BOOK EXTRACT
Farm race lifts school fortunes In this extract from Tim Fulton’s Kiwi Farmers’ Guide to Life: Rural Tales from the Heartland, Farmlands shareholders Leighton and Jane Croft share their story of fostering a healthy community as well as a healthy Omihi School bank balance.
Maree taught at other North Canterbury schools
Omihi is best known for its farmer All Blacks, including World Cup-winning former coach Alex Wyllie.
Maree also owns and operates event-organising company
Leighton Croft didn’t reach those rugby heights but he also grew up on an Omihi farm, played a few games for Canterbury, coached the famous Glenmark Seniors and did a stint as club president.
of her professional skills to work for the farm race.
early in her career before heading overseas to teach in London. She answered Omihi’s urgent call for new leadership soon after marrying George Lucas, a sheep and beef farmer in nearby Greta Valley. M Factor Events, so she has been able to put the sum
And like most of the farming locals, he and his wife, Jane, are thoroughly community-minded. The Crofts host the Omihi Farm Race, an imaginative annual bike, run/walk event raising funds for Omihi School. The sheep and beef farmers’ hill-country property has about 600ha of effective grazing and runs about 2,000 Romney or crossbred ewes, 500 replacement hoggets and about 100 Angus breeding cows. A partnership between the farmers and an outdoorminded community, the race has been a boost for a community that has been through the mill. First came several years of drought, then a fire which razed the cherished Omihi hall, the habitual gathering point for the area’s famous rugby team. Those were dark days, made more worrying by a school roll that fell to fewer than 10 pupils. It eventually rained and a monumental fundraising drive built a new community centre from the ashes. To the relief of many, the school roll has risen again as well, helped by the arrival of a new principal, Maree Lucas. Seeing the obvious danger of closure for the school, she managed to muster a busload of new kids from Pegasus Village, 30 minutes to the south. The roll is now a much heartier 30 to 40 kids strong.
30 | THE FARMLANDER
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