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Farmstrong’s annual ‘growers versus farmers’ cricket match in Te Puke raises awareness about rural mental health
"When you’re in a situation, sometimes it’s very hard to recognise what’s happening"
Doing things differently: Lessons from life on an orchard Leighton Oats is a veteran of the kiwifruit industry. Now he runs his own four-and-a-half-hectare kiwifruit and avocado orchard near Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty. After spending 20-plus years in a results-driven industry, he says there is plenty he has learnt about managing pressure. Leighton went through the lows of the Psa crisis in 2010, and then enjoyed the boom that followed, climbing the corporate ladder into leadership and management roles. He also had a young family at the time, so life was busy on all fronts. Leighton says he reached a point where he felt burnt out. “I just noticed I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I normally do. I was also getting frustrated with people. They would come and ask me questions and I’d be grumpy. I soon realised it wasn’t them, it was me. I simply couldn’t come up with the answers that should’ve been there anymore.” Leighton says the industry itself had changed. “When I first started out, there were gaps in the year where you could have a bit of a breather. You’d do your pruning or thinning and then there’d be a gap. But as the industry moved from casual employment to creating permanent 16
The ORCHARDIST : JUNE 2022
jobs, those gaps disappeared. There was less downtime.” As the pressure mounted, so did his stress levels. “When you work in a large industry, you don’t always have control over decisions, but you still have to implement them,” Leighton says. “For example, there might be another project that needs to be done, but there aren’t staff to do that. That sort of situation can be stressful.” Leighton remembers it as a tough time. “I had to prioritise my health. I discovered adrenal fatigue was a big part of it. The adrenal gland affects how you perceive and handle stress. Mine were only working at about 45 percent of where they should’ve been.” He made a raft of changes to his lifestyle – everything from how he worked to what he ate, to how he spent his spare time. “I was told I could do anything outside of work as long I didn’t have to run it. If I played sport, I had to just play for the fun of it.”