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Consolidating their farming future
28 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – May 30, 2022
On Farm Story Consolidating their farming future
It’s been all go recently for Taranaki farmers Lance and Janelle Downs as they juggle the next step of a family succession plan while getting the best out of their own business and enjoying their rural lifestyle and community that they live in. Colin Williscroft reports.
GIVEN the differences in their formal education histories, there was a bit of amusement in the Douglas community, just under half an hour up the Forgotten World Highway from Stratford, when Lance and Janelle began dating about 11 years ago.
However, the success of their partnership since then has proved the match a good one.
Lance and his twin brother Lloyd had left school at the age of 14 to run the 2100-hectare Aotuhia Station after their parents Kevin and Jean bought it in 2003, while Janelle was a school teacher when she and Lance met.
Now married and with three children, Ellie, 6, Tim, 5, and Millie, 3, it’s all systems go as they look towards consolidating their farming future.
After recently purchasing an almost neighbouring block from where they live and work on the Whangamomona side of the Strathmore Saddle, the couple now farm 1903ha (1720ha effective), 340ha of that leased with the remaining 1563ha under their ownership.
They are also in a 50/50 partnership with Lloyd of a further 2735ha, made up of Aotuhia Station and its fattening block near Te Kuiti.
However, more change is on the way, as during the next couple of years there will be further steps in the family succession plan to take account of growing families and options for future expansion.
Janelle says Lance has inherited a drive for progress from his father.
“Kevin is very driven in terms of growing and expanding and Lance is always looking at options for how our business to grow and improve.
“Kevin took risks when no one else would and he and Jean have both worked exceptionally hard to give us the opportunity we have been given and we are forever grateful.”
She says the hard work ethic has filtered down through the extended family.
“When I first met Lance, I made note of a saying Kevin often used to say, ‘the first generation work hard, the second generation get it a bit easier and the third generation play golf, go fishing and lose the farm’.
“As long as we don’t spoil our kids and work them as hard as the first generation, we will be right for another 100 years.
“With that in mind Tim can dig a new post hole and roughly ram it up and Ellie knows where all the stock on the farm are... I think we are at least heading in the right direction.”
Excluding the shared family business, Lance and Janelle run 5500 ewes as well as lambing 1330 hoggets, fattening all their lambs along with an extra 2050 trade lambs.
They have 590 breeding cows, 330 Herefords and 260 Angus.
Bulls are for both the beef and dairy market. Their 20 best stud bulls are sold at an on-farm sale in combination with other farmers in their area (this year on June 15), with the remainder sold at a second on-farm bull sale in September, as well as throughout the year, primarily for the dairy market.
Lance and Janelle’s children are the fifth generation of the Downs family breeding Herefords and six years ago the couple established their Tawanui Hereford stud.
Lance says buying registered cows from three different studs involved some tough selection pressure but spending all their savings on bulls has seen the stud come on in leaps and bounds over the past few years.
They aim to produce moderately framed, hardy cattle, with good carcases and excellent calving ease.
“Basically cattle that can hang on up in the hills when times get tough in the winter, then come
TEAMWORK: Lance and Janelle Downs farm just under half an hour up the Forgotten World Highway from Stratford.
Janelle Downs Farmer
off the hills to calve looking good and get back in-calf early.
“Our cows are used all year round on hill country to clean up, keeping the pasture right for sheep.
“Hard working cattle for hard working farmers, there’s no such thing as freeloading around here.”
Janelle says coming straight out of teaching to run the books for what is a significant and complex family farming operation was a sink or swim experience for her at the time.
“Not coming from a farm or knowing what GST was, I was super fortunate to have an awesome accounting and rural banking team.
“Now I juggle the books for both the shared family business, Downs Family Farms and our own farming business, Tawanui Farms.”
She says having good relationships with their accountant and bank is very important.
“With a large family-connected operation like ours with so many moving parts and an expansion driven father-in-law, the business feels like a constantly moving puzzle that is never quite completed.
“I am kept on my toes and in regular contact with both the accountant and bank manager as to what each month’s family and business direction is looking like.
“Keeping them in the loop is essential. Kevin has a mindset of ‘everything is for sale’ and he has a good eye for opportunity.”
