Errol and Marylyn Copland are selling their Waimumu sheep farm, Cosydell. Photo / Shawn McAvinue
Errol and Marylyn Copland are selling their Waimumu sheep farm, Cosydell. Photo / Shawn McAvinue
Errol and Marylyn Copland are holding a clearing sale on their Southland sheep farm today. The couple talk to the Otago Daily Times’ Shawn McAvinue about calling time on the good times on Cosydell farm in Waimumu.
A clearing sale on a sheep farm will close a chapter for Errol and Marylyn Copland in Waimumu today.
“It’s time to go,” Errol said.
The sale on their sheep farm, Cosydell, about 15km west of Gore, would be emotional, he said.
The Coplands leased out the 200-hectare farm about 12 years ago, in a bid to take it easier after Copland had a valve in his heart replaced.
After leasing Cosydell, they remained living in the farmhouse, which his father, Andrew “Gardy” Copland junior, and grandfather on his mother’s side, Charlie Goodwin, built about 90 years ago.
The house was the only place Copland had ever called home.
Marylyn, 79, and Errol, 81, Copland are holding a clearing sale on their sheep farm, Cosydell, in Waimumu today and will move out of the only home Errol has ever known. Photo / Shawn McAvinue
His grandfather, Andrew Copland senior, moved to Southland from Canterbury in 1913 to buy a 280ha “rough block”, including Cosydell, Errol said.
“It needed a lot of development and is a totally different farm to what it was then - it was all gorse and tussock.”
Andrew Copland senior sold the farm to return to Canterbury and bought it back after the new owners put it on the market following an economic downturn.
A reason for his grandfather returning to Cosydell was because it was easier to grow crops in Southland when dry conditions were biting in Canterbury.
Errol’s father, Andrew Copland junior, kept farming Cosydell between pioneering the crayfishing industry in Fiordland.
Errol is the middle child of five siblings, including four sisters.
He started at Waimumu School at age 4, to bolster his class numbers to three.
Waimumu once had a school, shop, church and hall, where a dance was held every weekend.
Now only the hall remains.
After boarding at John McGlashan College in Dunedin for three years, Errol returned home to run Cosydell, aged 16.
During his tenure on Cosydell, improvements included removing gorse, cultivation, establishing duck ponds, planting shelterbelts, building sheds and installing fences and drainage.