Up the Rakaia Gorge and towards the Southern Alps, the Guild family has heard the outcry.
Farming below the Selwyn headwaters, the Guilds at High Peak and neighbouring Quartz Hill were in a regulatory red-zone for water use and nutrient runoff.
The separately-owned stations were immersed in the water and nutrient regulations of the Selwyn Waihora catchment.
The Guilds at High Peak were double-fencing about 30km of stream and river margin, including tributaries running through forestry. Relations at Quartz Hill were following their lead.
High Peak patriarch James Guild was a new member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, honoured for services to deer farming.
He also headed the Molesworth Steering Committee and the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust – roles that exposed him to a kaleidoscope of opinion on the health of NZ waterways.
Molesworth, a vast tract of publicly-owned upper South Island high country, attracted vigorous comment about wilding pines, pest control and, more recently, water quality.
James recalled one visitor, a Fish and Game officer from Taranaki, demanding an investigation into “cow shit in the river”.
Molesworth managers referred the woman to a 2011 Cawthron Institute report, Culmulative effect of cattle grazing in the Acheron River, that found cows were being grazed at an intensity of four head to every square kilometre. Cattle were scattered across no more than 15-20% of the property.
The woman’s assessment of that report was essentially “I don’t care about the science. I just don’t like the look of it.”
High Peak was another up-country station with a high profile, running deer, cattle and sheep. It also ran hunting tours across 40% of the property and made honey for export.
Inevitably, there was pressure on such a varied business to pay its way.
“It’s a bit like playing an organ – you push something here, you push something there, just to make sure the balance is right,” James said.
Right now, the station was in a critical stage of water storage and irrigation.
Five small-span pivots on 100ha serviced just 2.5% of the farm but made a disproportionate contribution to production and profit.
The irrigation had been a 15-year project involving about nine separate resource consent applications to enlarge an onfarm dam holding stored winter from the Selwyn River.
Farm manager Hamish Guild said the storage allowed the family to grow fescue, lucerne and modern cocksfoot. It meant they weren’t forced to sell stock as soon as it went dry.
For the last 20 years High Peak had sold most of its lambs at the Rakaia Gorge onfarm lamb sale in mid-January. This year, irrigated clover allowed the Guilds to finish 2000 lambs two months later.
Through 10 weeks in autumn, the lambs were putting on 300g a day.
“Instead of the lambs averaging $55 in January they made more than $100 in March. The top lamb was getting up to $120 that we couldn’t get a bid on in the sale,” Hamish said.
Admittedly, lamb prices stayed unusually high after Christmas, but irrigation gave High Peak confidence to put a higher reserve price on the stock.
“Anything that made $80 we sold, anything less we kept.”
But it wasn’t all sweetness and mint lamb.
The Guilds found themselves defending basic facts about their environment, like the Selwyn’s flow.
The river had run dry along its length for as long as anyone could remember, from the mountains to the coastal Canterbury Plains. But none of that dampened the recurring idea that the Selwyn was “in a bit of a mess”, Hamish said.
At Quartz Hill, Dan and Georgie Harper were introducing new pasture and brassica crops to their roly-poly lower country.
The new feed worked well for the deer as well as the lambs and calves the family finished on an irrigated, down-country block at Windwhistle.
Like High Peak, Quartz Hill was adapting to Environment Canterbury’s water and nutrient rules by adding stacks of fencing and riparian strips.
The station was laced with at least 50 creeks feeding into the Selwyn.
Deer-fencing on a 200ha block on their top country cost $120,000. The job allowed them to increase hind numbers fawning on the hill but the farm had at least 25km of waterways so double-fencing every brook and stream would be a nightmare, Dan said.
If deer fencing cost $15-$20 a metre, Quartz would be up for $1 million.
Fortunately for the owners, Ecan agreed total fencing went too far.
“The guy (from council) laughed and said, ‘no way, that’s not economical’.”
But Dan said they were happy to progressively fence as much as they could afford, just like at High Peak.
“We love the Selwyn and we thought we’d do our bit.”
