The view of a high ridgeline in the South Canterbury backcountry is a quiet place of reflection for Nicky Hyslop.
For the farmer and farming leader it is a junction for two special pivot points in her heart.
The isolated site is high on Clayton Station where she grew up, and from a distance overlooks The Levels, home-base for her and husband Jonty for the past 27 years.
"It’s not a particular spot per se, but I do enjoy the view from my horse. Māori have a beautiful way of articulating their place of belonging and they recognise their mountains — for me it is Fox Peak and the High Claytons. Fox Peak is right at the top of Fairlie Basin on the Two Thumb Range, really visible from here on the home farm. So I look up there and that’s my mountain I guess and that’s my favourite place. So it gives you a sense of connection. I don’t get up there nearly as often as I would like to or should."
Today her brother farms Clayton Station and the Hyslops pursue busy occupations outside of running The Levels, a 227ha property, halfway between Timaru and Pleasant Point and an additional 100ha of leased and dryland.
Many hours on the road takes Mr Hyslop across the region as a sheep and beef representative for the Timaru office of PGG Wrightson.
More lately, Mrs Hyslop has followed a governance path as a director and chairwoman sitting on many boards after initially working as a farm adviser.
Owning and running the property carries a responsibility as the original estate dates back to 1851, when George Rhodes and his brothers, William and Robert, established the first pastoral run in South Canterbury.
When the early settlers sold it to the New Zealand Land Company, Mrs Hyslop’s ancestors were managers from 1876 to 1904. Then it was bought and broken up by the government into smaller farm lots and they were given first right to purchase some of the land.
Her great, great, great grandparents on the Orbell side of her family picked the home block on which the original homestead stood.
Still standing in the garden is the first South Canterbury homestead — a totara slabbed and thatched two-room cottage the original Rhodes erected before moving a few years later to an adjoining grander home.
Long ago this was dismantled for more comfortable lodgings which the Hyslops call home with their adult children — Grace, Eve and Abigail — who’ve since moved on to their own lives.
Mrs Hyslop grew up farming on Clayton Station’s good balance of flats and hills at the back of Fairlie.
The Orbell family had sent her father to run the station as it needed a younger man’s energy. When her uncle and aunt sold The Levels in 1995 her parents bought it as a finishing farm for Clayton Station.
In 1997, the Hyslops moved from working in Wairarapa to manage the farm.
Six years later they bought the intensive sheep, beef and cropping property from her family, continuing to develop and convert it, from just border dyke irrigation on a 26ha front block to initially spray guns and K-lines, eventually upgraded to two centre pivots and a lateral across the farm.
Further farmland was added — 40ha of leased neighbouring land and a 60ha dryland block on the other side of Pleasant Point for mainly finishing livestock.
The Levels is a pure trading operation without breeding stock, with dairy animals grazed under contract and lambs and cattle bought and finished.
"The land here is on relatively heavy soil with the exception of our front flats," she said.
"Everything else is clay, silt loam so while that is certainly useful for its water-holding capacity, in the winter we do have be careful for the management of our cattle and we have refined our system over the years because of that. The focus is little-and-often for our irrigation on these heavy soils. But we are very fortunate to have the water."
The Levels is fully irrigated via the Opuha water scheme — water is drawn from the lake and river of the same name. Then it drops into an old scheme once called The Levels Plain Irrigation Scheme, since absorbed into Opuha Water. Originally designed and developed as a border-dyke, open-race scheme it fed water into about 3000ha of pasture, including the Hyslops’ small front block.
Opuha Dam was just getting off the ground when they looked to expand their irrigation footprint so they bought shares in the early 2000s to make it happen.
Before this conversion happened, finishing stock and growing crops were challenging in the summer.
Irrigation has opened up the way to grow a wider variety of crops to diversify their income, which fits in with the farm’s regrassing policy.
"We don’t naturally call ourselves cropping farmers, but it absolutely works ... we have grown spuds, currently lease ground for juicing carrots and, in more recent years, a small area for hybrid radish seed, which is a really good option. Typically, you only get a contract for a really small area because it’s a risk, up to 3ha to 4ha at the most, and we took that on about seven years ago."
