Marrying Admin and Farm Work

How did you and your husband meet? I ended up at boarding school in the Wairarapa, where at sixteen I met Monte. He grew up on his family farm – I spent most of my weekends through high school on the back of the motorbike opening gates there, and now it’s where we live with our three children, ages five, four and just over a week old. 

Can you tell us a bit about the farm? We are the third generation on the family farm, which Monte’s grandad Tim bought in the 1960s as an investment in the wool industry when the prices were high. Then Monte’s dad, Arthur, ran the farm for about thirty years before passing it on to us in 2023. The farm has changed a lot over the years – it was initially making money off wool, but headed into sheep and beef sales when the wool market crashed. We run two blocks – the home block where we live is 870 hectares, and the other block just down the road, where our worker lives, is 340 hectares. Between the two blocks we have roughly 6,100 sheep and 285 cattle.

And what about The Martinborough Tree Church wedding venue? Monte’s mum, Felicity, designed and planted the tree church in 2015 – and in 2018 we were the first to get married there. We took over both the farm and the wedding venue at the same time. It’s a summer-only wedding venue – mid-October to mid-April – as it’s mostly based outdoors in the gardens surrounding our family home on the farm, including the “tree church” structure. We also have a 100-year-old renovated woolshed that we have done up for the reception venue, which we have kept quite rustic. 

What is your role on the farm and for the wedding venue? I do most of the admin, GST, bills, and town-runs for dog food and drench. Or, while the kids are at kindy and school, I get put to work rousing in the woolshed when the boys are dragging or shearing. I absolutely love getting out on the farm whenever I can, especially with the kids. I also fully run the wedding venue with the help of a cleaner after each wedding, and once a year we get a gardener in to do the hedges when Monte is busy with shearing. I take all the booking, viewings and do all the invoicing, and I spend a lot of time out in the garden weeding, trimming and tidying. I could not do it without Monte, who also spends a lot of time trimming hedges, leaf blowing, and mowing to set up for weddings. My least favourite job is probably picking up the cabbage tree leaves – and, worse than that, trying to fix the lawn mower after running them over. Having a husband with all the tools and know-how to fix everything I break comes in very handy!

Who else helps? We have a full-time block manager, Jesse, who works closely on the farm with Monte. We have been lucky to have Jesse since we took over the farm – he and Monte work really well together. Monte’s dad helps out with the tractor work when the boys are busy. We quite often have casuals help with the big jobs and getting things like dagging done. With the weddings, we only have the cleaner for the reception area, and the once-a-year gardener.   

Why did you choose PaySauce to run your payroll? Our accountants actually got us onto PaySauce. I wanted something easy that I could enter information into and have all of the PAYE sorted and ready to go without any mistakes or fuss. With having young kids, it was important to me to have good systems in place. I can use it on the computer at home, and I also regularly use the app on my phone when out and about with the kids. I find it quick and easy to pay our full-time worker, as well as casual workers like the shearing gang.  

What are your top tips for managing on-farm work and farm admin? My biggest challenge with admin is trying to get it done around the kids and where they need to be – especially if the 20th of the month falls on a weekend or in the school holidays. Keeping up to date with our compliance paperwork has been a challenge. We signed up for an integrated farm planning course that was one day a month for eight months. This was great as we could update our farm plans and put new up-to-date procedures in place for staff, as well as a general refresh of how we work as a business. We find we both make a lot of lists! The office is covered in bits of paper with lists on – we don’t always get to them, but just the process of writing things down keeps us on top the jobs. I find if I get a few admin jobs done first thing each day then I can carry on with other things without the admin getting on top of us.