Lake Ha¯ wea clip led to death threats
A book reveals what happens in the centre of a media storm, writes
II felt bereft for my country and fear for my family. — Justine Ross in Meet You at the Main Divide
n a new book, a celebrated Kiwi business couple reveal how a Country Calendar episode featuring their innovative and climate-positive approach to farming triggered a vitriolic backlash that included death threats against their family.
While ultimately overwhelmed by support — “our mountains would explode with the aroha we received” — 42 Below founders Justine and Geoff Ross were ridiculed by a vocal minority for practices that featured in the episode last year, such as landing mattresses for sheep in the shearing shed and playing Vivaldi music to help keep the animals calm.
In Justine’s book, Meet You at the Main Divide, she explains how she and Geoff came to buy the highcountry Lake Ha¯wea Station, the struggle to ‘fit in’ to the traditional and conservative farming sector, how they have transformed the 6700ha into a carbon-positive farm.
The rollicking read gives full context to their farm practices that extend well beyond mattresses and music.
As well as clearly laying out their sustainability and commercial mission, it’s a fascinating insight into human behaviour, especially from some people they encountered early on.
Justine Ross also devotes a chapter to that Country Calendar episode, the highest rating of the year.
It is clear the Rosses don’t believe the show fully portrayed their climate-positive and commercial mission. Nor, in their view, did it moderate social media comments in the best way in the aftermath.
Ross writes the “most severe response” from the show’s Facebook moderators came from someone falsely claiming that fashion designer Maggie Hewitt was the couple’s daughter.
“‘What about the crazies who threatened our family and were actively spreading lies about our business?’ we thought. But we were assured that it was just a small group of hateful people who wanted us dead, or simply limbless in a ditch, and some of them extended their wishes to our children.”
Justine Ross says the couple called in police.
“We’ve never experienced that before,” she says. “Don’t forget, we come from the alcohol sector and they had better manners. We’ve done some disrupting before but we had never in our lives had our families threatened and had our home threatened.”
Ross says in the book that her husband “specifically asked me to make sure I wrote about how I felt during this public onslaught”.
“I felt bereft for my country and fear for my family,” she writes.
“I felt shock at the ignorance. And if I’m honest, I felt doubt — that anything we tried to do to help grassroots farmers to get heartily deserved premiums would actually work. When it came to the vitriol, women were some of the worst, and this surprised me.
“Our first utterance on the programme was ‘farming is the hardest thing we’ve ever done’. But the haters heard ‘rich not self-made’, they heard ‘fluff not profit’, they heard ‘flashy not hardworking’.
“We received correspondence from people who had never even met us, who threatened me, my home and my family — our character and capabilities too — to a degree to which the police had to intervene.”
Justine Ross told NZME the episode had limited pre-production. “And without the right level of preproduction, it was incredibly difficult to understand how to tell our story.”
She says her father-in-law John Ross was disappointed Country Calendar did not show the incredible amount of work undertaken by the family at the station.
“The before and after photos of the station are dramatic and Geoff achieved this in a few shakes of a lamb’s tail. I was similarly disappointed and I felt that it was the lack of attention and crafting during pre-production that had resulted in this miss.”
Geoff Ross agrees the show did not portray the commercial returns for farmers focusing on sustainable practices.
“They have a very set format, 23 minutes, week in and week out for years and years and years and it has worked.
“When they came to us, they put our farm into that format.
“But I think the piece they missed is understanding why and what the rewards are for farming because of it. I think some viewed it as saying, why are they doing it that way?
“The piece they missed is that actually can create greater returns for New Zealand farming, which is what all of us in farming need right now.”
Justine Ross adds: “I think it was sort of a perfect storm in a way of factors. The farming sector was in a world of pain. The story wasn’t told super-right.”
Country Calendar producer Dan Henry said he understood the Rosses’ feeling that not every aspect of their story was told.
“Country Calendar’s focus is on the people and what they’re doing on the land, meaning our programmes don’t always have room to cover all the commercial and/or environmental goals that a longer documentary might. We had 23 minutes to tell a very complex story and we covered a lot of new ground.”
He said the show monitored hundreds of responses on Facebook “and hid comments that were directed personally at the Rosses or set out to undermine their business — as we would for anyone that features on the show.
“We did leave negative comments visible because we are always reluctant to stifle debate and opinions from viewers, as long as they do not move into that personal territory.
“After a couple of days, the overall tone changed and most of the response was either in support of what they were doing on Lake Ha¯wea Station, or at least pointing out that it was their land, they weren’t breaking any laws, and they should be free to farm however they wanted.”