Don't fence her in

Jeanette Maxwell laughs out loud when trying to shed light on the gender mish-mash of men and women. The book title Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus seems to be as true in farming as any other livelihood.

"I think as a rule women tend to be more read/write in their learning. We write stuff down to learn so we can keep on coming back to it as a reference. There are read/write guys, but they are usually less so and guys tend to just do it. The men throw away the manual and the women pick it up. It's true in our household and you can't help it - it's nature."

Maxwell is among the unusual breed of women to be found working on a farm and mixing it with men in the boardroom. There aren't many of them around.

The 40-something mother of three helps run Rosehill farm on the rolling Mid-Canterbury foothills under the shadow of Mt Hutt with husband Alister and father-in-law Robert.

On top of these roles she's the national vice-chairwoman for Federated Farmer's Meat & Fibre council.

She's one of several women to hold a senior elected position for the "Feds", but, generally, women are light on the ground when it comes to agriculture's echelons of power.

Maxwell doesn't get bogged down with the injustice of the gender imbalance. Her pragmatic take is that women have strengths to counter men's weaknesses and vice-versa.

Maxwell says she finds herself subconsciously reading a room before passing comment. Is this a feminine trait? Whether men do this to the same extent she doesn't know, but it works for her. "When you have women and men together, that's a real strength. Men are really good at hard, cut-throat stuff that women are not so good at because of the nurturing thing. Women can make tough decisions, but men are sometimes better at it. As soon as a woman is tough or clamps down we are perceived to be harsh, whereas if a man does it it's okay."

Then again, the criticism cuts both ways and if a man is the nurturing type he's considered soft.

"These are stereotypes and I suppose women have been slow to come into business because of this. Women don't want to be seen as harsh and cut-throat yet they have to be prepared to wear that stereotype."

At Rosehill farm roles are split or shared among the Maxwell trio. "Al is definitely the primary farmer and I consider myself the FLU – a part-time farm labour unit. Most decisions, we make together and there are decisions that are most definitely better made by Al than myself."

Alister makes all the calls for fertiliser and, more often than not, the seed decisions and which paddock will be worked up. The couple used to go ram buying together, but lately Alister and his dad have done this.

Animal health decisions are made equally with Maxwell sometimes holding the casting vote as a former veterinarian nurse.

Maxwell does the accounting and budgets and writes out Rosehill's farm management plan every two to three years with direction from Alister and she does the farm mapping and recording.

Each paddock is numbered and its stock and seed history precisely recorded with the documentation extending to tree blocks and wetlands. This attention to detail won the couple this year's Land and Life section in the Ballance farm environment awards.

Stock responsibilities in the yards are split with Al handling the smaller mobs and Maxwell the bigger mobs coming through. This makes sense as the yards are close to their home.

One job Maxwell is happy to leave to the menfolk is tractor work. Never taught to plough, she finds it too inflexible for looking after the children. "If I'm feeding-out or calf-rearing, I can keep on coming back to the house and touch base with the kids, but it's less easy to do this with a tractor and a big roller on the back. As the kids have got older, it's become easier, but I tend not to work until 8.10am when they have left. I go where Al and Robert need me to do stuff and I'm the gap filler."

School holidays this week provide her with a break from the routine winter work of fencing and feeding the south devon herd and coopworth flock.

This is the lull before her workload goes "flat out and beyond" with the farm accounts needing to be completed for Rosehill and Robert's small farm before mid-August when the calf and lamb rearing season arrives.

Earnings from the calves are set aside for their retirement years. Between 30 to 40 calves, once weaned from the cows, are fed twice a day in a shed. The calves remain in the shed for six weeks and continue to be fed for 3 1/2 months.

The pressure comes on when the orphan lambs arrive in mid-September and Maxwell and her father-in-law team up to feed and match them with surrogate mothers. Their numbers are boosted by lambs in need of reviving from the bone-sapping chill of late snowfalls.

About 100 lambs passed through the "pet pen" last season, and ensuring they survive can save hundreds of dollars a day.

An allowance is made for ewes failing to produce a lamb during a harsh winter, yet Maxwell is as tough as her husband when it comes to giving consistent non- performers the flick.

Over the years, south-facing paddocks have been subdivided and new shelter belts planted to improve lambing conditions. Paddocks with chest-high snow tussock are good for shelter, but can make it difficult for ewes to find lambs and are avoided for lambing.

Maxwell agrees with the often-heard comment that women tend to handle stock better than men.

