Previously chairman of the Te Uku School board, the Te Uku hall committee when a rebuild began and on the former Hamilton Education Board with a responsibility for 24 schools, Jim was regarded as the right man to convene a farming committee 20 years ago to oversee the development of Wainui Reserve farm park near Raglan.
The reserve would not have been established, he says, but for the efforts of another local farmer, Michael Hope, who had been on the Raglan County and Waikato District councils and negotiated the purchase of the land.
At times Jim was worried an increasing area set aside for bush reserve would make the farm less viable.
“For me, as a farmer, there were mixed blessings when losing more of the park’s jolly land (for bush) but I am very proud of all that now.”
The Waikato District Council bought farms to form the reserve that today provides public access to Raglan’s main surf beach and its surf club, picnic spots and walkways with panoramic views of the coast and Tasman Sea.
“We were aware it was more than a profit-making farm and I was fairly keen on native bush, as you can see around here.”
“It had a farm manager but it was a big job for one man. I crawled the length of that reserve on my knees helping to bury water pipes.”
Jim, 86, now lives in Raglan with his wife of 60 years Shirley, but most days drives 12 km to the Te Uku farm where they began their married life and built a home.
Over the years they bought neighbouring acres to double the original dairy farm to 102 hectares and this season their herd of 260 Jersey cows is being lower-order sharemilked by grandson Daniel Peart.
“When we came here we didn’t have milk tankers. We separated our own milk. The cream lorry picked up the cream and the skim milk was taken down to the pigsties, and the milk wasted in the pigsties went straight into the creek.”
“The bad name dairy farmers have got … I think some of it is completely justified but there’s a lot more awareness now.”
A keen hiker until well into his 60s, he regards himself as “a bit of a greenie”. A highlight with his hiking mates was a six-day trek, 23 years ago, from the top of Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown to the Routeburn Track then south to Greenstone before looping back to Glenorchy – at the sprightly age of 63.
A neighbour was just as keen to regenerate bush on his farm and they began fencing and planting a bush sanctuary on each side of a shared boundary more than 30 years ago. In the bush Jim planted rimu and kauri for each of his 14 grandchildren.
The bush has grown dense and on the edges their grown grandchildren have begun planting trees for their children. Jim estimates the farm’s fenced-off
bush areas would total “only about 5% of the farm” and says little was planned or budgeted but would resume “if the money was there”.
Ten years ago he asked Whaingaroa Harbour Care (WHC) to plant a steep slope left bare after pines were harvested and two years later they extended their planting of native trees and flaxes along a farm creek.
“I have absorbed their ideas over the years,” Jim says of the community-driven WHC whose first project was the Wainui Reserve farm park he helped develop.
“The creek is pretty good now but years ago we had to walk the herd up it to get into a new chunk of land over the road. They made a hell of a mess.”
When council started to replace the road bridge over the creek with a culvert Jim successfully requested he pay for a stock underpass to be installed at the same time so the cows could be kept out of the water.
“We need to be aware of those sorts of things.”
