New horizons in farming on historical Hauraki Plains site

Warrick, 80, and Jocelyn Davey are part of an innovative trial to improve the soil and water on their Hauraki Plains farm. Photo / Alison Smith

Hauraki Plains farmer Warrick Davey calls it island life, and the 82-year-old who returned to the farm to work as a sharemilker just two years ago isn’t being ironic.

The Daveys’ farm Stanfred - named after his father and uncle - is on Puhunga Island Rd, and Warrick loves his life.

The farm was known as “Davey Bros Farm” for 100 years until Warrick’s brother Selwyn died in 2020. Now the 140 acre farm is co-owned by family members Carol Davey and Warrick Davey.

“Don’t ever say this is a busy life, this is a beautiful life,” reflects Warrick’s wife Jocelyn (Jos). “Warrick says the farm isn’t work, because to him it’s his life.”

Stanfred farm is among the productive land left from thousands of hectares balloted by the Government for the development of dairy farms at the turn of the 20th century.

In living memory, the soil has suffered unimaginable change in this area, which began when the government introduced settlers in the hope of establishing a new industry of dairy farming.

But farmers like Warrick - at the age of 82 - are at the forefront of scientific study to turn around the history of New Zealand’s farming impact on our soil.

The health of the soil, of waterways on farms and the stories and wellbeing of farmers themselves is being captured in a research project called Rere ki uta Rere ki tai.

From the Hauraki Plains Story by Rufus Tye: “Prior to 1908 the Hauraki Plains was a desolate wasteland of swamp and alluvial flats frequently inundated by the Waihou and Piako rivers.

“The government had its attention drawn to the possibilities of the Hauraki Plains through its departmental officers in particular Mr W.C. Kensington...and by 1908 [sought] financial backing for the Government’s proposed drainage of some 160,000 acres of swamp.”

The Hauraki Plains Act in 1908 allowed the Department of Lands and Survey the legal means for survey, drainage, reclamation and roading “fit for settlement”. The land was auctioned at ballot.

Warrick’s grandfather Richard Davey and wife Elizabeth arrived in 1880 from Cornwall and Devon, England. Warrick’s uncle Stan was born first with three boys and two girls in the family. Warrick’s father Fred was born in 1897.

“My grandparents had 20 acres in Avondale, Auckland which they sold in 1919 and loaded everything on the barge up Whau Creek to the Plains in the early 1900s for farming,” says Warrick.

“A lot was tea tree and a lot was bush. [Nearby] Kaihere had a big flax mill. We still have two scutchers [flax milling machines] in the shed and they’ve got them going again.”

Annie and Will Davey, brother and sister of Fred, in the early Hauraki Plains farming days. Photo / Supplied.

This was no easy country for farmers. The land could only be accessed by river and was sometimes so thick with flax – reports of it reaching up to 13 feet high - that settlers found it impossible to ascertain their plots.

Backbreaking hours draining “swampland” and digging miles of stop banks - initially by hand – was done largely by Dalmatian nationals brought to New Zealand by their own countrymen at the turn of the 20th century, according to local history.

Wrote a New Zealand Herald correspondent in 1918: “These men are doing great things for the nation without the nation realising what has been and is being done.”

The Patiki paddle steamer traded along the Piako and carried loads of explosives for land clearance. In A Hauraki Plains Story, by Rufus Tye, the late Bill Preece remembers swamps abounding with wild pigs and wild horses in dry areas, curlew, wild duck, swan and pukeko in the hundreds.

“An open rowboat 24ft long plied the Piako with men and provisions,” he recalled.

Aside from a weekly visit to civilisation, the dredge men worked in solitude in dreary surroundings, cutting their way through peat, marl and clay, the Herald reported.

“As for the drain-diggers, standing up to their knees in swamp water day after day heaving out shovelfuls of dripping peat and clay is trying labour, and should be replaced wherever possible by steam and steel,” its correspondent wrote.

For the original Puhunga canal, teams of six men used square-mouthed shovels so expertly that they could keep the spoil on shovels from the two throwing at the bottom to the two at the top and the last pair giving it the final throw, wrote Tye in Hauraki Plains Story.

Warrick’s Dad Fred was born into this tough pioneering era.

Through the land drainage and construction of miles of stop banks, Warrick and his brother Selwyn grew up helping their dad and uncle Stan who each had their own six-a-side walk through milking sheds. These and the family villa were demolished in the 1960s when the canal was widened.

Warrick’s brother Selwyn fell ill two years ago and Warrick and Jos returned, with Warrick taking on the caretaking farm work that Selwyn has done for the land, including introducing seaweed for the soils.

At age 82, Warrick is reconnecting with his family land, which now includes a neighbouring 40 acres, and is trialling new ways of honouring the soil among 10 Waikato and Bay of Plenty farms studied in the $2.7 million trial, Rere ki Uta Rere ki Tai.

The trial is funded for two years by Our Land and Water National Science Challenge as part of the Revitalise Te Taiao research programme.

Hosted by a seaweed innovation company down the road in Paeroa, AgriSea, its goal is to restore the mana and mauri of soil. Say Selwyn’s children: “Selwyn was using Agrisea on the farm for many years, caring about the quality of the soil for a long time before this trial began.”

Butter from this area of New Zealand won acclaim once dairying took off, and was packed in butter boxes made of the magnificent towering kahikatea trees cut from the native forest and wetlands that grew in the century prior.

Now, scientists are testing soil on farms to greater depths, working alongside farmers to trial new practices, and measure the effect of any management changes on animal and human health. They are also assessing the financial implications of different farming techniques and examining if healthy soil can have positive benefits for farmers’ mental health.

Building on six years of pilot research by AgriSea, it is hoped export markets might pay a premium for products that are farmed in ways that support the “mana and mauri” of soil.

Warrick has witnessed the soil diminish from 4ft deep peat on his farm, to areas that are dry and compacted.

He recalls a new road built in Ngatea where workers dug through peat to find hard clay, finally reaching it at a point so deep they could not see the land: “That same road is above the land now,” he says.

He used to mow hay for another farm, and always took care to avoid the front wheels sinking in deep peat. He is interested to see how changing his own farm practices might strengthen the soil.

Farmer Warrick Davey with the hanging begonias his mum used to place in the milking shed. Photo / Alison Smith

“It’s been a wiggly path to come home to the farm,” says Jos, who is full of admiration for what her husband does.

Jocelyn is a herbalist, but with rheumatoid arthritis, blindness in one eye and a broken tooth, she is allowing Warrick to care for her as well as the animals, and his farm. Warrick has cooked for his wife for 15 years, and for his mother-in-law when they took her in until she died at age 102.

In the two years since they’ve been home on the farm, Jos says they’ve planted 300 plants. They feel connected to the land.

“The soil and the wholesomeness, the vast sky…we are watching the weather – I forgot how the wind comes with such force here. We plant our food, we live off the land, and how incredible is that? I was just in hospital and Warrick has been digging up beetroot and carrot and blending it for me, which is so healing.

“Poppa [Warrick’s father] used to say it was his dream to have a Davey on the farm. How cathartic is that, to know you are honouring your ancestors in the way they wanted to see this land come forward.”