Genetic Love of Our Land

4 Mar

Passionate in restoring and giving back to the soils we borrow from our land.

I hope you enjoyed my introductory story last edition, The Love of Our Land. I am very passionate about restoring and giving back to the soils we borrow from our world.

With everything going back to healthy soil, Genetics play a large part. I take genetics not only to be animals but as well the plant life which has a huge place in the genetic world. I have been saying

for quite a long time with the modern day farming that you need to keep up with genetic farming if you want to keep up with farming in general on going.

Firstly let me share a little bit about myself and my back ground. My name is David Taylor and some of my passions that you might not know. I moved on from the sheep and cattle and dogs into the Dairy World, Sharemilking and Dairy farm ownership.

I worked in the genetic world of breeding, having two dairy breeds of pedigree cows and livestock, I was also a judge in both breeds. I enjoy passing my knowledge on and I also love to learn and study.

My wife Kay has played a huge part in our Dairy enterprise. Right from the start we sold a three year old house, to invest in a herd of two hundred dairy cows, not only all of a sudden we have no house, we had the bank telling us we have to insure our cows for lightning... Did they really think we would one day go out to the paddock and find all the cows have been struck by lightning because we had moved to Hari Hari in South Westland of the South Island. We had moved to the best place for thunder and lightning and rain storms.

After two years of sharemilking we moved even further south to Whataroa to own our first farm. We had to accept the coastal farming conditions as they were, leaving our previous experiences behind. At times we put up with six metres of rain in one year.

Imagine the stress of growing feed for production and reproduction, since coming from 24-27 inch of rain fall per year. I think the main thing that drove Kay, was she was not going to lose a three year old house and end up with nothing just because of some lightning storms.

Our Whataroa farm was at the end of the flat heading towards the Tasman and the farm was full of clover. So it was no surprise our stud names for both herds was Clover Flat. It was usual for more than 20 of our cows and young stock to attend Westland A+P Show and the South Westland A+P. Kay was a very good farmer and run the operation well to allow David to become involved with the pedigree and genetic field as well as training to be an artificial insemination technician.

We loved South Westland, we had a great time there. We loved the people who went through the hard times and understood what a very special place of New Zealand it was. You need to realise one part of being accepted there, was you had to get through these hard hurdles, to become one of them, and if you did it was for life.

But things changed when I realised I wanting to do more in the genetic world with training and instructing AI Technicians - so we decided to shift back to Oxford.

I also turned down a position I was offered at the DSIR Lincoln. I went on to become the sales manager for Ambreed. Where I looked after the top of the South Island with 20 reps selling under me and I trained over 400 people to become AI Technicians.

It was discovered when we sold the Dairy unit in Oxford and we shifted up the road. Kay always liked to show flowers and in particular Dahlias. So it was no surprise I found my own passion in growing Roses and I had my first Autumn of showing in 1994.

It was at that time a certain passion of mine had come to surface.

I went on to win all of the cups from Oxford and some from the Sheffield show. So ever since then I have been around the rose tables.

In about 2000 we had a change in property, we built the Oxford Sales yards and a new house – within two years I had over 300 roses, but sadly one year the Lucerne paddock got sprayed next door and sadly I lost 170 roses. Since then one has to remained and lasted over 50 to 60 exhibits for Oxford show, with only two hours for staging, there is a lot to get done. 2013 was my first champion, then in 2019 there was a big show as it was the 100 years of the Thompson cup for roses where there was a miniature cup to be won.

You can imagine the twelve months leading up to this event. Oxford being a hard place for growing flowers due to late frosts as it was, there was no way I could get my usual approx. 50 exhibits. I thought I would have no chance of getting one prize, meaning the cup was out the window. I got my entries in and left for my usual show day work at the dog trials. I remember being down there thinking there would be no way of getting anything and simply being told thanks for your kind donation... When suddenly before lunch I was told I had to be up at the flowers area at a certain time, with no clue of what was about to happen.

I took the One Hundred Year Cup - in fact I had a clean sweep, I even got a Champion win, a beautiful white rose - Royal Philharmonica, got the cup. It was such a great highlight when I didn’t think there would be any ribbons for 2019.

From there, three of us went on to the A+P Shows, teaching the judges skills on flowers and vegetables.

We wanted new judges to be learning and gaining skills, even if they were not going to be a steward as it was a little bit different to be a judge compared to what you do at garden club. We wanted to see more young ones coming to shows. When asked how old is young, I would say under 70 will be ok.

Since then I put my company together based on the 4 F’s – Future; Farming; Food and Foundation. My website has recently been launched and I am proud to be working with Scott Hobson and his team.

Since then we have been thrilled with the results and data we have been recording. The end results are due to come together very soon and should be available by the time you read this story.

Scott has been working with soil for many years and has done over 200 trials. With his findings, we have discovered what is happening in our soils, plants and animal production and reproduction.

Until now we had only been able to show results on grass, health and production – now we the information published on farms as well.

Our last spring proved to be a huge testing opportunity for a lot of farmers, coming out of a long dry period, followed by wet and cold wind conditions.

Right now we have some of our farmers going back into the paddocks at 18 days to find over the last 10 months they only needed to put on 150units of Nitrogen.

It was back in 1979 when I got introduced to a book called “The Rape of our Heritage” I learnt so much from this book, as it introduced me to some new ideas. I have been farming this way ever since. Along side this I had been learning about what Scott was working on and was introduced to Humates.

I was first introduced to Scott when my accountant phoned me one day and said there is a guy I think you need to meet in Fernside. My accountant had noticed seeing some results in some figures as he was one of my clients - so not long before the first lockdown I went and met Scott and his wife Ali.

5 hours later I left there, what we discussed was exciting. I went back the next day, and it was then I decided, I need to be talking to other farmers about this, sharing what he had been doing.

It is the missing link that I had not had or been exposed to this way of thinking since 1979.

Scott and myself have a huge amount of experience and expertise to offer now look forward to the future as we share this information... The bottom line being - If you breed them, you must feed them.

Written by
David Taylor