ENVIRONMENT │ ONFARM
Flowering manuka planted last year.
Gary Watkins by the 220-cow feedpad.
A kauri for McKenna Planting native trees and shrubs where once there were pines has become a labour of love for Northland dairy farmer Gary Watkins. Glenys Christian reports.
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orthland dairy farmer, Gary Watkins, uses Waipoua Forest’s giant kauris as his inspiration when it comes to planting up a gully on his Arapahue runoff. “I think that’s beautiful and it must have been what this was once like,” he says. His proof is one large kauri stump he found on the 1.5-hectare area after 50-year-old pine trees there had been cleared. “It was never burned when the land was originally cleared, fenced and the pines planted,” he says. “I can imagine where the kauris were and I think, wouldn’t it be great to have it back like it was.” So now he’s intent on turning back the clock and as well as almost 5000 plants put in last year, he plans to get another 4000 in the ground this year. Six kauri have already proudly taken their places, the first planted on daughter, McKenna’s, first birthday. “When she’s 80 she can come back and have a look at it,” he says. Six totara have also gone in with plans to plant kahikatea, totara and puriri next year. But the groundwork for them has been in clearing the pines, which were falling over. This work was carried out by contractors, then he got to work fencing
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the gully off and spraying with glyphosate. The next step was to plant 200 willows to stabilise banks and provide shelter for more than 3000 manuka and kanuka along with flax, cabbage trees, pittosporums, coprosmas and some rushes which have gone in around a wetland area fed by a spring running down the hill. The planting has all been carried out by Dargaville company, Babylon Coast Gardens, with Gary helping out along with his two full-time staff. He says he never really considered
Gary Watkins with the kauri planted for daughter McKenna’s first birthday.
replanting the land in pines after difficulty getting them harvested. “They’re ugly and they also make cows abort,” he says. But he did briefly think of putting the area into manuka before deciding that a mix of natives was the way to go. He’s been involved in dairying ever since leaving school in Dargaville where he grew up. He sharemilked in the area before moving to the 151ha Ruawai farm his parents Noel and Delia bought more than 20 years ago. Noel, 75, keeps busy as a milking machine fitter for De Laval, working seven days a week. “I’ve worked in the industry for 24 years and can’t see myself getting out of it now,” Gary says. A recent dream that he sold his herd was more like a nightmare! Some years ago a trip to Southland to a sharemilkers’ conference led to him taking a oneseventh share in a 349ha dairy farm there. “I thought it was a wonderful place but I didn’t want to live there,” he says. Now owners have reduced so he and John and Diane Smith have equal shares in the farm on which 50:50 sharemilkers Tony and Vicki Miles milk 1000 cows. Gary’s also recently stepped up to be a committee member at the Northland Agricultural Research Farm (NARF) just north of Dargaville. His cows, herd-tested every year for the past 23 years, are in the top 4% of Breeding Worth (BW) in the national herd and the top 3% in Production Worth (PW). Since 2007 all his cows have been DNA traced, giving him “real accuracy”. He culls solely on BW and PW, with around 25% replacements coming into the herd every year. He uses LIC Premier Sires with mating starting on September 29 and finishing on November 10. Then Friesian bulls, chosen because they are better on their feet, go out until January 1. Calving for the heifers starts on June 26, with cows starting on July 2. Both dates have been brought forward slightly in recent years mainly because of the series of harsh droughts the area has suffered. Calves are reared initially in a shed
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | September 2017