Canterbury farmer Enda Hawe is living the life he dreamed of when he arrived in New Zealand from Ireland 20 years ago, having climbed the dairy career ladder to farm ownership and a secure future for his family, wife Sarah and three children.
They live just north of the Rakaia River, a few minutes towards the coast from SH1, on a 202ha dairy farm, which they part-own in an equity partnership milking 700.
Born into a dairy farming family in Kilkenny, south east of Ireland, Enda first came to NZ as a student looking for work experience to complete the agriculture degree he was studying for in Dublin.
“I was very lucky to meet some very good employers along the way and that was the key. I was meeting the right people and the good people were sending me on to more good people,” Enda says.
He started on a dairy farm in Palmerston North and after six months moved on to a pig farm in Dunsandel, Canterbury, because he needed swine husbandry experience to complete his degree. The piggery was owned by Ray Seebeck, who was to become an important mentor.
“He more or less took me under his wing and then he sent me on to another mate of his, Gary Townshend at Canterbury Grasslands at Te Pirita, which was a wonderful experience,” he says.
By then he had fallen in love with NZ and told his mother he wouldn’t be coming home to finish his degree.
“But my brother was getting married and I was the best man at the wedding so I had to go home for the wedding,” he says.
He completed his degree and returned to NZ in 2001, working at corporate Canterbury Grasslands for nearly five years. All the while he kept in touch with Seebeck who owned a dairy farm, as well as a piggery. Then, having had his fill of rugby and Paddy’s Day celebrations, he decided to take life seriously and commit to NZ dairy farming and asked Seebeck to help him progress.
“I said to him, ‘I’ll come and work for you and it’s not so much about how much you’ll pay me, I want you to share everything with me. I’ll absorb everything, I’ll ask questions, I’ll really annoy you but I want to further myself here, it’s a great opportunity’,” he recalls.
“And he said, ‘I’ll kick you out when you’re ready to go self-employed’. So he really opened the door, nothing was secretive and I learned a lot.”
In 2006, after a few years with Seebeck in Dunsandel, he took a lower order sharemilking job in Hinds and was just settling in when one of Canterbury’s worst snowstorms arrived.
“Twelve days into the job and we had 18 inches of snow. I ended up buying chainsaws to clean up the trees that were knocked down and buying a generator, buying this, this and this on borrowed money. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” he says.
The snow was so deep that the only way to get to the runoff to feed cattle was by tractor.
“On a cabless tractor in the snow, it was sheeting down. I’d never seen anything like it before. We’ve had earthquakes, we’ve had wind but talk about snow. People say it’s lovely, but it’s not when you’re a farmer, I tell you.”
During this time, he met future wife Sarah who had never imagined she would leave her hometown of Christchurch and move to the country.
“I finished my degrees, then I went overseas for my OE and paid off my student loan and thought I’d come back and work in town but that’s not quite what happened,” Sarah says.
“I ended up moving down to Hinds when we got married and became a dairy farmer by default.”
For the first few years after they were married Sarah worked full-time for an accountant in Ashburton.
“Learning about farming through Enda helped my job because at the time I didn’t have a lot of experience with farm accounting and then after having children the hours I worked decreased and I eventually gave up working in the office to work at home,” she says.
After three years in Hinds they took another lower order job in Westerfield, near Ashburton.
In the first year they milked 900 cows, then 1100 in the second year and 1450 in the third.
“We had some great times there, they were character-building stuff, large-scale,” Enda says.
“Here I was coming from 32 cows back home in Ireland, to two jobs with 600 cows and now we’re milking 1450.”
In their final year there, 2012, they were named NZ Sharemilker/Equity Farmers of the year and they applied for an 800-cow job on a new conversion near Oxford in North Canterbury.
“How we got the job was we invited the farm owners and the consultant to come and see the job we were doing in Ashburton. Lo and behold they turned up the following morning at quarter past seven and I’m in my apron still milking,” he laughs.
“That’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I got the job on that – they said, ‘What you told us, you were able to demonstrate’.
“You can tell that within two minutes,” adding that’s the way he now likes to interview prospective employees.
