Te¯na¯ koutou katoa, greetings to you all...

It has been heart-breaking watching our lush landscape turn brown as the water shortage impacts on all our towns.

I would like to especially thank the large team at Council dedicated and working with the community, the Regional Council and other agencies planning and ensuring our water demand and supply meet the essential needs for our communities to continue to operate.

It is time, as farmers and lifestyle block owners, for us all to make some key decisions. With no rain in the forecast, these decisions will play a critical part for next season.

Due to unseasonable dry weather in 2003 Mike and I made the key decision to dry off 50 per cent off our herd on February 3 and the remainder by the 27th. This decision was made due to cow body condition score, the weather forecast, looking after next season and not using all our supplements for winter or spring calving.

Sacrifices in a very hard season protected us for the following season. The financial impact of this decision was a significant loss for the year and resulted in us borrowing an additional $20,000 from the bank to see us through.

On reflection, things we did well were making those decisions in a timely manner, liaising with our accountant and bank manager and keeping them in the picture.

Things we didnot do well - asking for help, letting others know about our circumstances and that we were in trouble or talking to our community.

One of the things which helped us through those tough times, was to have something positive to focus on. Making key decisions early enabled us to have the best two seasons in the following years.

Some of the financial management skills we learnt through those tough times made us better farmers and better business people.

If you are experiencing hardship, I am happy to talk with you. As a district we are all in this together, every drop of water conserved helps us all.

Thank you to all residents for the effort they have made. Ask yourselves is there any more each of us can do to ensure we all get through?

The key message from our farming story was we should have asked for help. Call it early, ask for help. Whether it be a farming, financial or personal support on health and wellbeing. Donot be afraid to talk to each other, we are all in this together.

You can contact the East Coast Rural Support Trust on 0800 787 254 (0800 RURAL HELP) will connect you to help in your area. Or go to rural-support.org.nz 06 374 4080 or 06 376 0110