17 July 2022

Close Quarters

Ngā Hononga. Common Threads.

writer: Nathalie Brown

photographer: Chloe Lodge

Have you ever wondered what life is like on those remote high-country stations? How the business of running a vast and remote farm is balanced with the everyday tasks of cooking, cleaning and childcare? Station matriarch Heather Gray, her daughter-in-law Juliet Gray and shepherd general Olivia Cotton are three important members of the close-knit team at Hakataramea Station. Shepherdess takes a look at life in the high-country with them.

Heather heading up the table for lunch. She wears many hats and interchanges them with ease, from being a JP to running the business side of the station, as well as making a delicious lunch for the team.

Three generations of Grays make their home on the 3,994 hectare Hakataramea Station in the South Canterbury high-country. The land they farm is rich and green where there’s irrigation, fringed with a tawny gold of drier grass that spreads up to the foothills of the Kirkliston Range. The dogs provide a night-time chorus – something everyone learns to appreciate as part of the rich tapestry of station life. Together, the Grays and their staff run 3,000 hinds, 10,000 ewes and 300 cows on the gently rolling hills and gullies of the station.

Heather, 66, and her husband Barry, 69, the oldest generation of the Gray family, live in a comfortably furnished home on one side of a rectangular working yard that serves as a communal hub for the station. The older Grays both grew up on farms in Southland and spent the beginning of their married lives farming in the region. “We shifted here in 2008, just before the global financial crash,” Heather explains. “At that time prices were really high for farms in Southland, which enabled us to move here. The land is totally different from Southland, and the farming is on a much bigger scale. I was fully involved on the farm from day dot of our marriage. One of our neighbours said that she thought I just lived in a parka and leggings while I drove a tractor all day. Once we had the kids, they were out with me everywhere.”

Morning light spills over the surrounding hills onto the workers' quarters at Hakataramea Station. The constant movement, dogs barking and buzz of machinery fills the air with teamwork and also comfort. "There's just something about the rural community that's really nice and welcoming," Olivia says.

In an airy and spacious house on the other side of the yard, the Grays' daughter-in-law Juliet, 41, lives with their son Richard, 42, and their three children - Ben, 12, Sophie, 10, and Phoebe, 6. Like her mother-in-law, Juliet is a farm girl, born and raised in Southland, and her parents instilled in her the value of hard work. "I was the eldest of four children, with a younger sister and two younger brothers. We grew up on a farm in Waimahaka in southern Southland. I just remember from our childhood how hard Mum and Dad worked to pay their mortgage. It was a pretty tough time in the eighties, and I take my hat off to them. Mum was sewing our clothes - including our underwear - milking the cow or goat and making butter while Dad was working hard to make the farm productive. But we had a pretty neat childhood, and I was the typical farm girl with the gummies and the Swanndri. We didn't have any casual staff, so we all pitched in."

After high school, Juliet did a degree in physical education in Dunedin, working in Invercargill for Netball Southland and the Southern Sting - now Southern Steel - team for six years in sports administration before eventually becoming the Regional Manager. Juliet and Richard have known each other since school days and have been together since she was eighteen. She and Richard moved up to the high country in February 2009 to work with Heather and Barry, who had already been on the station about eight months.

"Heather and I were talking the other day about how we've worked at maintaining our identities up here on the station," Juliet says. "Down in Southland I did have my own identity - I was Juliet Mackintosh and was involved in so much outside of my married and home life. Yes, I was I married to Richard, but I also had my work and those ties to my own family, friends and other things. When we moved up here, I sort of lost that part of me, and that took me a wee bit to get my head around."

Heather nods, empathising. "There was a kind of grief. Yes, it was grief for the life and the people you've left behind - you still keep those contacts, but it takes work. We both love seeing our friends and family down south, and our neighbours are awesome." She recalls the first day she and Barry moved to the station. "We arrived here on a Friday and the next day there was a big snowfall," she remembers. "On Sunday, the neighbours turned up in their utes with barbeques on the back and introduced us to the local community by organising a surprise housewarming. But it takes a while to find your own niche. I suppose I've found that through being involved in community things."

Juliet's experience was a similar one. "It was a pretty tough time, those first couple of years," she says. "I'd gone from having my own independence and job to arriving here and thinking, 'What is my role and my place?' And obviously we live very close so that's always another thing - establishing our boundaries and how that all works was also really interesting. We never formally sat around the table as such and discussed roles. Probably the process person in me would have thought that was the way to go but we found our way and balance and I'm pretty proud of how we've done it."

Everyone in the family has their niche within the business. Each couple has their own way of working the situation of being married to your business partner. In Juliet and Richard's case, Richard is the practical out-there-doing-it person, and Juliet loves numbers and processes. "In the office, I'm the boss and out on the farm it's Richard's turn - we have a great balance, Juliet says. She and Heather share the huge administration load the large-scale operation brings.

"I had to explain recently to my son Ben what it is I do in the office side of the business, because of course it is a business, and there is more to it than the outside work," she says, ticking off everything that falls under the umbrella of the "office side": staff management, financials, taxes, environment and biodiversity - even cattle data analysis.

Juliet jumps on Heather's computer to complete some work before lunch. The women each have their own office, yet the nature of life on the farm, children, partners and multiple jobs means it's important they can work from anywhere, anytime. "I love the fact that I am involved in the business side of our farming operation, and also get to grow my governance skills within my roles in the community. I love watching people and communities grow and thrive and hope that I can contribute to that in some way," she says.

Heather making traditional mayonnaise.

Juliet in the driver's seat of the side by side. Being a mum of three is a hands-on job, and is one she handles with confidence and compassion.