“We never advertise, we pick up staff on Fencepost or by word of mouth. I’ll ring them up and I’ll say, ‘How do we go about meeting up?’ And they’ll tell me they’re on days off in a week’s time,” he says.
“I’ll say, ‘I’ll come to you’, and then you’ll either get, ‘Don’t come to me’, or ‘You’re very welcome’. If you’re very welcome, you’ll know that’s a good start, they’ve got nothing to hide.”
They had been working and saving their two incomes, waiting for an opportunity and once they had the job, Enda travelled to the North Island and found three herds that could be amalgamated into one.
“I bought them off good people. I looked at the stats of the cows per se on paper, but I actually bought them off the people who were the most genuine. You go to the farm and say ‘Who are they in-calf to, what’s their milksolids and they could tell you everything,” he says.
“Why I went to the North Island is they’re owner operators and they were getting out, either retiring or in changing circumstances, and their herds were genuinely for sale. There’s sentiment attached but if there was no sentiment, I’m not sure I would have bought them.
“The moral of this story is relationships with people.”
They stayed on the Oxford farm for three years, steadily lifting production, but in 2014 the property was abruptly put on the market, mid-season.
“The payout was $8.30 and it was sending people wild with enthusiasm to sell so it was a perfect opportunity for the owner,” he said.
He thought he would take family, cows and staff to another sharemilking job but then his friend and mentor Seebeck suggested there might be a better idea, because he feared the record payout couldn’t last.
“Ray said, ‘Sell the cows’, and I didn’t like the advice because I would be selling what I always wanted, but it made sense. I knew it made sense but there was sentiment attached and sometimes when you let sentiment rule your head you can end up in trouble.”
It only took a couple of days to sell the herd in January at $2100/head. Six months later the Global Financial Crisis hit, so timing was crucial for them.
They now had a sizable amount in the bank but knew that wouldn’t buy them a farm, so they “stashed their nuts” and Enda took a 2IC job. It was a big pay cut but it meant he could keep his staff together, as well as enjoying the predictability of a roster rather than the “200 days-on, not many off,” he was used to.
“It allowed me to find the clarity to find the right type of farm to purchase,” he says.
“The only way to get rid of job uncertainty is to buy something but you need the money to do that and we were still building our assets.
“I was still in communication with Ray on a weekly basis and he was saying, ‘There will be an opportunity, you just need to ride the wave, keep working because you’ve got income, keep making contacts, keep looking at the paper, keep talking to estate agents, a property will come up’.”
They viewed five farms, checking potential environmental issues, location, which Canterbury water management zone it was in and whether they believed the land could still be farmed in 20 years, but either didn’t proceed or missed out in the tender process.
Then they got wind that the farm in Rakaia was coming on the market soon and took the opportunity to view it before it was advertised, with a view to buying it in an equity partnership with Seebeck and Jason Palmer.
“Ray always said let’s go to the bank before we put in our tender offer and make sure we know exactly how much money we have, exactly what we can afford and how quick we have access to money because when it’s advertised in the paper, everyone knows about it,” he says.
They viewed the farm and placed an offer on the Thursday before Canterbury’s Show Weekend, before it appeared in Saturday’s Press newspaper.
“So they said they’ll get back to us on Monday and sure enough the phone did ring on Monday and we said we’d take a week to do due diligence on the water and then they said, ‘Do you want the cows as well?’, so we agreed to buy it as a going concern,” he says.
With M bovis rife at the time, he was pleased he wouldn’t have to go out and buy more cows and he was confident it would only take a couple of years to improve the herd’s genetics.
“The first week after business opened up again in January, we put pen to paper. I tell you one thing, the feeling is unique. I wanted the cows and that was a big milestone, then we wanted land and to get it, the relief is just – I definitely had tears in my eyes, you know, it was humbling.”
“It was amazing,” Sarah adds.
“As soon as the deal was finalised I was on the phone to the parents (to tell them) ‘We’re only going to be 45 minutes from Christchurch and this is it, we’re not going to be moving around anymore’, it was great.
