The flying Milnes thrive on the West Coast

Katie Milne and her partner Ian Whitmore run a dairy farm at Rotomanu between Hokitika and Greymouth and have managed to greatly improve their farm and do some fun things as well as allowing Katie to play a role in farmer politics.

Katie and Ian are typical born and bred Coasters who don't hesitate to tell things as they are. Milne refers to her 'righteous anger' and frustration at people knowing little about farming but telling farmers what to do. She says many such people don't know what consequences some of their ideas would have at a practical onfarm level; their ideas won't solve problems.

"I got involved in the federation, initially in the dairy section, to basically help others understand why farmers do what they do.... These people often thought it was all about the money and greed and that frustrated me because that was not what it's all about. Farming is a business and you do your best to make money, but in most cases you also do it because you like the land and animals and like working outdoors. The last thing farmers want to do is to destroy the things they love," she says.

She has a big commitment with Federated Farmers, and she's involved in the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, is on the council of OSPRI, has a role in Worksafe as part of her Feds role and is involved in TB Free. But she and Whitmore employ a herd manager and her partner works around her days away – sometimes two weeks in Wellington.

"I have been banned from going to Wellington for the first six weeks of calving, although after a month I slip up there a couple of times," she says.

They milk 200 high BW Jersey cows on their 100ha effective farm; and they lease a further 60ha where they run up to 80 high BW heifers, some of which they sell. Milk production is about 85,000kgMS. Whitmore's grandfather got the farm in a ballot for WWI servicemen but he died young and his grandmother, helped by his father and uncle, helped run the property.

In 1992, Milne and Whitmore bought the property and set out to improve it. She had a sheep and beef farm background with south Westland roots and admits it was a steep learning curve to understand the ins and outs of dairying.

"I knew nothing about dairy cows apart from the couple that I'd had to hand milk in school holidays – grumpy old bags that had to be leg-roped – so I had to learn everything. Ian taught me a fair bit but I also learned from farming magazines and dairy board discussion groups," she says.

A focus for Katie was the cows and she invested a lot of time and effort in seeing whether the Jerseys on the farm were the best and what the alternatives might be. She was interested in the idea of Kiwi cross, but in the end decided the Jersey was by far the best cow for their farm, not only in terms of production but because its size caused less pugging damage to the pastures with light soils. And the Jerseys have fewer foot problems and suit the farm's mainly grass based system.

When they took over the farm it was running 145 cows; now it has 200-220 and Milne and Whitmore have worked hard to improve the fertility and composition of the soil. A major task was to spread lime to unlock the P in the soil, getting the farm in balance and growing more grass and cow numbers. They used a little PKE for the first time this season but only as a supplement to maintain cow condition.

The soil on the farm is alluvial river silt and very good quality. It is deep and in summer the pasture seldom dries out, but in winter it is prone to pugging, says Whitmore.

"The cows may spend two-three hours on the paddock then they will go to a standoff pad and on an ugly day they will get some supplement which is usually grass silage. This means we look after paddocks so that we can come back in 18-21 days and graze that paddock and it will still have enough grass on it. Soil preservation is the key."

They aerate the soil using a machine that cuts deep, effectively loosening it up and repairing any damage caused by pugging. They have always done this and are now onto their third machine.

Whitmore loves machines; he runs a contracting business doing silage, baleage, and effluent and fertiliser spreading. At first he did a few favours for neighbours and the business quickly built up.

"I like good gear, but for a 100ha farm I am over committed," he says.

Milne jokes, "If he wasn't into gear we could have had three farms if we'd wanted."

And there's more: from the house you can see a large shed with a strangely straight gravel road leading from it. The shed houses an aeroplane and a helicopter which Whitmore flies. This was all part of a plan by the pair to have some off-farm activities to get them away from the milking shed. Diving and skiing have been done and now it's flying.

His father had flown in the past and at age 45 Whitmore decided to challenge himself and learn to fly.

"I had never sat an exam in my life; I had to sit six exams for the aeroplane. I didn't know how to study or sit an exam and I didn't know what an exam paper looked like, but it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it," he says.

He has flown the four-seat Cessna 177 up to National Fieldays, landed on the snow at Wanaka and been to many other regions. On occasions he has taken Milne to Christchurch to catch a plane to Wellington. He's also flown to Christchurch to collect parts for his machines and for a neighbour's dairy shed.

Recently he learned to fly a helicopter and bought his own machine – a Robinson R 22. He flies about 100 hours a year in the aeroplane, purely for pleasure.

Environment a high priority

Katie Milne is not afraid to say what she thinks to anyone, and she has a great reputation as a doer – especially on environmental matters.

For ten years she has led projects by local farmers to improve the quality of water in nearby beautiful Lake Brunner. One was producing farm plans and identifying hotspots that might be the cause of environmental damage. It was voluntary, each farmer committing to what they would do.

"It was fencing off waterways, putting in culverts and bridges and some quite expensive infrastructure. It involved upgrading some farm effluent, some of it not flash. It was all voluntary. When they reviewed it two years after the end of the project they found that people had done a lot more than they had committed to because they knew what the issues were and what they might be [in future]," she says.

Milne says Fish and Game, the Ministry for the Environment and the farmers themselves were impressed by what they found at the outset. Many native fish species were found in the drains and streams on the farms, surprising many people.