(COUNTRY MUSIC) (DOGS BARK) (WHISTLES) Always a favourite on every rural road ` (DOGS BARK) - Come on, girls ` come on. Come on, girls! Up you go. I always sort of had farming in my blood. - A farm manager who was challenged by the owner to do things differently. - It got me thinking, 'Why are we doing this?' When you put a dog around the cows and calves, it can stress the mother out. They're just way calmer if they're with their same mates for their whole life. It really opened up the world of farming in a different light for me. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024. I was in the sleeting rain in my last job, and my phone rang, and it was a friend ` he said, 'Jamie, I've just met the most fantastic guy, 'and he's looking at buying a property in Hawke's Bay, 'and he'd love to get a keen young family involved.' - Jamie Gaddum was a farm manager looking for a change, when Austrian investors Robert and Inge Haselsteiner offered him a job managing Matangi Farm, in the shadow of Te Mata Peak in Hawke's Bay. - It's been a fantastic experience, meeting Robert and Inge and looking at farming in a whole new perspective. I've brought, you know, farming experience, and Robert's brought his business experience, and it's a really good mix. - My wife and son, we were travelling in 2013. You know, we did a big New Zealand tour and, uh, somehow ended up in Hawke's Bay and, you know, immediately fell in love with, uh, the countryside here. I was immediately, you know, taken by the beauty of it. You know, just driving up the driveway, with those old trees and that old established, uh, setting, you know, and, uh, having the hills in the background and the river below, it really opened up my heart and immediately felt like, you know, this is a wonderful place, where we could spend a lot of time. - Robert knew very little about farming. A merchant banker, he'd created a very successful mortgage-broking business in Germany. Jamie, on the other hand, was a conventional type of farmer. - When we first got here to Matangi, we were running it, sort of, as a very traditional sheep and beef farm. I went into it with a very traditional, sort of, farming brain on how we were going to run Matangi, and he turned everything on its head, and we just started thinking about everything outside the box, from a real European perspective, a business perspective. It really opened up the world of, uh, farming in a different light for me. (COWS MOO) Go down there. That's it. (COWS MOO) Walk on. Come in a bit! A bit of pressure in here! We had policies that I wanted to run on the farm, and he was always, like, 'Well, why?' And so, it got me thinking, you know, 'Why are we doing this?' You know, there's other ways of doing it ` it's not necessarily the easy way, but there are other ways of doing it. And we found the challenge and ran with it. - Being more focused on the world of finance, you know, you're dealing with money ` you're not dealing necessarily with things that you can touch. And I think, you know, farming is, on one side, the complete opposite, because it's, you know, out in nature, dealing with animals, dealing with, uh, the challenges of nature every day, but at the same time, you know, there's some similarities as well ` you have to be quick on your toes. You know, it's challenging environment, be it weather, be it markets, so all that kind of, uh, adds together and, uh, makes it, uh, a challenging field to be active in. - Robert and Inge have invested heavily in upgrading the farm, including new landscaped yards and woolshed. - Started out with, obviously, things like water supply, fencing, power lines and, you know, sheds, yards, so a lot has been done. And, uh, you know, if we look at the woolshed or the practical sheds what we have here, you know, we've put some solar power on them as well. Sustainability is a big part of what we do in our farming policies here, and electricity that way is cheaper, and, you know, it's sustainable, so happy to do that. And it allows us to basically run the whole farm on solar energy. (MEAT SIZZLES) - The Haselsteiners spend seven or eight months a year in Germany and the rest of the time here on the farm. They've become very close to Jamie, his wife, Nicky, and their two boys, Max and Oscar. - Robert and Inge, immediately ` we met them on Skype for our first interview ` and just immediately felt so comfortable with them. You know, they were taking a huge punt, I guess, with meeting a couple essentially online, overseas, who were going to come and work for them. But we had this instant affinity, and it's been, yeah, an amazing journey with them so far. - We are in a great partnership, and that's part of the whole thing ` that we feel like family. And that doesn't happen very often with people, that you really just, uh, like each other. - We look after the place for them, but when they come, they just immediately slot back into what we're doing. And really, it's like a big family. It might sound a little bit cliche, but it really is. And