The King Country Farmer reported last month Growing Future Farmers needed 31 more King Country and western Waikato sheep and farmers to help train students after a record number of applications. The charity already has eight experienced trainers across the region willing to mentor students but has received applications for 39 students. Nationally, the charity, which offers an employer-led career pathway, has received a record 150 student applications for 87 existing placements. Chris Gardner visited a farm in Kawhia to see how the programme was working.
Owen Bartlett, left, and his partner Liz Robinson, with stock manager Sam Shaw, far right, welcomed Briar Joines onto their sheep and beef farm. Photo: Chris Gardner
Briar Joines gave up a career in her extended family’s building company to go farming.
“I started building in December, and by February I was farming,” Joines said.
Joines grew up in Bombay, on the southern edge of the Auckland region, where she was home schooled.
She missed the application process for 2024’s Growing Future Farmers intake but was accepted two weeks into the programme when another student dropped out.
“Building wasn’t for me,” she said.
Owen Bartlett and Liz Robinson welcomed Joines onto their hill country sheep and beef farm at Kāwhia Harbour after their neighbours, Chris Irons and Debra Hastie, urged them to become Growing Future Farmers trainers.
“We were all just talking about it down the way,” Robinson said. “I was interested, but I had to wait to see if stock manager Sam Shaw was because I need him as a backup as I can’t do it all by myself.”
Irons and Robinson are two of eight experiences Growing Future Farmers trainers in the King Country and western Waikato region.
Robinson grew up in Port Waikato before working as a nurse in Auckland and shearing contractor in Taupō. She and Bartlett moved to Kāwhia Harbour about 32 years ago when they began rearing calves before changing to sheep and beef farming.
Shaw, who grew up in the area and returned from the Wairarapa about five years ago, welcomed the opportunity, relishing the prospect of help on the farm.
“We used to get pretty stretched,” he said.
The farm supports 10,000 sheep and beef cattle which Shaw, Robinson, and now Joines manage between them.
Briar Joines with farm dogs
Bartlett is on light duties following surgery.
Joines works four days a week on the farm with one day of study as part of the scheme and is offered additional work on a casual basis.
“I quite often get half a day off on Friday because I’ve got a one o’clock Zoom meeting,” she said.
She lives with Irons’ and Hastie’s student on their nearby farm.
“I’ll head home and do that and then I’ve got an afternoon to do bookwork, written work or whatever I need to do.”
“I think it’s worth my while,” she said.
“I’ve got a great farm here. And plenty of extra hours. I love it. Yeah. It’s been better than what I thought it was going to be.”
Joines’ highlight is learning to shear and passing on those skills overseas.
“I’d never held a hand piece before,” she said. “I really enjoy shearing. One of my highlights would be getting 100 in eight hours.”
She’s such a dab hand that she taught shearing in Mongolia for a month in the winter.
Kawhia Harbour farm
“They have three million sheep, all sheared by scissors – big scissors!”
Shaw’s highlight is teaching Joines and her fellow student to hunt – and they shot a deer.
“There’s always a bit of a tradition when you shoot your first animal, you have to eat part of the liver,” he said.
Robinson has enjoyed having Joines on the farm and watching her grow her skills.
“She’s just easy to work with. So punctual it’s not even funny. I think only one morning she’s been late, and she’d had a set a triplets on the driveway and couldn’t get through.”
Bartlett said much the same. “Briar is willing to learn and be happy.”
Joines earned an NZQA Level 2 Agriculture last year, working four days a week on the farm and studying one day a week, and will complete Level 3 in November.
She started on $150 a week and it will rise to $280 by the end of the course.
“I don’t go out a lot, I don’t buy a lot of alcohol,” she said.
Her perfect job?
“It’s pretty hard to describe what my perfect job would be as I don’t really know myself,” she said. “I would just say: big country dogs, horses and a great team of people to work with.”
See: A chain reaction
Growing Future Farmers student Briar Joines, centre, with stock manager Sam Shaw and farm owner Liz Robinson on the farm. Photo: Chris Gardner
