Woody (left) and Tim Anderson are the third and fourth generation of the Anderson family to farm Kalimera in North Canterbury and have plans to expand the operation. Photo / Tim Cronshaw
Woody (left) and Tim Anderson are the third and fourth generation of the Anderson family to farm Kalimera in North Canterbury and have plans to expand the operation. Photo / Tim Cronshaw
When Tim Anderson's grandfather and father first stepped foot on the family farm in 1945, there was no end of "bush bashing" ahead of them.
Native scrub was cleared and superphosphate added and sub-clover oversown by Tiger Moths after World War 2 to generate more grazing country on the 930ha property at the foot of North Canterbury's Hundalee Hills near Conway Flats.
The farm was called Kalimera - the Greek word for good morning - as Tim's grandfather, Arnott, was a great fan of Greece when he was in the Mediterranean during World War 2.
He was also fond of Cheviots and was one of the first to cross them with Romneys.
This led to a Perendale stud set up in the early 1950s. A group of similar-minded families got together - led by Sir Geoffrey Peren - to do trial work and found the Cheviots crosses were outperforming other breeds.
The farm continues to support two families - with Tim and Sue, and their son, Edward "Woody", and his wife, Sophie, but there's no longer a married couple.
Mt Guardian Perendale Stud remains a pivotal part of the operation and has gone the distance when other studs have folded as sheep numbers decline. At the Gore Ram Fair, they sold a two-tooth ram for more than $10,000 and another for $4200, while 20 years ago a ram sold for $22,000.
That's where the similarities start to fade, as Kalimera has evolved with the changing dynamics of farming that have made one-dimension sheep farming no longer feasible.
Today, much of the borderline farming land on the steep to rough hill country - mixed with some river terraces and land on the flats - has returned to bush.
There's about 400ha of effective farmland, another 300ha of thick bush, 100ha of forestry with the rest lying somewhere in between this and either farmed or reverting to bush.
The 60 Angus breeding cows and 100-odd trading cattle are a tool to maintain grass quality for the 1000 Perendale DNA recorded stud ewes and a flock of 650 commercial Perendale ewes.
The stud sells about 250 purebred Perendale rams from December to January on the farm along with 60 Romdales. Another 70 terminal rams with Texel, Suffolk and Beltex bloodlines are sold each year.
About 400 Perendale ewe hoggets from the stud are mated with Romneys for Romdales.
Some of their clients have been coming on the same day each year to buy their rams for more than 30 years.
Tim (left) and Woody Anderson have plans to expand the operation. Photo / Tim Cronshaw
The Andersons take a hard-line approach when it comes to culling unwanted ewes in the stud flock. Each year, it's freshened with about 300 two-tooth Perendales. For those that don't make the stud grade, 150-200 two tooths go into the commercial flock and others are sold at ewe fairs as well.
The stud ewes scan at a lambing percentage of 180 per cent -185 per cent and 165 per cent at weaning, despite the tough country.
The family puts this down to Perendales' strong survival instincts and to disturbing them little at lambing - an advantage of DNA parentage recording.
That's not the only change, as the Andersons are trying to pull out of long-term grazing arrangements off their farm.
The long journeys and early morning starts to drench, draft and dag the sheep into the dark have worn thin after 30 years of grazing stock off the farm.
So they've been looking at alternatives, including buying more farmland, but it's not been easy in this inflated property market.
The rise of carbon farming is squeezing out available hill country for sheep and beef farmers.
Tim said it was a big call, but a necessary one.
Tim Anderson runs an eye over the perendale flock at Kalimera, at the foot of North Canterbury's Hundalee Hills. Photo / Supplied
"We are trying to get ourselves more independent and have more control of where we are grazing and what we are grazing. We're looking for another grazing arrangement or more land. That's difficult because land prices are going right over the top and there's very few opportunities here."
Woody agreed: "We are probably only carrying 2500 stock units here so we're pretty reliant on grazing stock away or buying feed in. That's why we're very keen going forward to shore up the future of the operation as it's just too inefficient to graze stock so far away and it's getting very expensive."
On one hand, the trend towards carbon farming is putting pressure on their ability to find more land as it's adding competition for the back-country - traditionally the domain of sheep farming.
The Andersons accept they can't be too critical, as they mapped out their own native blocks three years ago for carbon credits, and claim credits for a 70ha block of pines and cypresses. The yearly 10 per cent return helps to make the farm more profitable.
"I guess the crux of it is that in the past two years land prices have gone up 30 per cent around here," Woody said.