Regrettably, radish growing for South Pacific Seeds will have a breather. Their small area of flats is unable to cope with its rotation demands, preventing planting on the same ground until seven to 10 years have elapsed.
Attempts to grow the specialty seed crop on the downs were unsuccessful and heavy flats on the back are also unsuitable so they will just have to wait until the rotation catches up.
"We keep searching for what will this farm look like in 10 or 20 years’ time and I don’t think for a minute it will be doing what it’s doing now. I’m probably the schemer and my husband is the level-headed one, but I think we will probably end up with horticulture incorporated in some shape or form."
Electricity and irrigation costs of pumping water to the downs were only going to go in one direction so further diversification seemed inevitable. There was always something new in farming and as farmers they had to be open to that, she said.
Typically they grow up to 40ha of feed barley in a longstanding relationship with dairy farmers who’ve since moved on.
Low crop prices have them rethinking their options and they had considered growing maize silage with hybrids suiting a cooler climate.
Whether this rolls out is yet to be seen as Lake Opuha is only half full and the maize crop will need this irrigated water after Christmas for the crop to reach its full potential, whereas barley can handle a dry spell over this period.
Because of the risk of irrigation restrictions this coming season, returning to barley grain and growing rape for lamb finishing may be the outcome as it is a good dryland crop.
Quite how this plays out will unfold over the coming weeks as they remain flexible until the dam’s water situation is known.
Greater clarity is ahead of them for cattle and sheep finishing.
The Hyslops aim to put at least 1kg a day on the cattle and 250g on the lambs.
When they first arrived at The Levels, the front border dykes were used for finishing stock coming from Clayton Station. Elsewhere, the mostly dryland property put weight on lambs, cattle and deer whenever the climate allowed.
With the development of irrigation, the entire farm has emerged as a finishing operation and they buy stock more widely now.
Boundary fences remain deer-fenced, as are some internal fence lines, but they got out of deer as neither Mr Hyslop or their manager particularly enjoyed working with them.
Dairy support was added to the mix. Winter crops — initially in kale, then fodder beet, and now kale and swedes — for the cattle are rotated around the farm.
Even though stock did well on a "big sugar bowl" of fodder beet, it was found to be costly and hard on their country. It required some strip tillage, and cattle ended up standing intensely in areas for longer periods because of its denser canopy.
Whereas the hot wire is shifted more quickly for the kale and swede combination.
On this goes 150-odd bulls, 300 dairy heifers and up to 100 head of beef cattle. At one stage they were wintering 600 to 700 cattle, but have backed off from these numbers to have more lambs taken through the winter in a deliberate decision to reduce pugging of soils.
Lamb selection can range from Romneys to halfbreds, but their preference is Texel cross lambs. They regularly buy these lines from a range of properties.
Last year, 9800 lambs were finished, up on the previous 5500 to 6000, and the plan is to keep somewhere within these ratios.
Beef cattle are bought and sold at various times of the year relative to feed surpluses between The Levels and their Pleasant Point dryland block.
Dairy heifers also weigh in at the same rate when they arrive at the same time and go back to their owner on May 1.
The first crop of lambs bought in December is finished through to February and March with a larger crop landing in autumn and killed progressively.
Over the past few years they’ve taken halfbred hoggets bought in August to September through to October.
Spreadsheets and FarmIQ keep tabs of these many comings and goings and this is Mrs Hyslop’s specialty.
The couple are in agreement the farm wouldn’t work without Brendon Feely, their farm manager who has been with them for nearly 15 years.
The trio can be seen sitting around the table planning the farming calendar.
Mrs Hyslop said she was fortunate to have a livestock agent for a husband who had his finger on the pulse of stock selection and prices.
"We spend a lot of time off farm and Jonty is on the road and the opportunity of being able to source good quality stock is what works for us. Brendon does the main mahi on the farm and does a great job with Jonty spending quite a bit of time on the farm at this time of the year when things are quieter out and about and he does a lot of work in the weekends. We have a regular casual to assist and give Brendon a break and we also have a younger guy living on the Pleasant Point block who does 15 to 20 hours for us. So it works just so well. I’m the gopher and can be an extra set of hands. I still enjoy being able to do a bit of stock work and being able to assist."
