- 2 days ago
Hyundai Country Calendar - Season 60 Episode 32 -
Room To Grow
Room To Grow
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00The best of New Zealand's rural heartland, Hyundai Country Calendar.
00:17We wanted to do something that would reduce the animal numbers on the farm.
00:21We're the only ones that are planting manuka in this way.
00:25Taranaki couple growing manuka and rearing coloured sheep.
00:30They are a rare breed in New Zealand.
00:33They love a good scratch and a cuddle.
00:35I really love the Gotland sheep.
00:51I wanted to have some pretty sheep up the driveway
00:54and basically to feed my family.
00:56I really love the idea of knowing where the food comes from.
01:01It makes me feel good that they've had a happy life and I can look after them.
01:06Ness Dickey has added a flock of Gotland sheep
01:09to the family's Taranaki dairy farms near Waverley.
01:14Hello girls.
01:16What are you doing today?
01:18I got into the Gotland specifically because they're dual purpose.
01:22Their meat is a fine texture and really nice but also their wool is pretty sensational.
01:27I've got a hundred breeding years so I'm just checking that they are all lambing okay.
01:39Hello dear.
01:41Hello, what did you have?
01:45Hmm?
01:46Alright.
01:47Good girl.
01:48The lambing bait, I actually do twice a day.
01:53I do first thing in the morning and the evening and I just walk around and check that the lambs
02:00can stand up and suckle.
02:02Well, otherwise if they don't I take them home with me and put them by the fire.
02:07Ness's husband Ben indulges her soft side.
02:13Ben thinks I steal them.
02:15He thinks I specifically come to steal them and bring them home.
02:19I normally end up with about 15 each year because I just can't bear the thought of anything
02:24dying on my watch so I like to bring them home and make sure that they survive.
02:30Good girl.
02:31The Gotland sheep are Ness's project but Ben helps out where needed.
02:35Go Ben.
02:36I'm going to pull a hamstring.
02:38Come on.
02:40We're just drenching the hoggets today.
02:43The drench will kill the parasites and keep them healthy.
02:50Ben Dickey is the fifth generation of his family on this land.
02:54But he had no plans to be a farmer.
02:57I went to university in Dunedin and I did geology actually in finance.
03:01I thought I was going to work in that field for a long time to come.
03:04I went to Sydney and did do that job for a wee while but realised the city wasn't for me.
03:09So after a bit of travel I came back here to the farm about 20 years ago now.
03:14Which is still surprising to say when I say it out loud.
03:17But I really did miss the farm while I was away.
03:20And my brother and sister weren't keen to come back to the farm so there was an opportunity there.
03:25I used to work in advertising and I really loved being a city girl.
03:31And Ben said do you want to come back and live on the farm with me?
03:35And I thought yeah, that sounds pretty cool.
03:38My friends got quite a fright because it was a little bit different to what the norm was for me.
03:43One reason Ness's friends were surprised by her move to the farm is she's a vegetarian.
03:53I think eating meat is a really important part of our diets.
03:56I like to feed it to the family.
03:58I never told our children that I didn't eat meat.
04:02So it wasn't until probably a few years ago they actually noticed that I didn't eat what was on their plate.
04:09That's hilarious.
04:17Ness and Ben own three dairy farms but these days they're run by managers with their own staff.
04:23Danushka runs this one.
04:26The only time of the year when Ness works with the cows is during spring.
04:32My responsibility on the dairy farm are the babies.
04:36Hello mama.
04:37Come on.
04:39This morning Ness and Danushka are doing the calving beat.
04:43This is a really busy time of year for us, especially for me with all the babies
04:47because it's the calving, it's also my lambing.
04:51So I start work at 7 o'clock in the morning and last night I didn't finish till 6, 6.30 last night.
04:58So it's quite big days, I get pretty tired and there's not a day off.
05:02It's quite big isn't it?
05:04Yeah it's big.
05:05Well you got him before he woke up.
05:07Come on buddy.
05:09During this time Ben becomes a little bit more of the house husband.
05:12So he does the school drop off and the afternoon activities, driving into Ounganui and things.
05:17So he picks up the slack where I can focus a bit more time on the farm.
05:21The new calves are heading to the calf shed and their mums go into the milking herd.
05:33We have three farms.
05:35On each farm we try and rear 110 replacement heifers.
