The back of beyond

AT THE END OF A NO- EXIT METALLED ROAD AT MATAU NORTH IS A MAN WITH A YARN TO TELL. RICHARD WOODD REPORTS.

Steve Knudsen still hasn't quite recovered from his start as a hill country farmer in the Taranaki backblocks.

After arriving with no dogs and just a six-month-old pup, most of his bought-in ewes either vanished or drowned in the bogs, 30 cows died of exhaustion and his wife left him.

The farm, near the end of a no-exit metalled road at Matau North, had supported Rawlinsons for 100 years. It's 1300ha (3200 acres), of which about 607ha is in grass. It's carrying 3000 stock units.

Knudsen bought it for $1.2 million. He wanted to own a proper sheep operation, but settled for this place and called it Vertigo Station, partly because of the dizzying heights to the ridgetops, partly because he actually suffers from vertigo and mostly because it sounds cool.

"This is my fifth farm and they've all been run down," he says. "I like things that are old and buggered. I don't like glitzy places. If I see a hillside of scrub, I want to go and cut it."

The money came from the profits of the Fence-Pro hydraulic post and pile driver he designed and built, the subsequent sale of the business and then the capital gain he made on a block of Wellsford industrial land. He still owns a 40ha farm there.

Knudsen, 42, was raised in a family environment of sawmills and earthmoving. He became a professional fencer and won the Northland field days fencing competition three times.

"I grew up in Dad's sawmill at Coromandel, but I was mad on farming from a young age. I even gave up Saturday rugby to do farm work."

At 16, he was driving tractors on a steep Lands and Survey block at Cape Colville and had his first dozer at 17.

"I taught myself to weld to fix up the tracks. I'd weld all night sometimes."

He started a sawmill on Great Barrier Island, built with old junk, then got into contracting with diggers and bulldozers. But he tired of the Barrier and its culture.

"I went to the tyre repair place and the guy came out and said: You b------, I've just finished a joint and you want me to fix your tyre?"

He met his wife there. They have sons aged 22 and 9. But farming beckoned.

"I had no interest in good farms. I had the business, 100 acres, no debt and I decided to borrow to buy a farm. We were going to the Ahu Ahu Valley, but we met a guy at Ruatiti from east Taranaki who knew this place was for sale."

The Fence-Pro evolved from when Knudsen once borrowed a rear- mounted driver to put posts in for some cattleyards.

"I thought it was pretty good, but it got me thinking about the design. I worked for a contractor who had a Fairbrother King Hitter and I thought I could improve on it by having it work out to the side and easily change it back to a straight rear mount if you wanted to. This was about 1995.

"With the rear mount, you have to keep backing in - it's way slower - whereas with my design, you can pull alongside and slide it out for driving. At that stage, they were only rear or side mounted.

"I literally made the prototype adaptation on the front deck with the welder plugged into the kitchen stove.

"It was quite a simple design, but the geometry was tricky and kept me awake at night and it took me about two weeks to crack in the end.

"But it just went like a train.

"People told me I should go into production and eventually Pearson's [Pearson Engineering Ltd] took it on. We launched it at the 1995 Mystery Creek Fieldays under the name of Fence-Pro. We sold all the units and took orders. They cost $3500 to buy and I was paid a royalty on that.

"Everybody wanted one, but after three years, I discovered they had only sold 11 and I was getting complaints from unsatisfied buyers.

"Pearson's admitted they were too busy with their front-end loaders and allowed me to take it back, with no animosity. So I gave up fencing, took on a welder and we made and sold 50 in the first year at a workshop in Wellsford.

"We were still only making the side- mount attachments, so at the urging of customers and friends, I began making the whole hydraulic driver unit.

"I borrowed from Mum and Dad to buy an industrial building in Wellsford.

"I took three units to the 2001 Fieldays and we sold them by morning tea time. It sounds good, but it was a real tough time for me. I thought I would go broke, I was depressed, I had to dig myself out of a real hole. I came up with a saying which is now my mantra: problems are just answers waiting to be found.

"And I still only wanted to be a farmer underneath."

He'd also bought a heap of cull cows for fattening.

"The dollar went against me. It was the worst autumn ever. The cows were in mud up to their tits and I'm trying to feed them baleage on my way to the workshop to start work at 5.30am.

"It was real head-in-your-hands stuff.

"In the middle of it all, my business partner walked out on me.

"I think it really toughened me up and that's why I made money.

"I did all my own marketing and advertising and brochures and my machine was the cheapest on the market, but I reckon it was the best in the world. I paid tax on a million dollars in my last year of production."

He sold Fence-Pro to some investors in Auckland who he says "worked me over in the deal. I carried that around for a long time."

He bought Vertigo Station in 2005, leased the farm back to the vendors for 12 months and sold Fence-Pro in 2006.

"I don't have debt yet, but I'm struggling to break even. The stock losses were phenomenal. I think I was a bit naive about the stock. I missed out on buying the vendor's stock and what I bought in wasn't suited to the country. It's also difficult to farm cattle here.

"It was a nightmare first year here. I had sheep that weren't used to muddy creek bottoms. Many were Romney ewes that had lost a lamb and had udder problems. They were dying everywhere.

"I bought 1445 ewes, 870 from Hawke's Bay and another 575 from elsewhere.

"The Bay ones were great. The other 575 I did an ethnic cleanse on two years later and there were only 200 of them left. I should have just left that money in the bank.

"It was character-building, I tell you."

Arriving with a pup didn't help, but he has two good main dogs now and finds them adequate. He's also been able to tidy up the tracks and crossings, put in dams and prepared fence lines with his machines.

The Taranaki Kiwi Trust has placed 140 stoat traps around the farm, which Knudsen tries to check monthly.

"The kill can be up to six a month. There are a lot of kiwi here; I've found eggs laid in the open."

He had no cattle the first year, then bought in-calf Angus cows.

"In 2008, I lost a lot of cattle. Out of 105 cows, I lost 30, but that was a bad year due to the drought.

"I thought I had good tucker on the hills, but it wasn't. In August we had some nasty weather and they were wasting energy to climb up and get the tucker. Possibly some had a touch of eczema; they were weak and sliding off the hills. Some got stuck in minor bogs and just didn't have the energy to get out.

"I decided then I'd have no cattle and I wouldn't lose money. But I have to have them and I'm just going to run fewer numbers. I think I'll stay with cows.

"Lambing in 2008 and 2009 was good. I did about 100 per cent from the numbers to ram. They are mainly Perendales. They do well here, but I get a lot of wet dries."

There are a lot of wild goats and pigs on the property and the fencing's not good. The boundaries are unfenced and he estimates they would total about 14km.

"The irony is I've been here three-and-a-half years, I have a mountain of posts, the world's best post driver, a digger and dozer, and I've done hardly any fencing, but I've built a shed big enough to start building post drivers again."

He topdressed with reactive phosphate rock the first two years.

He's tried catching and selling wild goats "but it's pretty hard work, and dangerous.

"I once found myself hanging over a bluff, a rope round my waist, wrapped round a tree and young Luke on the end. My foot's hooked round a root and I'm leaning way over with my crook trying to snare a goat. I could have slipped for the sake of a $20 goat.

"I think there's potential here for creating a big bush reserve. Our forefathers raped this country and we have to put something back. We're all caretakers as well as farmers.

"I can make it break even. I'm not going to borrow money. I'll always be viable.

"Being on my own is not nice. I struggle with that. I like the remoteness, but not being alone. I could have an accident and injure myself. I'm keen to find someone else, but who would want to live out here?"

- © Fairfax NZ News