As Dutch immigrants in 1960, Ben and Ria headed to Ruawai in Northland to pursue their dream of farming and climbed the ladder to become sharemilkers with the chance of buying their own farm.
After searching for the right farm, they found 75ha at Aratapu, an area that grew from a kauri mill on the river’s edge and prompted the land to be divided into numerous titles for what had once been a thriving community.
Though much of the small township had long disappeared, the titles made it easier over the years to acquire neighbouring land and the Zwaans’ farm grew to 244ha and 13 titles.
When their eldest son opted to go dairying, they bought the neighbouring farm for him to sharemilk for them and when the youngest son also chose dairying, he became a sharemilker on the home farm. It gave Ben the chance to pursue other interests in local council, the local dairy company and then the planning committee for the regional council while still living on the farm.
“It grew as a family farm and as sharemilkers they made good money and I could leave them to it,” Ben says.
“We came to New Zealand to be dairy farmers and NZ gave us the opportunity. It’s a farm that we grew, so it’s very sentimental. It’s the gate I hung and the drain I dug, so it’s a part of you.”
But it’s time to sell. One son has bought the farm next door and is milking 360 cows while the other son and his wife have decided it’s time for a change. And Ben is 79.
Ben and Ria have spent 48 years on the farm which today flows over 118ha of alluvial flats with the remainder easy rolling contour on Te Kopuru sandy soils. It’s provided a good balance of soils with predominantly good, clean pasture – mostly kikuyu. It’s subdivided into 131 paddocks connected by quality limestone races.
The average production for the past eight years on the conservatively-run farm is 170,000kg milksolids (MS) from 480 cows. The highest production was 195,000kg MS and the lowest 145,000kg MS during a drought. Fifteen years ago the farm winter-milked with a split calving of 600 cows and reached up to 214,000kg MS.
It’s a low-input system with dairy pellets fed in the dairy when needed through the season and the bulk of the silage made on the farm. No crops are grown on the farm and annuals are undersown in paddocks as part of the regrassing programme.
The infrastructure includes a 60-bail rotary dairy with in-dairy meal feeding and a molasses system not in use, a great array of support buildings and a covered concrete feedpad with bins. A 41ha block lies on the other side of Pouto Rd and the Zwaans have recently installed an underpass to access it easily.
The farm’s effluent system has a 20-year consent and consists of four ponds before it is piped to 14 paddocks to irrigate onto pasture.
One of Ben and Ria’s requirements when they bought a farm was that it should have a house set back from the road and with a view. The main home is a beautiful three-bedroom, fully renovated home with polished floors of matai and kauri in the kitchen, a guest wing and a deck overlooking the farm. A second home of three bedrooms has a swimming pool, while the worker’s cottage has three bedrooms and a large rumpus room.
The herd is also for sale at valuation, along with the Fonterra shares. The farm has a set sale date of November 19. It can be viewed at www.bayleys.co.nz/1811336 or www.pggwre.co.nz/DAG21924.
For further information contact Catherine Stewart from Bayleys on 0800 422 959 or 027 356 5031, or Megan Browning from PGG Wrightson Real Estate on 09 439 3344 or 027 668 8468.
