The future of farming is high-tech. Collars that remotely control where stock graze. Satellite imagery downloaded to a phone for farmers to measure pasture cover.
The Internet of Things making extraordinary amounts of data available, including early notification of water leaks.
Then again, the future of farming is low-tech. There’s still a place for old-fashioned, knock it together in the shed, problem solving. Like this year’s winner of the Fieldays prototype award.
The SpringArm is not quite a number eight wire solution, but it’s close.
Waikato dairy farmer Ric Awburn came up with the idea when watching his thirsty herd guzzling at a water trough following the afternoon milking.
It was his routine particularly during hot summer months, when jostling cows would often break the ballcock arm as they drained the trough. Awburn would wait till they had finished and fix the arm before heading back to the house. Autumn was similar, as cows became thirsty after eating the dry matter they were fed out.
It was a wearying ritual. Until, in February 2019, Awburn had the thought: what if the arm could flex?
Back home, he hacksawed a ballcock arm in two, grabbed a spring from one of the kids’ bike stands, drilled some holes, fitted the spring between the two lengths of rod – and solved a problem that had dogged farmers everywhere for ages.
So began a DIY adventure for Awburn and his wife Maryanne that has taken in everything from high-powered meetings with patent lawyers to figuring out how to use Instagram.
First, they had to work out a failsafe design. A friend up the road from where they live south of Te Awamutu had a workshop, and they started using his welding equipment. Trial and error took them only so far.
The trouble is, Maryanne says, you can’t weld a spring if it is going to keep its flexibility. They shelved the idea for a while.
That was when a friend of a friend put them onto a guy, the aptly named Doug Hope, from A-Line Sheetmetals in Hamilton.
“We got brainstorming around, how can we do this differently so that it’ll last, and he took us to that next level,” says Maryanne Awburn, who is director of SpringArm Products.
Hope had cut-through with manufacturers. The Awburns were also talking to family and friends for feedback. Within six months, Maryanne says, they had a good idea of what was needed, and started trialling the springarms successfully in their own troughs, while also developing the design so it could fit a variety of valves.
They’ve filed a provisional patent application in New Zealand, and are now looking to file overseas. It has been, she says, a steep learning curve – all done while they worked day jobs, in Ric’s case as a farm manager and for Maryanne in the education field. A former high school science teacher, she has recently started a position with the Primary ITO as a training adviser.
Fieldays, returning to Mystery Creek with a well attended event this year after going virtual because of Covid last year, has been an important step along the way for the startup business. Not only did their win come with a $10,000 prize but feedback from visitors to the innovations area showed them they were on the right track.
Their dairy farm solution proved to have wider application. Horses, they were told, tend to grab the ball or arm in their mouth and play with it, while deer splash around in the trough. Bulls, meanwhile, break the arms by being rough, and young stock can also damage them through playfulness.
“It was such a confidence boost to have all that positive feedback.”
It helped that, as Maryanne says, the product is easy to understand. The elevator pitch she had been told she would need for the judges proved unnecessary.
The win itself was unexpected.
“On the night of the award, they were talking a lot about how the field had been incredibly heavily influenced by technology. And so, yeah, it was totally left field when they announced us. We had to do a double take and look at each other, like, ‘oh SpringArm, that is us isn’t it?’”
Fieldays has “pretty much” done their marketing, though Maryanne is also active on Facebook and says visitors to their Fieldays stand had often already seen them via their social media presence.
“I think that’s where we’re probably lucky that the farming community is such a close knit community. You don’t have to use a lot of different channels to get your message out there.”
Close knit in more ways than one, with their graphic designer being a fellow mum at their kids’ school and their website designer coming through a recommendation from their Te Awamutu-based accountant.
Their IP lawyers are Hamilton based and the rods are being made by A-Line Sheetmetal while, the springs are being made by National Springs and Wire Products in Auckland – leaving Ric to put them together in the couple’s home workshop.
That may be about to change, with sales due to start soon and the couple getting quotes from manufacturers as they try to build up a stockpile.
Maryanne’s biggest fear is not being able to keep up with demand, which is why they’ve held back on sales until now.
Feedback from Fieldays sees them also looking at further variations to the product. “We’ve got a few ideas in the pipeline. So there may be more coming, and it may develop a bit.
“But to be honest, I guess for me, the key thing is to keep as much manufacturing as possible in New Zealand. Keep helping farmers – that has been our key thing. Obviously, we’d like to earn a bit of money in the process. But for us, it’s been a huge help for our mental health, basically; we’re able to go on summer holiday, without having everything fall to pieces, because of this product.
“So if we can do that for other people that would just be gold.”
The crowds flocked to Fieldays this year, with 132,776 people through the gates.