they have taken our children under their wing, and they treat them like family. - Inge works in Germany as a GP and anaesthetist. - It's great to be on a farm. And the great thing here is that, uh, it's completely different from farming in Austria. In Austria, you... our neighbour in Austria, he has this farm, and he has, like, 15 cows in a stable almost all year. And when you come to New Zealand, and you see these animals are on the meadow, they are born here in the grass, and they live here, and they just have a happy life, I think. Yeah? And that's really fantastic. (DOGS GRUMBLE) - Jamie Gaddum enjoys the opportunities managing Matangi brought him, but he always aspired to own his own land. - To have a bit of dirt for ourselves, it just means the world. (GENTLE MUSIC) Here, boys. - Jamie Gaddum is making the most of the opportunity to manage Matangi Farms near Te Mata Peak in Hawke's Bay. While he enjoys working for the owners of Matangi ` Robert and Inge Haselsteiner ` he also had an ambition. - It's always been a dream of Nicky and myself, probably more so myself, is to own some land, and, uh, it's been a dream forever. In 2020, this opportunity came up to purchase Atua. - At the time, Matangi was looking to expand, by leasing a grazing block for both cattle and sheep. Jamie was able to buy Atua Station and lease it back to the Matangi business. - Atua is a block which is flat to rolling. It's about 140 hectares of flat. It has heavier soils ` it stays greener in a dry summer. When we're weaning in February, March, our beautiful little calves get sent down here to this block ` they stay here for about 18 months. I take an enormous amount of pride in the business and Matangi, but to have pride and a bit of dirt for ourselves, it just means the world. - With two farms to run, Jamie needed help. - We decided to get a block manager down here. So, Mark looks after Atua down here, and, uh, we've got Mike at, uh, Matangi that helps out there as well. - Jamie prides himself on his well-trained dogs. - From a young age, the dogs are trained not to bite the sheep ` we just want them to bark at the sheep, and, you know, I like to teach my pups to get up and on the back of the sheep, and they just run along the backs and can get the head of the mob up to the front of the race. Over! Over! - (SHEEP BAA) - Yes, Scooby-Doo. Yes, Scooby-Doo. I grew up in Hawke's Bay on a farm. Dad was farming second generation, from my grandfather, that broke in the block. So, after school, I was quite keen on my farming, and my father ` rightfully so ` he said, 'Go and do something different and get a degree.' And so I went to Wellington and did a design degree, majoring in graphic design. Bit different for a farmer to go and do that, but I really enjoyed that. - However, it wasn't long before Jamie felt the call of the land. - I always sort of had farming in my blood. I could always feel it. So sitting in a design office was always a little bit uncomfortable for me. The final straw that sort of broke the camel's back was I had a meeting, and a guy flew down from Auckland and another one flew up from Christchurch, and we were discussing a logo and a colour, and I was thinking to myself, 'I can't do this. 'We've got all these people involved for one colour' ` it just didn't seem right to me. And that was kind of the end for me. I was, like, 'Right, 'I need to get back to the land.' - Initially, Jamie went to Japan, to entertain crowds in a sheep show ` showcasing working dogs and shearing. Then he returned to Hawke's Bay to become a shepherd, borrowing a couple of dogs from his father. - I think Dad had two old dogs. One was blind and one was deaf, so it was a great combo. And the manager at the time was very patient with me, and, yeah, I learnt pretty quickly, I think. And, yeah, moved up through the ranks as the head shepherd, and then ended up managing that place. - His next step was managing Matangi. But farming has its challenges, and when Cyclone Gabrielle hit, Jamie was in the middle of haymaking. - We knew the rain was coming that night at some point, sort of after midnight perhaps. We worked up until just before midnight, to try and get the hay shed full of bales. And there was a huge relief when we got all the hay into the bales. And I remember going back, and we had a beer together, and we had a bit of a celebration, and then woke up in the morning, and we came out here to check everything, and the river had come up right through our hay barn, basically gone right through the bottom layer of all the hay and hay barn, which really upset us ` all that work in vain. - Gabrielle caused a lot of slips, which took out water lines and fences. - With infrastructure, we were pretty lucky ` houses and yards and things were good, but a lot of slipping. Access round the farm was impossible for, you know, two weeks afterwards. One year on, we're still repairing fences, and it's gonna be ongoing probably for another 12 or 18 months. (DIGGER BEEPS) - DRONE: Takeoff. - With Robert and Inge's