She’s found her station in life
Life on Otematata Station is as busy as it is unpredictable. Philippa (Pip) Cameron and her husband Joe, the fifth generation of his family to work the Waitaki Valley farm in North Otago, run 30,000 merino sheep and 500 head of cattle on their 40,000 hectares.
It’s a sparse, stunning environment and the couple’s livelihood is completely at the mercy of the elements.
As station cook, Pip feeds eight to 10 farm workers each day.
Whether it’s mustering in autumn, lambing in spring, in the freezing winter and the heat of summer, she is up at 5am to get a head start on the baking before her daughters - Evelyn, 4, and Flora, 2 - wake.
She collects and shares hearty recipes from other farm cooks on her Instagram account @whats_for_smoko and has recently published a cookbook of her own station recipes, tested on groups of musterers as they passed through.
Pip inherited her job as cook from her mother-in-law Mandy Cameron, who died a few months before she and Joe decided to take over at Otematata in 2017.
Four years ago she was a primary school teacher in Dunedin and Joe flew planes for Jetstar. They were “city slickers”, she said.
But the land always called. She grew up in Central Otago and chose sheep shearing over fruit picking as an early source of pocket money. She would often reminisce about her early 20s spent working outdoors at “magic” places like Lake Wakatipu and on the outskirts of Wanaka and Queenstown.
“I’ve always felt peaceful and calm just being near the land. Even now just looking outside my window at the dry hills, I feel calm.”
Joe’s childhood on the family farm and Pip’s sheep shearing days made them eager to expose their children to a similar upbringing, so when Evelyn was six months old, they decided to move to Joe’s home and run the Cameron family farm.
“As much as I miss my [previous] career it’s not a decision I regret at all,” Pip said.
“People are sometimes embarrassed to say they’re a stayat-home mum. This isn’t a case of a woman at home in the kitchen type of thing – my role on the farm is an integral part and brings the team together. I couldn’t think of a better role to have.”
She and her husband see themselves as custodians of the land they’ve inherited. They agree they share a responsibility to care for their family’s land and to pass it on to future generations.
“I just see this as an evolution of my life that makes total sense.”