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The Muster- Jon Pemberton: Catching Up On The Work · The Muster on Hokonui

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Can't hurry now.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: No, you'll just have to wait. She said I'm gonna
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: come easy. John Pemberton joins us in the Sargent Dan
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Farming Roundup. Of course, we catch up with the farmer
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: from the southern region every Monday, although it is a Tuesday,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: short a week, you know what I mean. Of course,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: it is thanks to Sargent Dan Stock Foods based here
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: in Gore.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: G'day, John.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I'm just reminiscing off here very briefly when I made
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: the correlation with Michelle Watt about having to go cut
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: gorse at school if you're a badass.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a fairly common practice up
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the road there, wasn't it?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Speaking of cutting stuff, you're still flat out there. You've
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: had a busy few months, it's fair to say, at
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: your property there at Brydon.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It's just a bit messy. We're shifting lanes and sort
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: of reconverting the old part of the farm at the moment. So, yeah,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: trying to do that on top of normal farm stuff.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: A bit of a juggle, but get through the next
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: six months and next spring will be a breeze, eh?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what they say. That's what they said last year.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, look, it was good to hear
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: that reprieve of the dry. The ground certainly got hard.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know what we had in rain. I'm picking
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: 40 mils. I think the wind stuffed up my rain gauge,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: so I was only having a 0.3 in there, but
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: it looks like most people would have ran their 30
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: to 40 mils locally, so... and culverts weren't even running
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: so heck what a change from a month ago where
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: 5mm would have culverts running so yeah this has certainly
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: set us up with grass growth so yeah it's obviously
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: how long this rain hangs around for there's talk of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: another high coming I see Phil Duncan's mentioning that and
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: yeah I kind of sort of prepared for the start
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: of this week to be it for the next three
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: weeks but who knows fingers crossed it was interesting I
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: was talking to a mate in Brazil and they've had
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: over 2 metres of rain for the 12 months which
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: is They're normally sort of around that 1.4 to 1.6,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and they do get it in half a year normally.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So they've had some challenges on the farm, and I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: know another mate in Chile, he's battling with the hazelnuts,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: same thing, just getting slammed by the wet. So New
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Zealand's certainly not immune to the wet from the Salnino.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Two metres rainfall in Brazil. With all due respect, not
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: knowing much about the topography there or the climate, I'd
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: say it'd be warmer, but you can quite imagine that happening,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: especially if it's near rainforest. Would that be correct?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the landmass. And look, the soils can handle
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: it though. The soils need the rain. They're quite a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: sandy sort of loamy soil, quite free draining. But it
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: is interesting when I was over there, you know, look
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: at our roadsides. We cut our roads to hit the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: culvert for runoff, whereas they would literally run the grade
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: around to the paddocks and sort of have these little
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: lines following the contour of the paddocks and would carry
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: water all the way around the paddock to disperse it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So water retention is a bit of a struggle for them,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: so it's quite fascinating to see how they were, I guess,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: working with nature rather than trying to fully channelise it
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: one way, which we tend to do in the South
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and just the nature of the beast, but can work
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: against us when we're trying to deal with contaminants and waterways.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And I certainly looked at that and could see why
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: they could still have room for lifting production in Brazil
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: without actually having any effect on resources.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: So how are you looking down there? Like you talked
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: about before, you've had a few weeks respite. Have you
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: got grass? You'll have grass now?
