farm was entirely dedicated to a dairy herd of 850 cows, and dairy support for stock and winter grazing.
“We always employed share milkers and liked the 50/50 system, which gives young families a very good chance of making it. In all our changes we never took a drop in production.”
By 2000 and the advent of Meridian Energy’s Project Aqua, 100 per cent of the property was in dairy and dairy support. Colin was enthusiastic about the proposed Project Aqua, costed at $1.2 billion and designed as a hydro-electric scheme consisting of 64km of canals through the valley on the lower Waitaki River.
“If New Zealand needed electricity, then hydro-generation was the most environmentally sustainable, but Project Aqua’s water race system was going to disturb a lot of farms,” Colin notes.
“For example, we would have lost about 100 acres [40ha], which meant dropping the dairy herd by 100 cows. Meridian were talking compensation and buying some of the farms but the amount on offer wasn’t equitable.”
The trucks and tractors that hold so much allure for Colin are integral to New Zealand farming, and the Harvey’s farming life mirrors the history of the North Otago rural sector for the past 70-odd years.
When the option arose to sell the farm in 2003 Colin and Catherine consulted their children but none of them wanted to farm it.
“We had a lower order share-milking couple offer them the opportunity to buy the herd and become 50/50 share milkers,” says Colin. “Then we went to Meridian saying we were prepared to sell on a lease-back for five years. The final agreement was for a three-year lease and the possibility of two extra years. A few months later in 2004, the scheme was cancelled.
“We got five years’ lease, then had a clearing sale and left the farm.”