Business Rural North Spring 2021

| 31 RURAL PEOPLE » Mangamingi Station: Todd & Jacqui Bolton Green guardianship at Mangamingi Pamu’s Mangamingi Station Manager Todd Bolton with wife Jacqui and children Holly and Finn. Richard Loader F or someone once strongly advised not to go farming because of a rugby injury, Pamu’s Mangamingi Station Manager Todd Bolton has made quite the success of his farming career, forging ahead with a raft of environmental initiatives. Freshly back on the land from an intensive weeklong Rabobank Farm Management programme with thirty other farm leaders from around the country, Todd was also recently awarded Pamu’s Environmental Leadership Award for work done on Mangamingi. Proud to have received the environmental award at Pamu’s conference, Todd says the award rec- ognised the extensive work he and his team have undertaken over the last four years to minimise the impact of intensive winter grazing. A Central Plateau steep hill country farm, Man- gamingi Station sits between Taupo and Rotorua in Reporoa and is surrounded by low-lying dairy properties. Encompassing 3,600 hectares, the property’s altitude rises from 600 metres to 800 metres above sea level, but only 1,550 hectares is in grass. “There are 1,480 hectares in plantation forest here, which is now in its second rotation. There’s quite a mixed age from trees that are just being planted now right through to being harvested. Mangamingi emits 6.6-tonnes of carbon as a farm- ing operation but sequesters 34-tonnes due to the amount of forestry.” There is also 130 hectares of native forest under QEII covenants and some land protected through Waikato Regional Council conservation, including waterways and gullies. Over the last four years Todd and his team has focused on fencing off all the waterways on the property. “We still have a few kilometres to go but we’ve done about three kilometres in the time I have been here.” Because Mangamingi is at the head of the catch- ment to the Waikato River, the idea is to improve the quality of the water that leaves Mangamingi before it flows through other farms and into the Waikato River. “We also put in about 250 poplar poles a year on the steep country for erosion prevention and stock shading. We have 6,000 Romney breeding ewes and produce 9,000 lambs, selecting 2,000 as replacements and finishing the rest. Two hundred and fifty ram lambs are produced from our two-tooths and sent to Focus Genetics, with the rest wethered. We also have a 600 Angus cow-herd with 170 heifer calves kept for replace- ments and the rest sold. We keep the steer calves and kill those out to Silver Fern Farms Pure and Reserve programmes.” A strong grass-growing farm with plenty of shelter for lambing ewes, the challenge is trying to be financially viable in a steep hill country property, which can either be feast or famine. “The only way it can be harvested is with the stock eating it down, I can’t harvest anything with machinery, store or sell it. “It’s a native brown top farm so the grass that grows in October is massive and gets out of control within a month. “Just harvesting enough feed using nothing but stock is a huge challenge. We do quite a bit of deferred grazing around October and start to eat that off January, February, March to control the pasture curve. By February we are starting to go really dry.” Todd’s journey to farming has taken on many twists and turns along the way including installing cell phone’s in cars when that was all the rage, installing barcoding equipment for courier compa- nies, working on IT project in the United Kingdom and even working as a gardener on a large country estate that belonged to a wealthy family. During the latter, Todd even sparked up a rugby conversation with Richard Branson, before knowing who he was. But in 2005 the journey came back to farming in New Zealand, and with his wife Jacqui and children Holly and Finn, Todd’s calling has been found. “I like the challenges that farming presents on a daily basis and I like the outdoors side of things too as well as the lifestyle that it has for the family.” Mangamingi Station also received the Silver Fern Farms Pasture to Plate lambs supply award for the Waikato region in 2020. Pat Lacy Livestock Ltd Pat Lacy 027 495 35 64 nyanza@xtra.co.nz . . Buyer and seller of store stock & fat stock Sheep, Cattle & Deer Proudly supportingMangamingi Station ll , l l i i i i Proudly Supplying Quality Shearing Services to LANDCORP , formerly LANDS & Survey, for 52 years We support all that is best in shearing - Glass Silage - Maize Silage - Cereal Silage - Precision Planting: - Maize & Fodder beet - Supply & deliver supplement - Direct Drilling - Round & Square - Hay & Silage - All Cultivation - Mulching - Animal Bedding 07 3331 506 - Andrew: 0274 909 417 - Clint: 0272 849 875 A.T. COOK CONTRACTING LTD For all your agricultural requirements