Juliet with her friend and Sole to Soul business partner, Sally Newlands. "I am super passionate about the outdoors and my favourite thing to do is chuck on my shoes and head out on the farm for a walk. It's also a great way to notice some of those biodiversity and environmental things happening on the farm at a slower pace. I am also extremely lucky to have found a 'bestie' who loves doing the same. It's so important to have someone outside your family unit to be able to offload to, and walking and talking is definitely a great way to do it."

The teamwork inherent on the business side of the station is just as present in family life. "We have to cook tea, do the laundry and tend to the garden," says Juliet. "And while there might be parts of this we don't enjoy, the outcome of doing these duties - healthy kids, happy husbands and mowed lawns - brings contentment." Once a week she'll do a grocery shop for their family in Oamaru - the station has a walk-in chiller and freezer so the basic food items are there - and considers herself lucky Richard loves to cook, and lets the kids help. "After a week of me cooking for our team, he will step in and take over the kitchen," she says. "Even if he doesn't leave the kitchen quite how I would leave it, the outcome is a meal I didn't have to cook."

Both Juliet and Heather know they are extremely lucky to have the opportunity to play such a close role in the lives of their children and grandchildren. "I see them most afternoons or evenings when we're doing our outdoor chores," Heather says with a smile. "They'll stop and tell me about their day at school, and at weekends they sometimes come over and help Grandad in the veggie garden. It makes me - and Barry - really proud watching the kids doing their stuff. Not everybody gets that privilege."

There is yet another element to the big picture of life and business on the station: farm workers are welcomed into the close-knit living arrangements the Grays have developed at Hakataramea. The shepherd generals, Olivia and Ben, have their own rooms in the shearers' quarters off the communal yard, while Daniel, the fencer and general, is in the single house a stroll away. The man of all trades, Mark, used to be part of the yard but now lives in Kurow with his partner and children, and Nathan the tractor driver lives in the other station yard on the farm.

"The staff here are like part of the family," Heather says. "We get to know them well and we take an interest in their lives after they leave, because part of the way things work here is that it's like a stepping stone up to something else." Group smoko and lunches - roasts, hamburgers or slow-cooker stews prepared by the women on a weekly rotation and served around the dining table - one week at Heather's, the next at Richard and Juliet's - are pivotal. There's banter and laughter and a sense of belonging.

Juliet helping Ben with his bee suit.

The kids swimming at the dam. There are often more than three children on the farm with friends buzzing in and out, riding ponies, swimming and kayaking on the dam and adventuring whenever possible.

Juliet points out that having everyone living around the communal yard is a pretty big deal. "I do worry about ensuring everyone's privacy so I'm very clear with the kids that that's the staff's space, and the same with Heather and Barry. We're trying to teach the kids that, yes, we all live together but we do have a few boundaries. Otherwise the kids would be down in Olivia's room all afternoon playing with the kitten! But we're very lucky with our staff. They are so good to the kids, playing along with them."

Olivia is Hakataramea Station's newest arrival. She arrived in March 2022, and contracted Covid within two weeks. She says the Grays looked after her as if she was a member of the family. Having worked in the agricultural industry since she left school in 2017, Olivia likes the small numbers employed on the station and the spaciousness of the property. Home for her now is the shearers' quarters, where she shares the big kitchen and living room with Ben, the other shepherd general. They each have a single bedroom with an en suite, as well as a personal TV for those times when they don't want to wrestle for the remote in the lounge.

When they're not at the family and staff lunches, they do their own cooking and buy basic groceries from the Four Square in Kurow, about twenty minutes down the valley. "You can do a decent supermarket shop-up if you go out on the weekend to Timaru or Oamaru, but it's an hour there and an hour back. A bit of a mission sometimes," Olivia says.

Moving to the station hasn't been quite what Olivia expected. "When I first came for the interview they asked, 'How would you deal with the remoteness?' But since being here I've met so many friends - heaps of people from other properties in the area. I've got involved in Young Farmers and I play netball as well, so it's just putting yourself out in the community. I've made more friends in two months than I had in a year or eighteen months in Ashburton."

Juliet and Heather, meanwhile, have each taken on a number of community responsibilities to forge those off-farm connections. Heather has been a Justice of the Peace since 1999 and is Chair of the Waitaki St John Area Committee, Chair of the Kurow Community and Recreation Committee, and Vice Chair of the Kurow Jockey Club. "People thought that, as a JP, I could marry them, so one thing led to another and I became a marriage celebrant twenty-two years ago," she says.

Juliet has gone back to her roots, coaching netball and chairing the Hakataramea Sustainability Collective - a group set up to help ensure the local community continues to be resilient across the four pillars of sustainability: human, social, economic and environmental. "This has been a fantastic group to be part of and the community is really receptive to the education and opportunity it provides," she says. And then there's Sole to Soul - Juliet's active mindfulness enterprise that facilitates farm hikes to promote mental well-being and fitness. "We live in a very beautiful part of the country, and it's nice to be able to share that with others. Being outdoors, being in nature, the slowing of the mind, making conscious connections with others and the conversations that come up in that context are all very healing."

Olivia says Hakataramea Station is definitely family-oriented. "You're a bit freer in a way. Everything's a little bit more relaxed."

Heather bandages Olivia's knee, putting her first-aid skills to use.

Juliet loves being outside. There is often more to do outside the four walls of her home than within them. She says, "It's about mindfulness and the importance of being outside in nature. It's pretty special to hear the comments of people when they come down off the hill. That's my cup filler. Like everything else we do here, it's about balance."