“Moving from farm to farm is the reality of the dairy industry and that’s what everybody does to move up the chain from contract milking to sharemilking and 50:50, it’s what has to be done, but eventually to be able to settle down and say, ‘Yeah, this is our piece of land’, is really nice.”
Enda says while he’s living the dream, other people in their family haven’t had the same opportunity and finds it hard “to put that into words”.
When he viewed the farm, he could see ways to improve it and soon had automatic cup removers installed, as well as Protrack automation in the 50-bale rotary shed, which also has in-shed feeding. Effluent is now put through the farm’s centre pivot, another way to minimise labour. Over the past winter fixed-grid irrigation was installed in the corners not covered by the pivot, at a cost of $250,000.
The farm is one of 16 properties in the Rakaia River Irrigation Association, which has rights to draw water from the Rakaia River. A 9ha pond on the farm holds about 30 days of storage for irrigation.
“We’re nice and efficient here. We have a one-person shed and I’m happy to do the morning shift; cups at 4.15am, it’s not too bad,” he says.
“The time of the day doesn’t make any difference to me; the way I see it is you’ve got to get out of bed at some time, as long as you have the discipline to go to bed. I love my job.”
As well as Enda, there are two full-time workers on the farm, including Filipino Rodel Manuel who’s been with him for 12 years, and recently arrived Welsh woman Hannah Roberts.
Sarah describes herself as the “spare pair of hands” on the farm and will help out with anything from picking up and feeding calves to drenching and weighing young stock.
“I don’t get my hands too dirty, but I’m there if they need me,” she says.
Her main role in the business is running the financial side and looking after staff, health and safety and the like, as well as the extra work involved in being part of Synlait’s Lead with Pride farm assurance programme.
“There’s a lot of dotting the is and crossing the ts that goes on with that and there’s a lot more regulations these days and health and safety keeps getting bigger and bigger,” she says.
Though not brought up on a farm, Sarah now understands the industry very well.
“With what I studied in my career as an accountant, it works nicely. I enjoy running the financial side of the business, planning for the future and having the flexibility of not having to be in an office and being able to help out the kids; they’re my number one priority,” she says.
Recently the herd was fitted with collars that monitor, among other things, how much the cows are eating, their rumination, temperature, how far they walk in a day, as well as when they’re in heat. So for the first time since he went farming, the herd will not be tail-painted prior to mating this year.
Last year, the 700 cow herd on the System 4 farm produced 350,000kg MS from its 186ha effective land and Enda’s aiming for 360,000kg MS this season. When they took the farm on, production was 306,000kg and they increased that by 15000kg a year for three years, basically by improving the herd, feeding the cows better and culling the poor performers.
They buy in barley and make silage to feed through the shed, but no other crops are grown on-farm. The herd is wintered off-farm on kale and silage.
Calving begins on August 1 and they keep 130 replacements, which are reared on-farm and then sent to grazing in Sheffield. Their weaning target is 80kg.
Mating begins on October 24 and runs for 10 weeks. No bulls are used on the farm and they achieve about an 80% six-week in-calf rate. Last year the empty rate was 2.5%.
Replacements are only bred from the best Friesian cows using sexed semen, and beef breeds, including Wagyu and Angus, are used over the remainder of the herd.
“That’s one way of improving your herd – mate the best to the best and mate the poorer ones to something that you won’t be prepared to breed from,” he says.
The Wagyu are sold back to LIC at 20 days of age and Angus calves and Friesian bull calves also find ready markets so the farm has few bobbies.
“One of the parameters in Synlait’s Lead with Pride programme is minimising bobbies. It’s not just Synlait, this is our philosophy as well,” he says.
“Why have a $20 calf when you can get $420 for a 20-day-old Wagyu calf? Why would you still be sending bobbies when you can maximise the opportunity by doing the same thing with a different breed?”
With the farm now humming and labour requirements minimised, Enda is now enjoying a slightly slower pace.
“We came here with a view to not rest on our laurels but do the best job we can, but we don’t have to keep searching for the next best option the whole time, we can enjoy it; we’re not looking to buy the rest of Canterbury.
“I’m not retired but I am now enjoying the simplicity of farming while doing a lot less work for the same income.”
