20 | Trying to ‘keep our heads above water’ Central Hawke’s Bay farmer Simon White used his jetboat to help evacuate neighbours and livestock. Simon and wife Lou lost 250ha of crop, weeks away from harvest. Kelly Deeks RURAL PEOPLE » Ludlow Farms: Simon & Lou White Central Hawke’s Bay farmers Simon and Lou White are on the long road to recovery following the disaster of Cyclone Gabrielle in February. Simon and Lou run Ludlow Farms, a 1100ha mixed arable cropping, sheep, and beef finishing farm near the Tukituki River at Otane. They were prepared for the forecast 100mm to 120mm of rainfall for February 13 and 14. “What we weren’t prepared for was the breaching of the flood protection banks of the local river networks, not just across our area but right across the Hawke’s Bay.” The Whites woke early on Valentine’s Day morning to no power and no cell phone coverage. With everything okay at home at that stage, Simon decided to drive to Hastings to check on their side business, the manufacturing plant of Kanapu Hemp Foods in Hastings. “When we were driving into Havelock North we could see some of the damage. Some of the streams we crossed were extremely high, and some of the roads were like streams with the tar seal ripped away. Farmers were on the roads trying to fix their fences while the slips were still coming down the hills behind them. It was like a bomb site.” All seemed safe at the hempery, so Simon headed back home and on the way, got into some cell phone coverage. Simon’s phone lit up with missed calls and messages from locals looking for help, because the river had exceeded its flood protection height and was flowing into local businesses and our valley. Ludlow Farms was turning into Ludlow Lake. Simon put his jetboat on the back of the ute and went out to help evacuate neighbours, livestock, and local businesses for the rest of the day. When Simon and Lou looked out on Wednesday morning, the lake was still there and still rising at 40mm an hour. Simon says about roughly 300ha of the valley would normally flood in a big winter rain event.“This beast had given us an 1800ha lake, bigger than anyone has ever seen in this area before.” By that afternoon, 100% of the Waipawa river was flowing into the valley at 3573 cubic meters of water per second and had taken out a few houses, as well as kilometres of fenceline, baleage, silage stacks, hay, trees, irrigators, bridges, and all the roads that connect the coastal settlements east of Waipawa. On Thursday morning, local contractors got into the river with their machinery and started to divert it back to its bed. “But the damage had already been done. Hundreds of hectares of processed vegetables, vegetable seed crops, cereal crops, and forage crops through this valley had been absolutely annihilated.” The true extent of the damage wasn’t clear until the water receded, which took a few weeks. Then Simon and Lou started prioritising their steps towards recovery and getting stuck in. They lost 250ha of crop, which had only been a couple of weeks away from the start of harvest. Boundary fences had been 3m or 4m underwater, fences and fence posts had been wiped out having taken the full force of the river flow, the farm was littered with logs, branches, and river debris, and paddocks were covered with silt. This silt is now the ongoing issue. Simon has mixed much of it in with his topsoil, but the stuff that remains, about 20ha, is sticky and he can’t get on to it to mix it in. He is planting grass and cover crops on land that has dried out enough and is regaining more and more land each week. He says the initial support from the Government was great in the aid to start the clean-up, but farmers and growers still need help and assistance, including some leadership from the Government so decisions can be made on land use, replanting, and infrastructure repair. “There’s no point rebuilding a fence if the flood protection banks aren’t repaired and maintained. “It’s going to be a long recovery,” Simon says. “We’ve lost a lot of crop and it’s going to be a long road to climb out of that hole. Other people are struggling big time and have lost more than our business. We’ve got to keep positive and keep our heads above water.” Floodwaters inundated the valley after the Waipawa River burst its banks. 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