support, Jamie is doing things differently on Matangi. One innovation is mustering with the drone. - Starting to move now. With all our cattle and all our handling and our management throughout the cattle's life, we're trying to keep the stress down. One way of doing this is to use our drone on moving the cattle. It makes it a stress-free process, especially with cows and calves. When you put a dog around the cows and calves, it can stress the mother out. They can try and attack the dog, and it can be very stressful. You fly a drone round them, and it's a bit slower, but they kind of look around and have a think about it, and then they're, like, 'Oh,' and then they wander off. - The drone was a result of an accident. - About a year and a half ago, I injured my knee, and I was incapacitated for a few months. I got between a young heifer and a calf, and she didn't like that too much. And I decided to be able to get round the farm and have a look at what the guys were doing, and we're in the middle of calving, so checking on the cows as well ` I bought a drone, and it was really helpful for checking on cows calving. I could get round the farm, where we couldn't get four-wheelers, to check fences and check water and check on stock. - Jamie strives to reduce stress on the animals throughout the farming operation. - On our cattle, we only ever use heading dogs. I've told all the guys that no huntaways on our cattle. The huntaways are obviously the loud dogs, that will do lots of barking, and the heading dogs are the quiet dogs. We do several things that keep the stress down on our stock ` it all starts in the third trimester in utero, so feeding the cows in that last trimester is really important. Then we get the calf on the ground ` throughout its whole life, we do things like minimum time in the cattle yards; they're sort of in and out. That's sort of a stress period that we've identified. We keep the cattle with the same mates through, uh, their whole life ` so that's a really interesting part of it; we've seen some cool results from that. They're just way calmer if they're with their same mates for their whole life. (COWS MOO) - It's calving time on Matangi, and Jamie is checking on the pregnant cows. - Good girl, 140. - (COW MOOS) Just over here we've got a brand-new calf, perhaps about half an hour old, number 140 ` she's a good mum. So we're just gonna have a quick look and make sure that she's nice and healthy and the calf is nice and healthy. Another healthy calf. And over here, we've got two new calves that were born last night. We're just gonna shed them out, put them with the other ones that have calved. Well done, girls. - It's autumn ` not the usual time for calving ` but Jamie has decided to try something new. - This year, we've tried to mix things up a bit, and we're going to start calving twice a year. Normally we calve in August, in the winter, and that's traditionally what we've been doing at Matangi. But with our seasonal product and the animals getting quite large, as we only kill, sort of, four a week, we decided to go and calve a second time, that same year, in January. This extends our season out to almost 12 months, and they're all born on the property, like we wanted to do. - It's important to Jamie that every calf fattened on the farm is born on the farm. - That first 250 days of the calf's life, we've gotta make sure that the cow is healthy, and it's got good grass intake, therefore it's lactating well, and the calf is drinking lots of milk, and it's just gonna grow every day of its life. And if we can do that, then that potential of marbling is realised, coming through when we kill them. A lot of people believe that, uh, the marbling comes in the last three months of a cattle beast's life, but, you know, we've got very good reason to believe that a big chunk of it is in the first 250 days of its life. - The key to succulent, juicy steaks is IMF ` intramuscular fat. It's the fine marbling within the meat. To breed animals with a high IMF rating, Jamie needs accurate data on each heifer. - We're just taking a sample out of their ear ` that will give us a DNA sample, so we can tell the parentage and we can tell carcass weights and what maternal weights they are ` ideal for choosing replacements in our heifers. So the DNA sample goes into a little capsule, and we send this away to get tested, and it gives us back the results that we're after. But the IMF, if that's high enough, we will breed calves from that and use them as a replacement. So using this data is a more accurate way to pick our replacements. (COWS MOO) - But the test of all this effort will come at the works, when the carcasses are graded. (COWS MOO) At Hastings' Progressive Meats, the abattoir that processes Jamie Gaddum's beef animals, each carcass is graded. Independent assessor Stuart Sampson is judging three things ` the marbling, meat colour and fat colour. For Jamie, it's crunch time ` seeing if his care with breeding and animal husbandry paid off. - We'll hold the light at