('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - The best of New Zealand's rural heartland... (COWS MOO) - She's a mum-of-three running the farm... - Wiki, get in behind! (DOG BARKS) It's been a pretty steep learning curve, but the buck stops at me now. - She's done a bloody good job with it, eh. - ...and she's building cosy homes for dogs. - We've got dogs with big hearts. I'd be pretty stuffed without them. Captions by Tom Clarke. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 (EASY-GOING ACOUSTIC MUSIC) (BIRDS CHIRP) - What do you want on your toast? There's peanut butter, jam or honey. - Like any mum of three young kids, life is busy for Rosie Dowling. - Is that good, Olive? We've got Harry on the end here. He's 9. And we've got Olive in the middle. How old are you, Olive? 5. Then we've got Digby. Digby's 6. Olive, you could probably ride Spring if you wanted to. - Not only is Rosie a full-time mum, she also runs the family farm herself after her husband, Gavin, died four years ago. - Right, see you, guys. Get up, Snig. Get up, get up. Good boy. I enjoy getting on the farm. It's as much of a mental and a physical game for me. It clears my mind and, um, gives me everything I need for the day. The last four years, I think I've probably learnt more than I ever have. (ENGINE STARTS) I was always brought up on a sheep and beef farm. It feels a bit different when you're sort of completely in charge of it. Yeah, the buck stops at me now. - This morning, Rosie's bringing in some Jersey bulls. - They're off down south for some dairy farms as dairy sires. So I've got 26 going today and then another 60 going on Friday. - The 440ha farm is called Kintyre Downs and is located just off State Highway 1, near Ward. - The farm's beautiful rolling hill country place in Marlborough, but not too far from the east coast and not too far from Blenheim, so it's a pretty sweet spot to bring up the kids. I feel pretty lucky to have the opportunity to be here. These bulls are ready to go to the dairy industry. They've been on good green grass for the last couple of months. This is predominantly a sheep and beef farm. We run 1500 to 1600, a couple of hundred Friesian bulls and some Jersey bulls, so fattening balls and breeding ewes. (MELLOW ACOUSTIC MUSIC) The dogs love the bulls. Wiki, get in behind! Get up, Yogi! They can get a bit feisty. Yeah, they like to play around and push around, but on the whole, they're pretty well-behaved. Yogi! I inherited the team of dogs from Gav. They're probably not quite as well-behaved for me as they were for him, but they're still pretty good dogs with big hearts and do a lot of work for me. I'd be pretty stuffed without them. Get in behind, Yogi! When things go well on the farm and the grass is growing and the weather's playing ball, it's a pretty sweet spot. - Rosie and Gavin bought Kintyre Downs nine years ago in an equity partnership with her family, and Gavin did a lot of work to ensure the farm system was flexible and simple. - When we bought it, there was probably about 30 paddocks, and now there's 80. So he got us into a spot where it actually was pretty straightforward for me to take the reins over. All right, wait, all right! Yog! Yogi! - The bulls are heading down south as dairy sires, but first they need to be weighed and scanned. Casual farm worker Chook Harris is here to lend a hand. - Behind. - Chook's been a bit of a legend. He's a really capable person, and we work really well together. - She's a worker, yeah. She doesn't mind getting her hands dirty. Now that Olive's got to school, she can get out on the farm more, and I think she's enjoying it more ` get her dogs, and she's got a horse. Just go and do it. - It's school holidays, so the kids have arrived to help too. - Hey, Harry. Hey, Digs. Olive. How are you? Spring, are you being a good girl? The farm is about the family, so everything we do here has to work in with the kids. It's nice seeing them starting to get a bit more helpful and enthused and enjoying the farm. It's cool. (SCANNER BEEPS) Good boy. So these are going down to Spotswood, just down past Cheviot. We're just weighing the, um, Jersey bulls so we know what weight they are when they left the property. They're nice light bulls and they're sires, so they're gonna go across the dairy farmers' heifers. One there. (SCANNER BEEPS) Harry's scanning the bowl so we know what each individual bull's tag number is. - It's a wee bit heavy. - Come on, mate. Come on, mate. Come on, boys. - These are yearlings. So these are 1 year old. - Come on, boys. Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup, hup, hup, hup. - They'll leave the property mid-October. They'll come back early December, and they will have done their job down with the dairy farmer. So we lease them out for a couple of months, and then they come back. We sell them to the dairy farmers as 2-year-olds. - Come on, fullas, Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup, hup. (CALMING MUSIC) - With the bulls now on their way, Rosie has time to catch her breath. - So this is Rui. He's come from Ruatoria. He's a wee pony that I'm getting going for the kids. I was brought up riding ponies, and I do a bit of hunting, and it'll be a pretty cool skill for the kids to learn. So when they're older, if they wanna go mustering or work on stations, they've got that skill. (PONY WHINNIES) I do like to enjoy the farm. It's nice to slow down sometimes, and this is a good way to do it. - Time with the pony is also time to reflect on the last four years. - It was the first day of lockdown when Gav died. Tragically, he tripped and fell and died from a knock to the head, and myself and Olive were, at the time, in Starship. Olive was born with a congenital heart defect called Ebstein's anomaly ` pretty rare, but she was pretty critical. At the time, it was probably a bit hairy. I think my family and some of my friends and maybe Gav's family thought it would be really easy for me to pick the house up and move into town and take the easy option, but it wasn't something that I was gonna do without trying really hard. It hasn't been easy by all means, but I feel I owe it to Gav to continue the dream of farming as a family in Ward. - And Rosie is not one to sit still. - Wow, that's impressive. - Her project that's taken a backseat in the last four years is about to go into production. (RELAXING MUSIC) - It's a big day for Rosie Dowling. She's headed north to Fielding with business partner Tim Allan to check out production of her new insulated doghouse. - Today is the first day that I've been up here to Fielding. The idea's come from an idea to the concept, now to the reality, so, yeah, very cool. - Oh, it's going to be great to see this product... - Yeah, can't wait. - ...after several years of hard work. - Yeah. - Hey, Trudi. How are you? - Hi, guys. How are you? - Nice to see you. - You too. - They're meeting with Trudi Duncan from Gyro Plastics, who specialise in rotational moulding. - So everything's going pretty good. - Oh, wow. - The moulds just up on the machine at the moment. - It's cool. - How are the trials going so far? - Yeah, not too bad. They've done about half a dozen trials. This trial period is for us to allow the gathering of all that data. So we record what the temperature is, what materials we've used... - Yeah, right. - ...what releases we need, what challenges we had after that. And then they kind of just change one thing at a time following that till we get to the perfect recipe, I suppose. So the tools at the moment, they've just finished their cook cycles. And if they stopped and just hung in mid-air, it would just slump. So they keep rotating for roughly the same amount of time as they cook, um, and then the guys will de-mould them and the product will be out on the floor. - Wow. That's impressive. - Nice. - Yes. - It was Rosie's grandfather who started her thinking about an insulated dog kennel. - My grandfather was Tony Prentice, and he was a really inventive sort of chap. He came up with heaps of gadgets and heaps of really cool ideas. Tony loved his dogs. He thought it was really important to keep them warm at night. I think he'd be pretty blown away. He's pretty determined to make things work, so I think he'd be pretty proud that finally this has come into production. - Yeah, it's definitely come a long way... - Yeah. - ...since the old 44-gallon drum prototype. - Definitely. - Tim first met Rosie about 10 years ago, when she took an early model of the kennel to the National Fieldays. - I had a product development company at the time, and Rosie had a prototype but didn't really have a lot of experience with engineering, design, mass production. So we started talking, and then my design team and engineers basically developed a product that you see here today. Obviously, you know, with what Rosie's been through, she showed such perseverance. And so she reached out to me, I think, last year, and she sort of got to the point where, you know, she'd got the farm under control, kids are a little bit older and was starting to think about getting the kennel under production. - That's come up nice. - Nice. - The final design uses recycled plastic and is fully lined with New Zealand wool. - Two teal colours together in one mould, and so that way there, we can cut down on the wastage. - Kelvin is the absolute measurement of temperature. The Thermokennel