05:39So we keep 110 and then we also try and do beef stock.
05:43So we do charolet now which are beautiful big animals and we do about 30 of those on each farm.
05:53Ness trains up new staff members.
05:56Bagia from Sri Lanka had never been on a dairy farm before.
06:00They're looking really good actually.
06:03Looking good these ones.
06:04They're all sucking really well.
06:06Unwanted male calves, bobby calves, are sent to the works at a few days old.
06:13I really struggle with the bobby calves.
06:16When I first came back every time the truck turned up I used to cry and cry and cry.
06:21I used to break my heart.
06:23And now I'm getting a little bit more used to it.
06:26And I think the rules around the bobby trucks have become so much more humane.
06:31And I really feel happier about the whole process now.
06:35I used to hide a few that I really love because you get a bit of a connection.
06:40You're teaching them how to drink, you become their mum.
06:47The three farm managers are contract milkers who hire their own staff.
06:51So Ben is able to be hands off.
06:54Kelly runs the day to day operations on this farm where they've been experimenting with electronic collars.
07:00Hey Kelly, how you going?
07:02Yeah, good.
07:03We've been trialling the halter collars on one of our farms for just under a year now.
07:08And it seems to have been going really well.
07:10So we've rolled it out to our other two farms just in the last couple of weeks.
07:14The cows here, they're still learning how to deal with them a little bit.
07:17But they learn surprisingly quickly.
07:20Pretty impressive when we turned up here with the line and the grass.
07:23There's grass that long on one side.
07:25Yeah.
07:26It only took about three days to train them up.
07:30Every cow has a collar.
07:32And they are linked up to GPS.
07:35So we can set on our phone app an area that they're allowed to graze.
07:39The collars will tell them when to stop going any further.
07:42So we can be really closely monitoring exactly how much grass they get.
07:47Other than that also they tell us when the cows are on heat and when they can be mated and that sort of thing too.
07:52And they are getting more and more popular.
07:55To me it seems like it's just going to be on every farm sooner or later.
07:59There's such a game changer that I think that every farm will have these one day.
08:03When Ben and Ness first returned from Sydney they were milking by themselves.
08:09When we first moved home there was no cow shed on this farm so I had to walk the cows all the way to the main road shed.
08:19And sometimes it would take me up to two hours to get them there and I used to feel so sorry for them.
08:24It was a really long walk so it's been a game changer having this shed here.
08:29It's meant that we can increase the production while having just the same number of cows.
08:34The breeding worth of the cows has got better and better.
08:37We've put a big effort into breeding better cows, breeding from our best cows and we use LIC genetics.
08:43We're in the top 5% with this herd in the country now so it's meant that we've been able to reduce the cow numbers a lot and just keep our very best cows.
08:51Milking was a test of Ness and Ben's relationship.
08:56Ben and I work really well together when we're in different areas.
09:01Working together in the cow shed is not so great because I'm an animal lover and I take a really long time talking to the animals and you know saying hi and Ben's quite keen on being quite efficient.
09:14We have different ideas about efficiency I think really, that's the main issue.
09:19The Dickeys may have stepped back from running the dairy side of the business but they're very busy with their new projects.
09:26Ben and Ness Dickey own three dairy farms in Waverley South Taranaki but Contract Milk has run those and the couple has time to focus on diversification.
09:42Ness's passion is her flock of Gotland sheep which she runs without using sheepdogs.
09:49I hand-rear probably 15, 16 lambs every year and they become pets so they follow me in the paddock.
09:58When I come out to move the ewes I call and they all come running and they just follow each other so it's fabulous really.
10:06I really love the Gotland sheep. I think they've got a personality quite similar to goats.
10:13They're quite inquisitive and just really friendly.
10:18They love a good scratch and a cuddle and kind of like a dog they'll paw you if you stop patting.
10:24So they're just great pets really, they're beautiful.
10:31They are a rare breed in New Zealand.
10:36They're from Ireland of Gotland in Sweden.
10:42We're just trimming their hooves because they do tend to get quite overgrown and if they get overgrown they get foot rot quite badly.
10:51It's working really well because we used to have to run them through foot baths all the time to try and stop the skull but trimming their feet regularly really works.
10:59I can't do this by myself. I really need men's help. I can't quite get the muscle power to lift them over and hold them on my own so I've got to bring in the big guns.