the correct angle and check the marbling cards against what we're seeing. So that's very much better than the five ` around that six mark. I don't think we'll get to a seven. - The colour of the fat is also important. - The very yellowest fat would probably not be a very good-tasting fat. So whereas in the internal muscle, it's always white, the, uh, external fat sometimes gets a bit yellow. And meat colour ` an indicator of stress prior to slaughter. A nice pink colour... is an indicator that the animal's pretty happy. - And Stuart likes what he sees. - I think it's good. The quality of this stuff that comes in from Matangi, I've graded other,... uh, Angus coming through the same facility, and nowhere near the same amount of marbling consistently. So, yeah, I'd eat it. (ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) - The latest addition to Matangi Meats is in Hastings. Jamie and Nicky have opened their own butchery. - Prior to 13th of February 2023 and Cyclone Gabrielle, we used a contract butcher in Napier. When the cyclone hit and we couldn't get power over there, we lost a huge amount of meat, and it really highlighted the risk we had in having a butcher operation that was quite a long way away from the farm, but also with bridges in between. So it really made sense to start our own butchery and to bring our butchery team in-house. - Marketing Matangi meat is a long way from Nicky's last job. - I have a background as a clinical neuropsychologist, and I worked in private practice and for the Hawke's Bay DHB, uh, for about 16 years here in Hawke's Bay, specialising in children with neurodevelopmental problems. And about 2020, I was looking for a bit of a break and a change, and the business was really taking off, and so it made sense for me to jump in and help Jamie out, who was drowning in everything he was trying to do. My role is really looking after the beef side of the business. So Jamie's in charge of managing the farm operations; I manage the beef business, so the online store, I look after our chef trade and, yeah, manage the orders day-to-day. - Another innovation is dry-aging. - This is a dry-aging cabinet that we have custom-built here, essentially to hang our bone-in products, like our ribeyes and our sirloins and T-bones in. Dry-aging's a process where the meat's kept at optimal humidity and temperature, in order to let the enzymes in the meat break down the connective tissue. What that does, then, is gives a more intense beef flavour and a more tender product. So it brings out a strong umami in the meat. Some people say they can taste blue-cheese notes coming through in the beef as well. It's really delicious and gives those beef connoisseurs that extra-special experience. We dry-age for up to a hundred days. So, the longer you leave the meat in there, the more the flavour intensifies, the tenderness ` uh, really up to about 29 days, you get the maximum amount of tenderness. - The biggest part of Matangi's business is supplying restaurants from Northland to Queenstown, but Craggy Range Winery is close to home ` just down the road from the farm. The executive chef here is Casey McDonald. - Morning, Casey. - Hey. How are ya? - Hi. Got a delivery here for you. Because we're small and we're a boutique producer, we really have that personal relationship with the chefs. Craggy Range have been a huge supporter of ours right since the beginning. We've got you a ribeye on the bone here for you today, Casey. - Yep. - So, this beef has been aged on the bone for 21 days. - Awesome. Yeah, it looks so nice and dry. Thank you. - Awesome. Yeah. Delicious. - Awesome. I can take it. - Great. - When we look for steak, we love it if it's dry-aged. So this is why we love this product. When it's dry-aged, it has better marbling, because the water is sort of dehydrated out of the product, and you can see the fat coming up. So when you go to cook it, it's much harder than meat you might find anywhere else, and that just makes us able to get a really, really crispy sear, like you can see here, and you get a really nice crust. And the flavour is much better, because, obviously, the product we use from Matangi is great, but also the process they use helps us make it a way better product. - Hey, girls. - The owner of Matangi, Robert Haselsteiner, is very happy with how the partnership with Jamie and Nicky is working. - We are absolutely flushed by what we've achieved so far. You know, we enjoy our time here, you know, working, uh, with Jamie and Nicky on this big project, and there's a couple of great things ahead of us, you know, new butchery coming along, growing the herd, all excited and, you know, all ready to go. - We know we've got a fantastic product. We're getting great results with our cattle. I've learned a huge amount, um, in doing what we're doing, so the future's looking bright. (GENTLE MUSIC) (ALAN MOORHOUSE'S 'HILLBILLY CHILD) (COUNTRY MUSIC CONTINUES) (MUSIC CONTINUES) Captions by Faith Hamblyn. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024.