May 16th - Day 10 in New Zealand

We started our day out by traveling to a little town called Geraldine, where there was little boutiques to shop.  On the way there, we finally got to see something we were used to...PIGS! There is only a couple of pig farms in New Zealand, so this was quite exciting.

We then continued into the foothills of the Southern Alps where we met our producer, Paddy Boyd.  He is the manager of Haldon Station, where Hans and Jenny Klisser own the business.  The cooks of the farm, served us some delicious dinner where we had a home cooked New Zealand meal.  Paddy talked to us about the farm that he managed.  It consists of 22,000 hectares with 10,000 merino ewes, 150 rams, 1,000 head of cattle, and 6,000 red deer that are used for both venison and velvet production.  

This is obviously a big farm so they staff ten workers including five individuals and five families.  Since this farm is an hour and a half away from civilization, they have their own school for the kids, many houses for the families, and housing complexes for the individuals. All of this is included with there salary and wages to work and live here.  Each worker brings their own tools to the business.  Some of these would include dogs.  Dogs are valuable to this farm due to high terrain and amount of sheep they have.  There is a total of 40 dogs to six different masters.  Each well trained dog is worth between $2,000 and $4,000.

This part of the country experiences long hot dry summers and cold dry winters.  They receive an average of 12-15 inches of rain yearly.  Since they receive so little rain they have to irrigate their land.  In order to irrigate the land, they have to get an approval from multiple different parties.  This is really difficult to do and very expensive.  To convert 90 acres of grassland to a pivot irrigation it costs half a million dollars.  The challenge in future years will be how to properly supply and utilize water.

This area has an infestation of rabbits.  The livestock has to compete with the rabbits for food, causing less grassland for the livestock.  To take this into prospective, Paddy hires a rabbit hunter to come and harvest the rabbits.  The rabbit hunter works three days a week and can bring in 500 rabbits.  He in return takes the rabbits and sells them to restaurants.  Even when we were driving throughout the farm, rabbits were running everywhere and if you couldn't see a rabbit, you could see the droppings they left behind!

We finished our day out by seeing Lake Tekapo.  This lake had a beautiful view of the snowy mountains and the clear water of the lake.  This area is grateful for the use of mans best friend, so they made a memorial here.

Ashley Roiger and Cody Wehner