is an insulated wool kennel. So that's where the name came from. Should we lift it up? - Yep. - I was hoping they'd look exactly like this. The finished product was really cool. So this is the end-of-production stage, and it's really exciting to get into the manufacturing stage. So I guess it's one door closes and another opens, and hopefully it brings some good fun and a new challenge. Oh, it'll be cool to get this home on the farm. - It's gonna be good with a dog in it. (EASY-GOING MUSIC) - Back at the farm near Ward, Rosie and her dogs are moving some Friesians and a few Hereford crosses on to some new feed. - We run, season dependent, between 150 to 200 Friesian bulls. Just putting a break out here for the bulls. They've been amongst the ewes and lambs, and, um, we're bringing them down on to the better grass to fatten them up to get them out of the gate. Yeah, pretty stoked. It's a really good season. Um, we've been lucky. Bit of a typical Marlborough drought in the summer, and things have come right now, which is really good to see. The bulls are sort of about 50kg behind where we'd like them to be this time of year, but we can't complain. Behind. Behind, Yog! Get in behind, Snig! We're shifting them every two days. They have two days aside on the break. We brought them in as calves at 100kg. Now they are rising 2-year-olds. So the idea with Friesians is to feed them as much as possible in the times we can. Get up, Wiki. Yogi! Wik! Wiki! They come down off the hill over spring about 500kg. We sort of fatten them up and send them out the gate sort of over 600kg. Over the last four years I've been farming, things have been pretty smooth with the Friesians. I think they get a bit of a bad rap, but realistically they're hand-reared by the dairy industry, so they're treated pretty well from the get-go, and they turn up here pretty calm. They get a bit feisty when they sort of start reaching 550kg to 600kg, but you'll see they're in a small mob, they're eating well, and they've got all the food and water they need. - With the bulls sorted for a couple of days, Rosie is off to meet her brother, Simon Todhunter. We're just heading out towards the back of the farm, where my brother, Simon, is coming up to spray some old grass. That'll go into kale late spring. - Simon's a farmer too, and also runs an agricultural contracting business. - Most of the work we do is like this now, yeah. All the flat ground in Marlborough has gone into vineyards. This is going to get sprayed out with glysophate, and it'll just be left to fellow for a week or two. - Originally, Simon and his wife, Pip, owned Kintyre Downs with Rosie and Gavin. - After Gav passed away, she decided that she wanted to carry on, so we gave her the opportunity to buy us out, and, yeah, it's been a good` good call. She's still here and, yeah, we've got her just up the road. (CHUCKLES) - Simon's been a sounding board for Rosie over the last four years. - How're we going? - Good, good. You going all right. - Yeah, good. Farm's looking good. - Yeah. - It's been a pretty steep learning curve. I've been really lucky. I've my brother and another guy down the road. They've been pretty legendary, and I've got a really good farm consultant, can't thank them enough. - Rosie is a good farmer. She's constantly searching for new ways. She's full throttle. She's not scared to give things a go, but, yeah, she's... she's doing a good job. This farm's producing at a pretty high level for any farm around here, let alone one that's being run by a mum with three kids. Yeah, no, we're all proud of her. VOICEOVER: Waitoa Free Range Chicken, full of natural goodness and deliciousness. This looks great. but turns the whole family... Dad... ...cozy. What's happening? The meal that brings everyone together. I'm warm and cozy but slightly worried. I think this is one of those collective experiences. It's not reading my fingers. Just try face ID. I don't have any fingers. You know what. I actually feel close to you all. Waitoa Free Range Chicken. (SOFT MUSIC) (DOGS PANT) (SOFT MUSIC CONTINUES) - Get up, Clyde! - It's tailing day at Kintyre Downs near Ward, and the lambs and ewes need to be brought off the hill. - It was an early start this morning, get out and get them in before it gets hot. - Todd Rowland's mustering the tops this morning. (DOGS BARK) (WHISTLES) (WHISTLES) (DOGS BARK) - Farm worker Chook Harris is working the flats. - The lambs, when they're young and tales are on, they're pretty lively, yeah. - (WHISTLES) Hold! Below, Clyde. (WHISTLES) (DOGS BARK) Sit down, sit down. (WHISTLES) - Todd was a friend of Rosie's late husband, Gavin. He's come up from Otago to help out this weekend. - Oh, Gav's