CountryLife Showing how it’s done

Mary Anne Gill looks ahead to Owl Farm’s April open day.

Forty per cent of the people who attend an Owl Farm public open day at St Peter’s School in Cambridge have never been on a dairy farm in their lives.

And Jo Sheridan revels in the challenge those newbies present for her and the property, which in recent years has become one of only three demonstration farms in New Zealand.

More than 2000 visitors come through the gates every year and continue down the drive, past the school, and onto the dairy farm. They come from all walks of life – students from primary up to university, other dairy farmers and townies.

It is the public day which really gives the farm’s demonstration manager a golden opportunity to educate people about what happens on a working dairy farm. There has been a farm at St Peter’s since 1935 – a mixture of dry stock, dairy cows, sheep, hens and pigs - with profits ploughed into the development of the school. During World War II, half the milk produced at the school provided town milk to Cambridge. But it was an agreement struck between Lincoln University and the school in 2014 which created the Owl Farm demonstration dairy farm and a role to educate the public which has taken it to another level.

Part of the farm to the east, poorer production land, has recently been taken over for housing development leaving Sheridan and farm manager Tony Alarca with 140ha and 351 cows to look