Family works to keep farm footprint light The story of the Dolan family and their ties to Mid Canterbury typifies the massive land use changes the region has experienced in only two generations. But this fifthgeneration family has also been making an effort to ensure that if the sixth generation choose to continue farming, then it will be on land that has been looked after, in a way that is sustainable WORDS BY RICHARD RENNIE, IMAGES BY LANEY WILLIS & JARRAD MEHLHOPT
Brendan Dolan is proud of being one of the first 200 farming families to join Ruralco— set up specifically to get its local farmer shareholders a better deal when it came to sourcing farm supplies. At the time the farm was a typical Canterbury dryland block- located by the sea and the Rakaia River the family ran cattle, sheep and some cropping. But it was pre-irrigation, tough times in
late summer many today would struggle to recall, amongst the cool drizzle of centre pivot irrigators working hard in the warm sun amid dark green productive pastures. “I can clearly remember as a kid feeding sheep hay in the autumn. It was so dry, there was simply no other feed around, and that was not so unusual for the time,” he says. Come 1974 and his father was the second farmer in the district to put in irrigation, drawing water from underground. “He had got a water diviner in, and he pointed out where, and how deep, and proved to be right.” The early irrigation system used the aluminium wheeled pipes on a 30 day round, depositing a few millimetres at a time, compared to the 10 day, 15mm programme most centre pivots run on today. When it came time for Brendan to take over from his Dad in the mid-nineties, the finance came with a caveat from the bank. “That was, that if I was to do so then we would have to go dairying. It proved to be, and still is, quite a learning curve. At the
time all I knew about milk was that it came out of a bottle.” Once again, Brendan and his wife Catrina found themselves at the front of change, converting half the 520ha property into cows, running 1,000 cows with a sharemilker for the first three years. During the conversion process Brendan also oversaw the installation of one of Canterbury’s first centre pivot irrigators, a move that included a trip to the United States to check out the new-found water technology. “It was something plenty of people told us at the time was a waste of time!” Today the entire farm has six wells serving five centre pivots, two laterals and two Roto-rainers on a 10-day rotation. A second dairy shed went in in 2014 to milk 600 cows, with both herds today managed by a contract milker and totalling 1,200 milkers.
IMAGES: The family dairy operation focuses on
high output with a sustainable touch, with the big Friesians generating 480kgMS a cow a year
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