Special report | Environment
Protecting waterways for the future
The Willcox family in Taranaki have spent the past 17 years fencing and planting their waterways. Jackie Harrigan paid them a visit to see firsthand the value of their time and investment.
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he Willcox family of Rahotu in Taranaki have been fencing and planting their waterways for the past 17 years, but Rob Willcox can still remember the feelings he had when the new rules were laid out in the late 1990s. “I was reluctant to start with - no one wants to be told what to do on their own farm.” “It was a huge and overwhelming job to think about - all of the paddocks on our coastal Taranaki farm had a stream running through them.” The 158ha farm milking 450 cows
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has been in the Willcox family for five generations with his daughter Tina Worthington currently managing the herd, supported by Rob on the development and Gwen in the calf shed, since Tina swapped out her chef’s career for farming 13 years ago. “I was vocal in my opposition (to fencing and planting),” admits Rob. “I was alarmed to think about how much land might be lost and worried about the logistics of fencing along the side of the numerous lahars in the paddocks where they are close to the stream.” It took a few years for Rob to get his
head around the whole job, but he readily admits he started seeing benefits of fencing off waterways as soon as he started to develop and plant the stream margins on the farm in 2004. “Because each paddock basically had a stream in it, we essentially had to refence the whole farm, which gave us the opportunity to plan all of the paddocks.” It helped that Rob is the ‘developer’ of the farming partnership - well equipped with his own digger and well-worn post rammer - and he says he took the chance to research what size the paddocks should be and basically carved the farm up into 25
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | May 2021
