Federated Farmers: Family farms built the nation

Rhea Dasent - her family have farmed in the Hawke's Bay for 107 years.

2014 is the International Year of the Family Farm. The Federation's Rhea Dasent celebrates the occasion recalling her family's trials and tribulations as Hawke's Bay farmers.

Family farms are a mainstay of New Zealand and we can be proud of our heritage. Settlers looking for new and freer opportunities came to forge a living from the land, and building relationships with local tangata whenua mean that we have a unique connection to our land arising from this dual cultural legacy.

With 2014 being the International Year of the Family Farm, we can hold our heads high and give thanks to the family farms that have built our nation.

A common thread that connects the fabric of New Zealand's family farms is the resilience needed to keep going in the face of challenges.

The ability to endure hardships, and hang it all together with number 8w ire ingenuity has been integral to who we are as a farming nation.

My family has been working and living on our farm for over 100 years in the rural Hastings district. Brothers Bury and Cecil Dasent gained ownership of the farm on March 31, 1907 in the Mangatahi settlement ballot, and started out living in a tent.

The farm was passed on to the third brother Gerald after the deaths of Cecil and Bury. The road was called Dasent Road, sheep were farmed and a house eventually built.

Good and bad years were endured. Births, deaths, weddings, droughts, earthquakes, debt and war occurred and we are still here.

Gerald became my great-grandfather and the farm passed on to my grandfather Tony and now my father Jeremy.

We are surrounded by many other farming families that we have lived next to for generations.

Their friendship and assistance has been invaluable, allowing the Dasent farm to continue even after all our grazing was wiped out by a fire in 1937.

New Zealand's rural communities are full of kind and generous people who are always willing to help a neighbour in their time of need.

Women are also extremely important to family farms. These women have mucked in alongside their men, raised the next generation, and sometimes taken over so the farm could continue.

My own great-grandmother was renowned for being a strong and capable woman. She was instrumental in keeping the farm going during the 1930s depression and also when her sons went to war as pilots, with only one of them returning again.

Farming takes many special skills and not the least of these is endurance. Fortitude is needed in spades to care for the land and continue caring for it for the generations ahead, and New Zealand farmers have plenty.