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Farmers Fast Five: Ben Dooley

Farmers  Fast Five: Ben Dooley
Photo supplied.

The Farmers Fast Five: Where we ask a farmer five quick questions about farming, and what agriculture means to them.

Today we chat to Southland farmer Ben Dooley.

1.What did your journey into farming look like?

I was born and raised right here on this farm, what seems like a while back now. Through school I was pushed towards engineering, and although maths and physics were my favourite subjects, got sick of it all half way through year 12 and very quickly decided to leave.

After a year of full time dairy farming, I moved to Heriot to work on a lamb, beef and venison finishing farm, along with hogget grazing and lambing for Avenal station.

It was also their first year milking 1500 ewes.

Following a year there, I spent a year at Glenaray station, an absolutely amazing place, before coming home part time, filling in the rest with casual shepherding as far away as Omarama, casual tractor work, and plenty of boating.

In 2021, my wife and I bought all the stock and plant here and started leasing the farm from the previous generation.

2.Tell us a little bit about your farming operation.

We run 2300, give or take, Turanganui Romney ewes, roughly 630 (dry) hoggets, and hope to lamb 140-150 per cent.

We are hoping to finish all lambs to an average nudging 20kgcw.

We also hand rear 40 dairy beef calves every year, taking them through to finishing at 18 months, most of the time.

The farm is roughly 250ha, and we are very heavily reliant on winter crop (swedes) grazing.

3.What challenges have you faced in your farming business, and how have you tackled those challenges?

Obviously the challenges everyone around us face, in sheep farming, 3 bad days in September can be the difference between a great season or a disaster, drought bites us hard when it occasionally happens due to our long winters.

There have been a few unique ones though.

In april 2017, I was told that I had a “mass” on my brain.

By an eye specialist.

The poor guy had no clue how to deal with telling me that.

2 weeks later, the biggest relief of my life to that point, was the legendary Dr Taha telling me “It needs to come out”.

“So you think you can get it out?” I said, to which he replied “Oh yes, easy”.

I was very lucky to have a successful surgery on the 17th July that year.

No malignancy.

But the 6 month recovery period was hard.

Thankfully I was surrounded by a pretty good group, especially my wife and uncle, who kept the farm going in that time.

Over the years, I’ve also struggled a bit with mental health, as I think we all do, when things outside my control stack up one on top of the other against me.

The only advice I have here is, buy the boat. And use the boat. Whatever your “boat” may be, use it as a reason, an excuse, if you will, to get off farm often enough.

4.What has been a major highlight for you in your farming journey?

Where to start? Riding horses with a team of dogs behind, working with a pretty cool team at Glenaray, Autumn musters at Dunstan Downs, helping to push precision planting of swedes to improve yield while reducing cost, my social media channels (X, YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok), being elected onto the Southland Pest Eradication Society and the Southland Federated Farmers exec, taking on a fortnightly spot on The Muster radio show, meeting Matt Chisolm.  

But big one, starting a family with my wife, Sarah, and taking on the family farm.

5.What advice would you have for the next generation of farmers?

It won’t be easy.

If it was, everyone would be doing it. It won’t always be fun.

Lambing in a snowstorm will take you to a dark place. But most of the time, it is the greatest career on earth.

Focus on the things you can control, while not thinking about the things you cannot is impossible, don’t dwell too much.

Talk to people in the same situation.

Your neighbour had that snow storm at lambing too.

And buy the boat. Use the boat.