| 73 nzdairy Experience and ingenuity go a long way Northland Farm Services focus on milking machines, farm consumables, water pumps, filtration, trenching & mobile welding. Photo: Tegan Weber. Tracey Edwardes Harnessing cost-effective ideas for farming success via collaborating, lessons from the past, and a little ingenuity, has been Grant Shaw’s goal for the past 20 years. The 38-year-old’s company, Northland Farm Services, focuses on milking machines, farm consumables, water pumps, for domestic and farm, water filtration, trenching, mobile welding and provides mobile service technicians. Recently, Caltex Oil shop - Filter HQ - has moved into the Dargaville office. “By combining labour and resources to make it work for everyone, we can now share rent, utilities and labour costs. They have oil filters, workshop consumables, car wash equipment, brake cleaners, grease guns - which ties in well with what we do. We can organise the deliveries, and people can purchase through their account with either business.” Grant has recently had success with solar - as far as water pumping is concerned. “The cost of getting power to some farm sites is just too high. And the logistics of getting it into these places is significant. But it is becoming more viable from a water pumping perspective than it has been. “By putting multiple products together to make a solution, we’ve made something out of solar equipment and off-the-shelf pumping equipment, and joined the two together. Its working really well. To keep the cost down, we’re doing it all without using batteries, and pumping it directly from the panels. Investment cost wise, depending as how much water they need, it could be as low as $10,000, or up to around $30,000. If you compare a recent example we recently had, it would have been over $80,000 to get into Snooks Road in Maungatapere” Since Cyclone Gabrielle, Grant says people are DAIRY SERVICES » Northland Farm Services Ltd more conscious of their plans going wrong, so there are more solar enquiries for water, and definitely more need for generators than before. “Most generators are on a smaller scale - for the family home, or as a backstop for water pumping. Hopefully we’ll see a bit more emphasis on maintenance with a lift in the dairy payout and the lower interest rates, which will be helping farmers out eventually.” He says Gabrielle was frustrating from the lack of communication perspective. “In my opinion it wasn’t the worst flood and rainfall we’ve had up here, but chaos from the damage of infrastructure was the main issue. It hit us first, before it eventually effected the entire country. But little ol’ Northland kept boxing on! The lack of communication when cellphone towers went down was a bigger issue than I’ve even seen in my career. Besides issues with the roads, it was interesting how we still relied on the habit of jumping on the phone to make something happen. Maclon is pleased to support Northland Farm Services Ltd and proud to be a supplier of high quality water reticulation products. www.maclon.co.nz Some could have easily driven a couple of kilometres to my premises, for example. “I’ve believe networking and getting to know your neighbours is even more important now than in the past. Keep checking on each other, and get to know your vital contacts like the local Federated Farmers.”The team at Northland Farm Services travel throughout the region, with a showroom and workshop in both Dargaville and Poroti. “I’m pretty lucky to have really good staff on board, and we are always on the lookout for good people. Four of us rotate a weekly roster system, so someone is always available for after hours callouts, 24/7 - every day.”
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