The Nolans have been operating their dairy tourism business for two years and say they love it.
The enterprising young couple and their three young girls Pyper, 3, Bonnie, 18, months and Gretty, 5 months, happily combine milking their 200-cow dairy herd with entertaining and educating tourists.
Nolan says most of the tourists are international visitors looking for the natural but hands-on dairy farm experience.
“The live milking demonstration and a 10-minute presentation about us and our farm happens in the milking shed.
“They watch the milking, ask questions and then we take the experience into a nearby yard where they can pet and feed the cows,” Nolan says.
“They love to get up close and personal with the animals and always have plenty of questions about the farm, calves, feeding and what the milk is made into. All up the visitors are with us for about 45 minutes. Our cows are well-handled and react well to all the attention.”
They say it is good to be able to talk to visitors and hear what they have to say and meet some interesting people. They enjoy talking to their visitors and finding out about them.
“You never quite know what their background is and the good experience goes both ways.
“We probably miss out on quite a few visitors sticking to the 2pm time but first and foremost we are a dairy farm and we have to stick to that and we are happy to let it just tick on.
“We put a lot of emphasis on stock health and wellbeing and we wanted to share our love of the cows with the rest of the world.”
Their dairy farm is at Hari Hari, south Westland, halfway between Hokitika and Franz Joseph and is only 2.5km off the main road – perfect for international tourists and visitors.
Nolan was brought up on the family sheep farm at Riversdale, Southland, and went to high school in Dunedin. When his parents sold the farm he continued farming through relief milking while still at school.
Leaving school he went dairying full-time as a farm assistant in south Otago then in Canterbury. Aged 18 he applied for a job on a farm at Hari Hari, which was his introduction to life on the West Coast.
“I progressed from farm worker to dairy farm manager and then on to sharemilking with a mate, Simon Stewart, for five years. At about this time Jade and I had decided to try to buy a farm. So Simon bought my share out.”
Jade, who is from a dairy farming background, got a dairy farming diploma at Telford. She had worked on a couple of dry stock farms before they met.
They looked for a larger sharemilking job – 700 cows – but could not find one in south Westland where they wanted to live with their young and growing family.
After a great deal of searching, even extending their search area, they returned to the West Coast where they had seen a small dairy farm for sale.
“It was owned by a lady who had farmed it for more than 30 years and it had been on the market for two years,” Nolan says.
“After some negotiation and plenty of thought we bought the 122ha farm plus most of her cows. They were a good herd and we were very pleased with the end result.”
They also have two lease blocks used as run-offs nearby.
“In hindsight, perhaps buying the farm when we did wasn’t the best time as prices were high. They have dropped but it was the best time for us,” Nolan says.
Their herd is mainly Friesian with some crossbred, some Jersey and a handful of Ayrshire and Milking Shorthorn.
Jade has been an AB technician for nine years and services the Hari Hari area. That also means she is not afraid to experiment with introducing different breeds of dairy animals into their herd.
The couple run the farm together but have set it up for sole charge. Their shed is a 20-a-side herringbone with automatic cup removers so is easily managed by one person.
Production averages 85,000kg MS and they run a System 1 with no supplementary feed bought. Their milk goes to Westland Milk Products in Hokitika.
“This is our fifth year on the farm and we introduced the tourism venture last year,” Nolan says.
“At our previous sharemilking job tourists would often stop on the side of the main road to take photos of the cows whenever they were in the roadside paddocks. So we thought we could encourage a few of the 1.4 million visitors to the West Coast to come to our farm for a real NZ experience.”
They initially promoted it as an event that happened at 2pm every day and if people turned up they turned up.
But that got a little frustrating with not knowing if they would have visitors so they now have a booking system through their website, farwestfarmtours.nz, and people seem to like the certainty and it means they know if there will be tourists.
“It’s a sideline for us. We have nice friendly cows, a very clean and tidy cow shed and our farm is kept up to scratch,” he says.
“But we don’t do a booming trade.
“Last year we had about 160 people through and we have had some tour guides who have come to check us out so we might end up with groups booked this way. But we aren’t worried about it. If it works, it works but we won’t worry if in a few years’ time we decide not to do it anymore.”
They say they have met some really nice, interesting people.
“They are either retired farmers or family. They come in and are overwhelmed by how a young couple can run a 200-cow dairy farm.
“We haven’t had any anti-farming people. We get plenty of questions, some quite probing. They are quite smart and ask questions which make you think. Questions about the animals, how it’s done, where do the calves go and so on.
“Once they see the cows and see how happy and relaxed the herd is they can understand the NZ way and they really like it. We really look after our cows 120%. You need to look after your animals so they will look after you.”
He says the West Coast can be quite challenging for farming with about 4.5 metres of rain a year but they also get good sunshine hours.
“Yes, we certainly get rain. Mostly in big amounts, often warm rain. We do get some frost but no snow on the ground here. The West Coast is just that – it is on the coast. It is warm and we don’t have as big of an impact on the environment that other regions might.
“We are kept pretty busy. We have young kids and it’s a 365-day a year job but we are able to spend every day with the kids. It’s a good lifestyle, brought up on a farm you get to experience responsibility at an early age. Everything is based around the farm.”