a good mate. After Gav passed away, we come up and helped Rose. Cool wee spot, and she's done a bloody good job with it, eh. It's good. Left! (WHISTLES) - This season they've had 2200 lambs born on Kintyre Downs, and these are the last mobs left to tail. (DOGS BARK, LAMBS BLEAT) - She'd have been cold up on that top. - Just a bit of wind, eh. (CHUCKLES) - There's some big lambs amongst them. - Yeah, they're looking good. - The heading dogs come into their own on this work. - Trying to just use the heading dogs. The lambs are pretty spooky. These sheep are quite stubborn. They're composite sheep and Romney cross and that, and they, um` they'll stand up to a dog. But when the lambs break and that, you do not want to noisy dog chasing, cos they'll go faster and further away. But if you get 'em with a heading dog and just sit there for a while, calm 'em, they'll slowly come back because they hear the mothers bleating. Behind you! Behind you! - The sheep suit the Marlborough climate well. There's plenty of feed around now, and the lambs will be sold before Christmas. - Walk up, Hale. Walk up, Hale. - Once they hit the farm track, it's a fairly easy walk down to the yards, where the tailing teams ready to take over. - Oi, Yogi! (METAL JANGLES, CLANGS) They're the last two mobs on the hill, so it's good to get them done, about 800 lambs. I've got the boys on the go, a bit of a crew. - Five of Gav's mates have made this trip from down south to lend a hand. - Getting through them pretty quickly. It's nice to catch up with everyone and have their help. (SHEEP BLEAT) - For Alec Watson and James Tisdall, it's about maintaining the connection. - He was a pretty special man, old Gav. - Oh, he's a pretty good bugger. We grew up together, and we all worked on the same station. It's great to come up and give Rose hand and see the boys and Olive. - It's pretty cool to see the next generation kicking around together. - Tailing weekend is fast becoming an annual event with this crew. - These guys keep coming back whether you want them to or not. - Everyone's busy, but it's a good excuse to get in the truck and come up and see her and actually do something while you're here, rather than just kicking around there. - Once tailings finished, Rosie's keen to show Todd the new Thermokennels, which have arrived from the North Island. - They just came down from Fielding yesterday. And over here, we've got the two-piece kennel that is straight 100% New Zealand wool, which is pretty cool ` 90 mils. Obviously there's insulation underneath too, so the whole thing is insulated. It's like a dog home. - Yeah, it looks good. - The dogs work pretty hard for you these days. They're a core part of our business. It's good to offer them a really good place to rest at night. That goes on. And old Sniglet likes the kennel, don't you, Snig? Good boy. We feel like we're giving people the option to buy a home for their dog. Hopefully people want them. - With the day's work done, it's time to relax. The crews headed to Camp Kekerengu 20 minutes down the road. It's a glamping site owned by Rosie's brother and sister-in-law on the farm where she grew up. - Gav I got married here, sort of where we are right now. This is just a typical night with us and our family, and, um, you know, I feel lucky to have all Gav's really good friends here tonight. - It's the perfect place to say thanks for everyone's help. - Four years on, we've still got such great support, and it's really cool that we're all solid and really enjoy each other. Thanks, everyone, for today. It was awesome. The lambs are looking good. Cheers. To Gav. Cheers. (GLASSES CLINK) - Rosie's the first to acknowledge she couldn't have stayed on the farm without the support of friends and family. - Mum and Dad and my brother and sister have been a big, big part in keeping the farm. They've always offered support and never judged or given me too much direction. They've sort of let me find my feet myself. I definitely feel close to Gav here. It's where we spent the last four years together of our lives, so he's all around us. The wee tadpoles, can you see them? Our main priority now is to be happy, and obviously, we need to keep the farm going and profitable and get the most out of it. Where's she going? I've learnt a lot from the last four years and learned mainly that life is really precious. Olive's health isn't particularly perfect and Gav obviously isn't here with us now, so it's my job as a mum with three kids to make sure that we enjoy it as much as we can. (IDYLLIC MUSIC) (MUSIC RESOLVES) ('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) Captions by Tom Clarke. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024