11:17Ness keeps her flock numbers close to her chest.
11:21The number seems to keep going up and up so I'm not really sure. The number does change depending on the mood around the house I'd have to say.
11:28I started with 8 and I've got up to over 100 breeding ewes now but I did get up to 200 at one point and he wouldn't give me any more land.
11:38A rare piece of honesty there. 200, really? Jesus.
11:43Ness has started another business, tanning and selling the sheepskins.
11:53The sheepskins are actually a by-product of the meat. It's generally the boys that go to the meatworks for their meat and then I get their skins afterwards.
12:04So instead of being thrown away I grab them and I get them tanned in Napier.
12:10So it's all 100% New Zealand made which I find really important.
12:15I sell online and I sell in retailers and it blows me away because I sell out every year. It's awesome.
12:25This one is a really silky beautiful kind of lustrous feel. You can see the kind of shine on the wool.
12:32It's really gorgeous. Really nice silver colourings in that one. I like it.
12:45About 8 or 10 years ago we were looking at ways to diversify the dairy farm and we wanted to do something that would reduce the animal numbers on the farm.
12:55So we were looking at a variety of different plants that we could grow and make a living off as well.
13:02Waverley is very windy so the plants needed to be hardy. They chose manuka.
13:08We looked at honey but then the oil came across our radar and we decided that that would be worth a go.
13:15So we cast around and found the best variety that produces the best oil from up on the East Cape.
13:21The first time we did this we planted 30,000 of these by hand and it was just an exhausting process so we thought there had to be a better way.
13:34They found this old lettuce planter.
13:38Modified it quite a bit to make it work for these and put the disc openers on it so that we can plant straight into the grass.
13:47That's made a big difference.
13:48It's not perfect so we just have to follow along behind and just make sure they're all standing up straight and nicely pressed in.
13:57We wanted to make sure that we were at least making as much per hectare as the dairy farm otherwise we thought there probably wasn't as much point in doing it.
14:07So we wanted to maximise the per hectare yield and that's why we're planting them in these closer rows.
14:12I think a lot of people plant them wide or open so tractors can drive down between them so we thought that was probably wasting a fair bit of pretty precious Taranaki dairy country.
14:25While the Dickies plant the Manuka in winter, harvesting happens in late summer and autumn.
14:36We're harvesting our oldest Manuka block today so this was planted around about six years ago.
14:41It's been harvested five times since then.
14:44Like many of Ben's machines, the Manuka harvester started life as something else.
14:49This is a converted single row maize harvester.
14:53So it's not really made for this job but we've tinkered with it and tinkered with it and for the most part it does the job pretty well.
14:59So it mulches it up really fine which enables us to get the oil out faster and it does a lot of heavy lifting for us.
15:05It cuts the plants off at around about 40 centimetres high and then it feeds in through feed rollers into a cutting blade which cuts it up very fine.
15:15And then sitting in behind those blades is a big fan blower which blows it up the chute and then we have the chute pointed down into the pots.
15:22It's a fairly simple process but it is hard work especially for this Manuka.
15:27It's quite a thick plant and quite stringy as well which is really difficult for that sort of machine.
15:32Andrew Chapman is Ben's right hand man.
15:36He's been with us from basically the start of this plantation and he does all the harvesting and does most of the oil extraction plus does everything else on the farm that we ask him to do as well.
15:49As far as we know we're the only ones that are planting Manuka in this way so we've just been learning by feel basically.
15:56It's been a huge trial and error over the last six years and we're still learning as we go.
15:59So even down to the row spacings, how we were going to harvest it, what we would need to power the harvester, the shoots, the pots, how to control the weeds, whether we need to fertilise or not fertilise, what time of year to plant, what time of year to harvest, all of this stuff we've just had to learn as we go.
16:18Once Ben and Ness Dickey had harvested the Manuka trees on their South Taranaki dairy farm, the mulched branches are brought straight to their distillery.
16:37We've got a fairly industrial scale gantry crane that we use to lift these off. They're not too far off a tonne for each pot.
16:47We're weighing them so we can keep a check on our yield out in the paddock and also how much yield of oil we're getting per kilo of green matter that's coming in.
16:55We use another small winch to put the lids on as well because they're pretty heavy on their own.
17:03We seal it all up with tape to get the vacuum to build up.