"Every year we miss out on an opportunity it's costing us for ongoing grazing and the cost of land. The flip side is our carbon credits have increased in value so we're not in a worse position."
The other big call they've made over the past year is to retire 200ha of native bush and put this under a QEII National Trust covenant. Full-sized matai - perhaps 200-300-years-old - are beside a stream, waterfalls and the 400m-plus peak of Mt Guardian.
They are immensely proud of this fulfilling, but expensive exercise.
Deer fencing - at a cost of $35 a metre - now surrounds the special block to keep a growing pest problem out. Tim said they weren't using the land to its full extent and they're excited to preserve it for posterity.
"It's also made us conscious of the enormous deer problem we've got. We've shot 50 deer out of that area in the last six months and there's still more. The other day there were eight deer in the paddock outside Woody's house."
The plan is to put in tracks and an eco-hut nearby to bring in visitors so the land becomes an income-earner.
Another sideline over the past five years is a shared-profit honey deal with a beekeeper.
Like the land, the Perendales had evolved too, Tim said.
"They used to be fairly fine-boned and tough little animals, but now they're more productive. They probably need more feeding than they used to."
Woody said they remained an efficient breed as the extra feeding was offset by their ability now to produce more lambs.
The Perendales run deep in the family, with both Tim and his father, Derek, made life members of the Perendale Sheep Society. Long-term friendships have carried on throughout the decades and even generations.
Mt Guardian is flock No22 in the stud book, and No2 on the Sheep Improvement Limited (SIL) recording scheme.
Tim's father had the foresight to join in the 1970s and today they are the oldest performance-recorded stud still active with SIL.
Tim said performance recording was driving out their development to a large extent, by identifying more meaty animals or other traits for breeders to select.
In the early 1970s he could remember when Perendales were "rocketing" in numbers with a stud in every West Coast valley.
None of them exist now, and registered Perendale studs are down to about 40 now, with about 10 per cent of them selling 90 per cent of the rams.
"If you look at the Romney book it would be the same and Corriedales hardly exist now. It's just attrition and evolution."
The Mt Guardian Perendale Stud has been at the Anderson family's North Canterbury farm, Kalimera, since the early 1950s when Cheviots were first crossed with Romneys to form the breed. Photo / Supplied
Woody said they'd tried to future-proof themselves by breeding Romdales - Romneys crossed with Perendales - in a joint venture for the past eight years with Turanganui Romneys in Wairarapa.
The two studs were working together with ewe hoggets mated to their ram hoggets, and their progeny sold as two-tooths, he said.
"Potentially we could pick up some Romney guys that don't want to go the full Perendale way or Perendale guys that don't want to go the full Romney way but are wanting a wee bit more production, which you often get with the hybrid vigour. It's been a good venture to maintain our ram sale numbers."
The family is keeping faith with the wool side of the business, despite depressed strong wool prices.
They continue to test for desirable wool traits and have commissioned their own carpet from nine bales of wool from the Perendales' 34-micron fleece.
In case there's any doubt of their loyalty, thousands of motorists are reminded they're in wool country with a big sign on the nearby State Highway.
Woody said sheep breeding was getting easier in some respects with the replacing of old brass tags by electronic ear tags and DNA parentage saved a lot of paddock time at birth.
He can programme software to automatically draft rams after identifying the tags for clients wanting specific traits such as fertility or high growth rates.
He's excited about the next breeding stages of selecting rams for facial eczema. Last year they paid $17,000 in a partnership for one of the highest testing Perendales for facial eczema tolerance.
Father and son share the same passion for ram breeding.
"It's about being creative, where you are actually putting a male and female together and it's incredibly satisfying when you see something special come out," Tim said.
"To me, it's the sheer joy of producing a top animal."
The changing face of breeding and new technology appealed to Woody.
"It's about being adaptive as well and seeing where the market and environment is going and what ram clients want. That means selectively breeding the ideal sheep that would suit as many people and properties as possible."
Tim and Sue consider themselves fortunate to have a son keen to stay on the farm as many other families have moved out of the area.
It helps that their daughters - Tiffany, Sophie and Vicky - want Kalimera to remain in the family.
As the fourth generation Anderson on the farm, Woody accepts the pressure to carry on the legacy and is happy to take it on when his parents retire.
The next challenge is to increase the land base to retain their capital stock numbers. Over the past two years they've just missed out on a few farms.
Tim said this had been unsettling, but a good summer means they'd got through without downsizing the flocks and they didn't want to go any smaller as it would impact their sheep breeding.
They remained confident something will crop up by this time next year, he said.
