Peak Wool

I didn’t come to farming in a conventional way, having grown up in greater Wellington. I joined the army in 2012, where I gained a degree in paramedicine, and later trained as a secondary school teacher when I left the military. I met my husband, Hayden, while in the army. He was from a farming background, but it wasn’t until we started spending weekends at his parents’ farm that I really began to appreciate country life.

We own eighty-nine hectares in Central Hawke’s Bay and lease about 330 hectares from Hayden’s parents, which we’ve been farming for the last four years. We got the name Floating Peaks because on a misty morning all you can see are the peaks of the rolling hills. We’ve faced many challenges in that time, including two droughts, a cyclone and falling lamb prices, but we’re determined to keep riding the wave because the lifestyle is so worth it. We may not be making heaps of money, but we have two beautiful kids, and we get to live in an awesome part of New Zealand, which is more than money can buy.

During Cyclone Gabrielle, we were cut off for seven days with flooding and slips blocking exit roads. It definitely teaches you the value of having some powdered milk on hand for your morale coffee. We lost kilometres of fencing, fifteen hectares in slips, a handful of stock, and have only just regained access to the whole farm.

I love farming because you are working towards your own goals. What you put into a day is exactly what you get out of the day. And being able to see progress is rewarding. Our farming journey hasn’t been linear, but we just keep getting stronger. I hate to use the word resilient, but we have had to be.

We’ve got two daughters, Ariella, 20 months, and Kiara, 4 months. It is so much fun watching their little personalities develop, and they seem to love the farm as much as we do. It is a juggle balancing family life, the farm and a start-up business, but most of the time the kids just come along with us, and we manage. Hayden takes Ariella mustering on the side-by-side and they both spend a lot of time where we make our Floating Peaks products.

We have a Romney ewe flock that produces strong wool, or wool with a high micron. Strong wool is typically used in the carpet industry because it’s tough, unlike finer merino, which is used in clothing. The idea for Floating Peaks started when falling wool prices pushed us to search for alternative opportunities for our wool. We looked at different manufacturing processes and came across felting. We got five bales of our wool turned into felt and just started playing with it. We knew that if worst came to worst, we would have an abundance of weed mat for the farm. Our first products were a wool pot, a seed bed and weed mats, which we rocked up with to our local market. Ariella was about four weeks old in a front pack, and we had no branding – nor a name!

In 2022, when I realised there was a lack of understanding in the younger generation about wool and where it comes from, I contacted the charitable organisation Campaign for Wool NZ, and signed up as a supporter. I didn’t fall in love with wool because of carpet or a jersey, I fell in love with the story – that’s why I developed a downloadable workbook called The Wool Journey, which is used by more than sixty schools. Campaign for Wool also asked us to put our biodegradable wool pots into their educational wool shipping containers that they take to schools. The two containers – one for the North Island and another for the South Island – are a huge opportunity for the wool industry. Kids can get their hands on the wool and learn about its journey and attributes, so when they see a sheep in a paddock, they understand all that goes on behind the scenes – the mustering, the shearing, all the processes and the people behind wool.

One of the most challenging things about farming here is the isolation and the change in dynamics of who you become. My main focus is the kids and the farm, but Floating Peaks gives me a creative opportunity and provides an outlet for off-farm activities. Although we are still starting out on our farming journey, we want to look back one day and think, “Man, that was worth it,” even though there are days when it doesn’t really feel like it. When you wake up in this beautiful location and see your happy kids and what you’re achieving, you know it is.