West Coast farmer’s got a powerful plan for future

Graham Berry and partner Jenny farm 5km south of the popular tourist town Franz Josef, on a property running from the main highway back into the bush-clad, often misty hills of Westland National Park. It's rugged beauty at its best. Water is seldom in short supply – in some years they get up to 5000mm of rain -- and Berry has begun harvesting this for his and others' benefit.

Berry is a born-and-bred passionate, proud coaster. He grew up on a sheep and beef farm near Greymouth and learned all about rearing calves and raising bull beef. But when he left school he got a job on a dairy farm and liked it.

He tried other things, even dairying on the Canterbury Plains. He went to Ireland to look at farming there, but the call of the Coast was strong, and 11 years ago he bought his 125ha (eff) farm, in a pretty rundown state.

"When I arrived here the farm was producing 28,000kgMS from 230 cows. I now have 265 cows and last year we produced 101,500kgMS," Berry told Rural News. "I had to re-fence all the laneways as trees had fallen on these. I also had to build a new effluent pond, replace water pipes, put in a standoff pad and upgrade the dairy shed. I upgraded the houses on the farm to a good standard. It was a lot of work, but this location is so beautiful it was worth the effort."

Berry has also worked hard upgrading his pastures spreading lime, adding dolomite and putting on 'spring mixes', something of a natural fertiliser. His emphasis is on growing clover – which means using less nitrogen.

Berry has also placed a lot of emphasis on improving the BW of his herd and now has one of NZ's top BW cows. He's turned a rundown farm into a smart, high-producing unit.

But the work hasn't stopped there. Looking for other challenges he has built his own power station.

"Eight years ago I watched all the rain and said 'we should be able to utilise this', but someone scared me off the idea. Then four months later heard about a farmer in Canterbury running his centre pivot off a turbine and I thought 'if they can do it off a border-dyke scheme, then surely I can do it here'. So I walked around the creeks above the farm, which are in the DOC estate, and decided it was possible."

Then followed a lot of investigation and discussion with the Department of Conservation on how to get approval and finally build the turbine power station. He and DoC learned a lot, complicated by there being few protocols to deal with a small power station.

"I was in the middle ground. DoC was used to big mining companies and hydro schemes, but I was in between all that. Essentially, I talked with DoC for years before I started building – so that I could get my head around the project."

The creek Berry has tapped into goes underground 400m from the intake, so there is no impact on the environment. One condition of his consent to install the mini power station is that he has to leave 30L/second in the creek, but take can as much of the remaining water as he wants.

"But we are only going to take up to75L/sec, and in a dry spell we'll utilise about 18L/sec which is enough to run the farm," he says.

He got expert help – some of it useless! -- to develop the project. But construction work began– an intake, a pipeline and a shed to house the turbine and generator.

"A local company bashed up the bush with a digger to make track a couple of metres wide just to fit a digger through. I designed the intake and a mate built it for me," Berry says. "I also designed the pipe network -- a pipe 250mm across and wider at the end where the water gets to the turbine -- a simple rule of physics. The turbine and all the electrical gear comes from China, which has caused a few problems trying to read the manuals which are written in Mandarin!"

No matter; he's just days away from generating his own power.

He's had good support from the local power board, which can see the benefits of the scheme. For a start they are beneficiaries of his scheme. The small turbine will produce enough electricity to run the farm and the remaining 60% will go into the national grid.

Berry says he'll remain hooked into the grid so he can get power for the farm if he has to shut his system down for maintenance.

"Everyone has been pretty sharp and there is a lot of interest in it because people are saying 'why don't we use this water resource more for schemes this size?' "We've had fun and games and it's been a learning curve for everyone, but I'd be bored shitless if I didn't do this job."

'People power' remains the mantra of the Coast.