Life means family and farm - in Punjab or Waikato

Mindy (left) and Karamjit Singh with grandchildren (from left) Arjun, Anjena and Amreeta on their Gordonton dairy farm. PICTURE / AMOS CHAPPLE

It's one big family farm at Whitikahu, northeast of Hamilton.

About 2800ha around the Waikato township is farmed by the descendants of Mindho Singh's grandfather, Baram, who arrived in 1913.

Many have been in Whitikahu since the early 1960s.

"It's a real family thing. We're all dairy farming out where we are," said Mindho, or Mindy as she is known.

Her father, Phuman Singh, had started out with a dairy farm near Warkworth before shifting the family to the Waikato in 1964.

Her two brothers now run the family farm, while Mindy and her husband, Karamjit, run the farm they bought in 1972.

The pair are semi-retired now, leaving most of the running of the farm and its 800 cows to their two sons, and their daughter and son-in-law run their own farm nearby.

Mindy's daughter teaches English at Whitikahu school, where 19 children out of the 100-strong roll can trace their lineage to Baram Singh.

Once a week, Mindy teaches these fifth-generation Kiwis Punjabi so they can read and write it by the time they leave for college.