To reach Wakare, I took Highway 1 heading south from Christchurch.
I was soon driving over the mile-long bridge that crosses the mighty Rakaia River, and then headed up the dead straight Thomson’s Track road towards the distant Southern Alps.
February brings the best summer weather, and harvest is well under way. But where once I would have seen many combines gathering in massive crops, today in almost every direction I looked there was an endless black and white ocean of dairy cows and huge pivot irrigators.
However, once I reached the foothills of the Alps my spirits lifted to once again see sheep and beef cattle occupying the paddocks.
Mike’s new farmhouse sits at 500 metres above sea level, and his farm lies on the lower, more fertile and gentler slopes.
When Mike and Nicky emigrated it was a huge decision considering all four of their boys were at school in Edinbugh. Back then £1 bought 3.3 NZ dollars (NZD), and farmland was less than half of today’s price.
Today £1 struggles to buy 2 NZD.
Their first farm was Temananga, an 850-acre cropping beef and sheep farm on the plains but still close to Mount Somers.
In 2008 they cashed up that farm to buy Mike’s dream farm.
Wakare is a 3,500-acre hill farm that rises from the edge of the Plains up to the foothills of the Alps. It is a stock farm with enough good arable paddocks to grow winter feed.
On my visit I saw a fantastic crop of sugar beet that will be used for winter feed for beef cattle or dairy followers. I did not realise new varieties of sugar beet could out-yield fodder beet.
The first decision was not to restock with sheep but to run a mainly Angus beef herd and carry 1,000 hinds to produce calves to be reared for venison plus the extra income from deer velvet a product which fetches a very high price in the Asian market as a health supplement.
A lack of red tape in New Zealand allows velveting, which is banned in the UK.
Mike has transformed Wakare for the better, with more than 15km of new deer fencing. Well-fenced lanes make moving deer or cattle a doddle, and the star of the show is probably the most modern automatic cattle-handling yards in New Zealand so that means in the world.
Mike’s system is so good it can handle 200 cattle per hour with just two men. He assures me the makers will be at this year’s Royal Highland Show, so look out for it.
I saw it in action on the day I arrived. Michael Coote, the buyer for the Five Star Beef feedlot near Ashburton, was present. Since Five Star fatten 34,000 cattle a year, his opinion matters.
He told me that Mike not only has the best on-farm cattle-handling system, but the Angus cattle he rears are among the best in the country.
Every time cattle are handled they are weighed automatically, and the EID eartag provides the computer with the average live weight gain.
The Angus sires are all from American genetics and reared by Gerald Hargraves on his nearby Kakahu Angus stud.
Five Star only want Angus or Hereford and take the cattle up to 650kg for the Japanese and Asian markets, where marbling is essential.
On-farm trials have proven the Angus genetics outperform Charolais. I was very impressed with an average 1.34kg per day live weight gain at grass, with the best Angus reaching 1.7 kg per day.
Mike took me up to a vantage point where the views are spectacular. To the north west is Mount Hutt, with New Zealand’s top skiing only a 20-minute drive away.
To the south are the peaks of Mount Peel, with forests on the lower slopes.
In the east lies the full majesty of the Canterbury Plains, with the turquoise blue waters of the Pacific just visible in the distance.
Wakare is well worth a visit.