"I get the calf and lamb rearing because I'm more patient. In the sheep yards, I tend to be more calmer with the stock. If they aren't running well, I tend to accept this more when the guys might get uptight. To be honest, I do get upset some days. One of the disadvantages about being a woman is not having the physical strength of men."

Rosehill is a 299.61-hectare property first farmed by Robert in the 1970s and now owned by the Maxwells. At between 470 metres and to 510 metres above sea level, the property is firmly in snow country and is fully equipped with a snow plough and bulldozer when conditions turn sour.

In the big snow of 1992, strong winds pushed the snow from depths of 300 millimetres to armpit height. The worst storm was in 2006 when 650mm lay on the ground for six weeks before the first blade of grass emerged. Yet only one ewe was lost.

From long experience, Alister has developed feeding-out techniques. He avoids clearing snow or feeding several times a day, as only greedier sheep come out well fed and the grass is ruined by trampling.

Instead, long feeding strips are laid out above the snow so they all get their equal share.

The Maxwells run a south devon stud of 577 cows and a small commercial herd selected from hand-reared calves that are sold after they produce a calf themselves.

Their coopworth flock was reduced to 1750 ewes when a permanent staff member was dropped and cattle numbers were lifted.

This was done to reduce costs with returns for sheep and beef farming hovering at only a breakeven point. The coopworths are descended from a romney flock begun by Robert in the 1960s. Over the years they have been crossed with coopworths, then texel and east friesian bloodlines followed by Rissington genetics five years ago before returning to a coopworth based composite. This fertile mix has the Rosehill flock producing two lambs for each ewe.

Alister says the ewes are in good condition after one of the best grass- growing seasons at Rosehill when lamb weights were 0.5kg above average. "It's difficult for us to play the shoulder periods and we are lumped into selling with everyone else. Contracting our lambs is good because we are normally not too much below [the market price] and we don't have bad years."

The first weaning starts in late December, with a second cut taken the next month and the lambs are then sent off the property once they reach 15.6 kilogram to 19.4kg weight targets through to April.

Around the farm, original tree blocks have been harvested and replaced with pine, macrocarpa and oregon for a log income and for more stock shelter.

Federated Farmers is lobbying hard against agriculture being added to the Emissions Trading Scheme and the Maxwells have resisted offsetting some of the potential emissions by trading carbon units from the trees. Maxwell says the plantations will remain unregistered until legislation is tightened around carbon. "It's too airy-fairy and vague because there is not good legislation. Where do we stand if ETS gets tipped out in 2015? These trees will be used for the next generation, so they can afford to come onto this farm."

She became more heavily involved in the federation after contesting the regional authority's original set of rules for wetlands. She found the rules made no allowance for their own work on 21ha of wetlands and were harsh on landowners when it came to maintaining and farming around them. Maxwell immersed herself into representing the farmer's position in 2004 when the wetlands chapter was being drawn up.

In quick progression, she went on to become the Mid-Canterbury Meat & Fibre chairwoman in 2007, was put on its national council a year later and promoted to vice-chairwoman last year.

"I'm passionate about farming and we need fair legislation to work with. I understand why there has to be some legislation, because there will always be some ratbags, but it has to be fair. We have to make it so the next generation has the ability to farm without both hands being tied behind their back."

Travelling overseas on leadership courses helped her to grow into the role and gave her an insight into the overseas marketplace and the challenges of overcoming trade barriers. This information is often slow to come to the farm gate, she says.

Neither wool or red meat is providing farmers with enough income to make a profit. The strong dollar is hurting trading, but fragmentation in each industry is not helping the cause.

Maxwell believes there needs to be some consolidation in the meat industry. Farmers should pick the meat company they believe will give the best returns and commit to them so the real winners emerge.

"If they got collaboration it would help. I think the processors could offer better communication. I remember two years ago they said they didn't want ram lambs and then there was a shortage of lambs and they took them all. Farmers also need an attitude change in their commitment to supply one firm for a full season. To do this, firms have to offer contracts which are reasonable and fair.

"If we keep on flipping around for an extra 5c to 10c a kilogram it makes it hard for meat companies to commit numbers because they don't know what they are going to get. A supermarket will not commit on a maybe."

As for wool, Maxwell puts her Fed's hat aside to support Wool Partners International (WPI). Good woolbrokers will survive, but the wool industry needs fewer and stronger players if wool returns are to improve, she says. "The sooner WPI can get out their prospectus and raise the money to buy out [partner] PGGW, the better it will be for a merger with Elders in the future."

- © Fairfax NZ News