Wary of being exposed to livestock disease and wanting good genetics on a trading property, they liked to know where their stock came from to ensure good performance, she said.
Running the farm without their outside work would have limited growth and they both wanted to make the most of their skills.
From an early age Mrs Hyslop wanted to go into the agriculture workforce and toyed with the idea of becoming a veterinarian until meeting a farm adviser.
She found the "jack of all trades, master of none" nature of the role and overview across farming suited her.
"It’s a really good place to be for someone who’s grown up on a farm, thinking and breathing farming and the opportunity to work alongside farmers which I’ve really enjoyed and the land and trying to see how this best fits for everybody."
Mrs Hyslop has been a registered farm management consultant for two decades. She started in Wairarapa before moving to Mid Canterbury to work for Tavendale & Co and in 1998 switched to Macfarlane Rural Business, eventually becoming a partner.
For farmer clients she provided advice on their business structure, helped them to grow their assets and providing technical support for sheep, beef, deer and mixed arable properties.
Part of the role was to lead farm discussion groups and oversee monitor and focus farms for Meat & Wool New Zealand (now Beef + Lamb NZ) and Deer Industry New Zealand.
This came to an end when she wanted to focus on her young daughters and a role on a local company board developed into a desire to pursue governance roles.
Mrs Hyslop cut her teeth at a national level as a director of Irrigation New Zealand.
She considers herself lucky in her early governance roles to rub shoulders with directors such as Tom Lambie, Peter Scott, Ed Sullivan, Tony Howie and Irrigation New Zealand (INZ) chairman John Donkers.
When the latter stood down, she became the organisation’s first chairwoman in a challenging phase when irrigation was being questioned.
The daunting prospect of walking into Wellington for the first time soon evaporated with experience, she said. "Irrigation, water quality and water allocation was becoming increasingly a hot topic, but also a hot political topic under the spotlight. There were lots of meetings in Wellington and it was an introduction into how that political beast works. We tried desperately to create a conversation rather than a shouting match in how we move forward and deal with the wider context around some of the figures regularly hitting the press. I think we have made progress."
Regulations at one stage were coming thick and fast from Wellington and becoming too prescriptive for all farmers who had the best of intentions instead of capturing those dragging the chain, she said.
Under her leadership, INZ took the view of explaining irrigation’s position to all political parties and emphasising the importance of water storage, while acknowledging improvements could be made and collective solutions were the way forward.
A long list of directorships have since followed.
Today this includes being a farmer-elected director on the board of B+LNZ since 2019 and also on the board of New Zealand Meat Board and Meat Industry Association.
In the past 10 years, the advocacy side of B+LNZ has grown as has the challenge of explaining farming to an urban public.
"If you are going to be really successful with advocacy politically you sure as hell need the public to understand you as they go where the public goes."
Progress has been made in connecting with urban people who have less of a link with farming today, but it was still a work-on. Alongside this was the critical importance of maintaining farm extension work and having early conversations and influence on policy, she said.
"The other important focus for B+LNZ is always scanning ahead for the big challenges ahead of us and distilling and sharing information back to farmers. That weaves back into its really hardcore DNA of farm extension. The integration of science, tools and management on the farm is just gold as it is challenging out there right now."
Governance roles extend to being a farmer director for fertiliser co-operative Ravensdown and chairwoman of the stakeholder committee for New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre as well as chairing the board for Timaru’s Craighead Diocesan School.
"In the Ag sector all the way through there’s often been the question asked that there’s not many [women] as a farm adviser or as a governor ... At the end of the day, [as] any woman in any senior role on the farm, in business, industry leadership or politics you would always say you don’t want to be there as a token woman. You want to be there because of your capability."
Spare time is spent mixing with the family and farming community, reading, being involved in sport and gardening.
In a change of direction, she’s grabbed the youngest daughter’s horse and taken up hunting to find it has opened up a new group of friends and helped clear the head.
This return to horseback will hopefully include the odd trek to her favourite ridgeline as much for the view as a chance to muse on the past and present.
