38 | still being plenty of improvements to do, it is also included in the award. “Chris has the same philosophy that we do so everyone’s on the same page.” Intrinsic to farm’s management has been understanding the soil types and how to best manage the activity on them. About 30% is flat land with silty river sediment on a lignite pan. The balance is easy rolling country on soils which are less compaction-prone, but are more vulnerable to sediment loss and phosphorus loss, but to mitigate the run off, sediment traps have been created. The farm is part of the Hedgehope Makarewa Catchment Group. Involvement in this has been an incredible asset and Jason notes that the cost to acquire the data and knowledge gained through the group would otherwise be beyond an individual farmer. Award culmination of 20-year journey Smoko at Roslyn Downs. Russell Fredric Ballance Farm Environment Awards » Roslyn Downs • to page 40 Being named this year’s Regional Supreme Winner at the Southland Balance Farm Environment awards is the result of a 20 year journey for the Miller family. Their farming operation combines Roslyn Downs, a generational sheep and beef business, with Claymore Dairies which was purchased three years ago. Located at Hedgehope in inland Southland, the farms are owned by brothers Jason, Quentin and Jason’s son Andrew who are married to Jocelyn, Eleanor and Rachel respectively. The sons’ parents, Chris and Gaynor retired to Cromwell in 2020. Roslyn Downsincludes a Coopdale stud with 250 rams and winters 4000 Coopdale breeding ewes. It comprises three properties totalling 620 hectares run as one entity, while the dairy platform which has a contract milker, Chris Henderson, is about four kilometres away and milks 850 cows off 360 hectares effective. Jason says the foresight to farm responsibly was motivated by understanding the general sentiment of where environment issues were heading globally, well before the raft of regulatory framework was imposed in more recent years. It had not always been easy, especially during tough seasons, but the family did not want to be in a position of having to make considerable changes in a short time and to not have the budget to achieve them, Jason says. “We looked at the land we were farming, and all land has different challenges. Our unique challenge was that we had 10 kilometres of unfenced waterways running throughout the property and we had soil types that were prone to water logging and compaction.” Exacerbating the situation was a transition from 100% sheep to adding cattle, with the ratio now about 50% of each. “They were challenges that we wanted to be able to address and still have a farm that was sustainable in the long term and we could see the environmental expectations going forward.” It is extremely pleasing that, despite having owned the dairy unit for a short time and there Proud to Support Roslyn Downs FOR ALL YOUR HERBICIDE, FUNGICIDE & INSECTICIDE SPRAYING LIQUID FERTILISER & PROGIBB SPRAYING TABULA GPS GUIDANCE, SHEEP DIPPING Office & After Hours 03 2258277 operations@boothag2008.co.nz www.boothag2008.co.nz “We test the water three times a year at the start of it entering our farm and where it exits so we’ve got a pretty good data base of our water quality through the farm.” The Miller’s readily adopted recommendations around managing critical source areas when this knowledge was disseminated following research about a decade ago. Their farm was subsequently a test site for the catchment group and was mapped with radio metrics and a high resolution drone as well as soil ‘truthing’ to precisely determine the soil types and how water ran and interacted with the topography. “Through that, we’ve identified areas that are not suitable for certain classes of stock in the winter and how we manage them. The interesting thing going through that process is all the areas that come up as red hot spots that potentially had high levels of risk around them, we had already largely fenced and excluded those. “We got science basically agreeing with the stuff we had done.” This included changing the winter grazing practice for both sheep and cattle because of the propensity of some of the soil to compact and be Proudly supporting the team at Roslyn Downs For all your Ag contracting needs 878 Downs Rd S, Brydone, Glencoe 027 751 8638 ldhuttoncontracting@gmail.com
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