Last year she and Lance were part of Rabobank’s pilot for the financial literacy courses that are now being rolled out around the country.
For Lance, it wasn’t just learning about financial statements and making goof financial decisions.
“It was also understanding what a bank manager wants from you. If you can give them all the information they want, it’s not a big deal for them to sort it out, and if you want to buy something next door it makes it so much easier for them.”
A feature of their September onfarm sale is that the proceeds of one bull sold goes to the Taranaki Rescue Helicopter Trust, an organisation that’s close to their hearts.
About five years ago first Janelle and then Lance were taken by the helicopter to Taranaki Base Hospital in New Plymouth after having serious farm accidents within weeks of each other.
It was the same crew that flew each of them, Janelle with a head injury and Lance having lost a thumb.
Through the spring bull sale they have since donated about $11,000 to the trust in the hope that if friends or family ever need it, they won’t think twice about calling in the helicopter.
“We’ll keep paying to the chopper,” Janelle says. “Fingers crossed we’ll never need it again but it’s such as good cause.”
It’s that sense of community that saw them get involved in the Douglas Kids’ Club, which won the 2021 Rabobank Good Deeds competition.
Janelle says the idea behind the club came from a group of local mums who wanted to provide free after school activities for local kids without them having to travel into Stratford.
“We thought ‘let’s do something at the (Douglas) hall’,” she says.
It started with wrestling, with Lance’s brother-in-law, a former national wrestler, taking weekly Thursday afternoon sessions.
They borrowed mats and it wasn’t long before they had up to 25 kids coming along during term time.
But it’s not just wrestling, one term there was gymnastics, while another had tennis lessons.
“We’re just trying to do something different every term, then these kids get a chance to work out what they want to do.
“If they carry on and want to be a wrestler, then it’ll be worth driving them to wrestling clubs but right now they’re (aged) five, six or seven and we’re giving them a bit of an experience.”
However, it’s not just the kids getting something out of the programme, with dads also benefitting through taking time out off the farm to come along and help out.
“Sometimes it’s easy to hardly see your neighbours because you’re sort of it your own little world,” Lance says.
“So when you get parents coming along to something like this you start to get to know each other better.”
He says that’s to be a good thing for farmers’ mental health.
“The more people we have coming along, at least they get to have a yack to someone, they’re not sitting at home stewing about whatever’s worrying them.”
Club afternoons have now turned into community catch-ups, Janelle says.
“Afterwards the kids goof off for an hour while the parents catchup and have a beer or whatever.
“It’s really good, almost like a debrief, have a talk about what you’re doing and all of a sudden your problems aren’t so big because the neighbour down the road is having the same trouble or he’s got a good idea for you, so you go home feeling quite good.”
Rabobank certainly liked the idea, selecting the club as the winner of its nationwide Good Deeds competition, which came with a $5000 prize that is going towards things like buying equipment for the club.
The wider Downs family might be working towards establishing their own farming entities through the succession plan, but the bonds are tight and they work together to help each other out when they can.
Between Lance, Lloyd, their brother-in-law and their workers, they do all their own shearing, which adds up to about 40,000 sheep over summer and another 20,000 to 30,000 during the rest of the year.
Janelle says it’s like running their own gang and although it’s hard work, Lance says it’s good for the kids to spend days in the woolshed with their cousins.
It’s a similar approach for docking.
“My sister’s just around the road and my brother, he’s out there too,” Lance says.
“And Janelle’s mother and father, they’re not far away so when we are docking or whatever we just get a family crew together, cousins and whatnot and yeah, get a lot more done in a day.”
Janelle says that means on their own property instead of docking every day for two weeks, it’s done in a couple of days.
“I’m the oldest of 21 grandchildren, so I ring the cousins and say ‘we’re docking, I’ll provide you good banter, food and beer, you just have to come and pick up lambs’.”
It’s an approach that works well but Janelle says they will be forever grateful for the work put in by Lance’s parents.
“We’re busy, we work hard but it’s all come from Kevin and Jean’s work ethic.
“They’ve set the pace and allowed us to be where we are, we’re lucky that they’ve done that.”
PERFECTLY POSED: Stock include more than 300 Hereford breeding cows. Photo: Janelle Downs
Lance Downs Farmer
>> Video link: bit.ly/OFSdowns