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got grass. We don't have a huge amount. Look,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I guess our situation is organic sheep farm, you know,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: they go good when you re-grass them, but the fertility's
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: not there and it does take a while to lift.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: So we've got a wee bit of a lag period happening.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: It's sort of shut down. It's a bit of the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: end of last season. Yeah, look, we closed the stack,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: but I'm not convinced we won't be opening it again
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: before Christmas. And look, with our system now, we've got
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: an area that's down by the river, which in our
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: consent we don't graze because it was leaching. That was
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: sort of one of the triggers for being able to
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: do a conversion on land next door. It was sort
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: of a bit of swapping the numbers around. That block's
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: humming away, we had a cut off it maybe three
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, it's got about a 3,000 coverant now so
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: we're certainly outgrowing, it's just probably more where we've challenged
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: with a bit of damaging the paddocks in the spring
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: like everybody and I think more so actually probably spring,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: damage done in the springs prior that we didn't have
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: feed pads are probably really showing up in those paddocks
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: but Yeah, just reshifting all the lanes, everything gives us
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to tidy up gateways and get that all sorted.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: So we're just working through it and, yeah, probably just
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: don't want the rain to turn off too soon, do we? Because, geez,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the ground got very, very hard very quickly, that's for sure.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: What's it like converting an organic sheep farm?
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Spit it out. You just need a big checkbook for
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the nutrients, really. That's pretty much what it comes down to. But, look,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: we've managed the effluent systems up and running now. We've...
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: we had to actually aerate the block because it was
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: just holding water and we just couldn't responsibly do effluent
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: management on it just because of the amount of ponding
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: we were getting. So we managed to get the aerator
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: through the last couple of weeks and opened the soil
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: up and it was literally just compaction on the top
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: two inches holding it up. So we've now managed to
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: start putting nutrients from the effluent onto that block, which
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is sort of going to be our tactic really is
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: to use the dairy effluent to lift those levels as
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: much as running through with the agronomists and livestock supplies.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Are you going to try and maintain that status to
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: a degree, or not really because it doesn't work in
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: with your operation?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, look, the day we took it over, two spray
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: trucks went in there, mate, so that was gone within
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: about four hours of ownership. No, look, we run a
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: conventional system on our farm. But I think we're just
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: always looking at how can we be responsive to what
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: we do. And that doesn't mean we haven't used organic
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: products in the past through COVID. RPR and Foster K
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: were products that became more financially viable to use because
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: of pricing and availability. And I'd have to say, look,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: there's products with that label, but there's also variants in
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: those products. So it depends on who your supplier is.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: And we've actually had very, very good results off it.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So Look, apart from nitrogen for one season, all the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: stuff we're using would have ticked the organic box, but
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: it was providing all the nutrients we needed just in
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: different forms. So it has, you know, COVID did actually
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: give us an opportunity to learn a fair bit around
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: soil biology and what options there are. Whilst not as
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: readily available, I've found some of those products are a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: lot safer for animal health, i.e. the foster care being
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: slow release potassium rather than MOPs. And I've certainly noticed
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: that in our silage cuts that we're not, you know,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: have any challenges around animal managing. Like our springers, we
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: didn't actually do any pre-carving minerals of any description this year,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and we had an absolutely dream run. So, yeah, always learning.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: That's the goal, right?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: So where about, say, a production rise to where you
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: want to be?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Um.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're tracking about on par. Yeah, not, I guess,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: milking into June helped us a bit. We had a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: fair bit of cover on hand with the, in May
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the new block came in. And we'd done a cut
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: in April, so sort of trying to manage that. Anyway,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: so yeah, we had a wee bit of a head start.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, being half the herd heifers, we're not setting
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: any records. We've probably peaked at around that two point. 3.5, 2.4,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and that's about all we'll get to, I'd say. But, yeah,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the goal is now to hold on to it and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: see how we track. So, yeah, obviously being a different
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: season to normal for the farm, I guess we're setting
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the bench now and build from there.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Good on you, Jono. Always appreciate your time and good
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: luck at squash this evening.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It was last night, Andy.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, last night. Oh, that's right, Tuesday.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: The squash club doesn't stop for any public holidays, mate.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Fair call. Good on you, Jono.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Cheers, mate. See you.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Bye. John Pemberton and the Sergeant Dan Farming Roundup. Thanks,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of course, to Sergeant Dan's Stock Foods, based here in G-Town.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Up next, Grant Disaster McMaster at Closeburn Station.