17:08We're generating steam in the bottom of the pot and then the steam is moving through the plants and it's dissolving the oil in the leaves as it's going through.
17:17And it comes out the top still in a steam form and then you can see condenses there so we run cold water through a water jacket which cools the steam down, condenses it back into a liquid.
17:31So this is where the oil and water separates off. It condenses in the pipes above us and then it comes down here as a mixture and the oil floats off the top.
17:39And this is where we can separate the oil off out of the system and take it away in its bottles.
17:47The big byproduct of the distilling process is mulch.
17:51We produce a lot of mulch at the moment. We haven't recorded it.
17:56This season we'll start recording because it's getting to be a lot more.
18:00And we use it all around the garden. It's an incredible mulch for the trees because it holds its warmth really well and it stops any weeds coming which is great for me because it means I get a bit of a break from the garden.
18:10We've got three kids. Our oldest Harry and Olive they board at Wanganui Collegia and that's pretty cool because they get to come home on Friday nights and they're amazing help for me.
18:23In the weekends they help with the garden, mulching everything. And Ed is at our local Waverley Primary School and he is an incredible help.
18:34Good boy.
18:35Most of the Dickies oil infused products are made by a lab in Auckland but one is made on the farm.
18:47We're really excited with this product actually because it uses two of the products that we make on the farm.
18:52So we haven't really had much of a use for the wool from our Gotland sheep. So this combines the wool with the manuka oil to make a great blister protection product.
19:03We get the wool from our lambs at their first year so it's extremely fine and soft. We infuse it with manuka oil to make it antibacterial and antifungal as well.
19:13And then we dry it on these racks. Once it's dried out we put it in our tins and it's ready for sale essentially.
19:20A couple of short bits there.
19:23Pass me another one.
19:25More hands make lighter work so we usually have a fair bit of music going. It's not the most exciting process packing the wool but it can be good fun when we have a few good people here.
19:35Ness and Ben make a variety of oil infused creams and gels for the tramping, cycling and skiing market.
19:42So this is our first aid gel which is probably one of our top sellers. It's the go to fix it cream for everything.
19:51Really strong manuka oil antibacterial base. I've ordered the chamois cream as well. That is a different consistency than the anti-chafe gel.
20:02We've got these little sachets that are really great to chuck into your pack when you need to go on the road.
20:08And our lip balm as well which is SPF 30. That's that order ready to go out.
20:18We've just been working on our insect repellent which I'm really excited about. It's 100% natural as effective as DEET.
20:25Ben and I have been trialing it on our tramps down south. It works amazingly well. So we're really excited about the launch of that and we've been testing our sunscreen which is a long time coming but boy is it going to be worth it.
20:40Their products were inspired by their own enthusiasm for outdoor sports.
20:47We've always been into anything outdoors really. We do a lot of trail running and a lot of hiking, a lot of skiing in the winter. So yeah, any chance we get to get outdoors we're there.
20:58In terms of marketing we really love sponsoring the events around New Zealand. There's so many awesome ones to get involved in but mostly we love it because we get to compete and enter them ourselves so it's really fun.
21:12My toes tend to get a bit blistered so I just tuck it in a little bit. A lot of people quite commonly use it around their heels or ankles especially if they're in their tramping boots.
21:24There's no need to stick it on at all. It just binds onto your sock so once you put your sock on it actually just locks on in place and that's all you have to do.
21:37The Dickies products may be selling well in New Zealand but they have bigger ambitions.
21:43We've been going really well in the New Zealand market so we're looking to expand into the States so we've just started the process of getting into that and we're really excited.
21:52The US market is going to be a real challenge but has huge potential and we're really excited about taking our products over there.
22:00We've got big ambitions for the brand and we're really hopeful that we can make something big of it.
22:09Next time, they left their jet-setting lives for a tiny piece of paradise.
22:14We quickly learned we're not farmers. It's a modest living compared to what we were earning but spiritually this is priceless.
22:25Every time I come in here it's like a mystical wonderland. It never ceases to amaze me.
22:31That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.
22:33Country Calendar was brought to you by Hyundai. Future positive.
22:43.
Recommended
22:47
|
Up next
22:18
1:23:32
43:53
45:20
47:08
1:10:48
59:16
58:08
44:05
48:39
22:57
45:29
28:45
43:30
46:00
29:25
43:21
29:48
Be the first to comment