Susannah and Mark Guscott of Glen Eden Farms.
When Wairarapa farmer Mark Guscott is feeling reflective and finds himself contemplating how problems would have been solved back in the day, he doesn’t have far to go to look for answers.
The grave of his great-great-great-grandfather, John Milsome Jury, is on the hill across from the Guscott homestead, which itself is filled with books written by his great-grandmother about the farm’s origin story.
Photographs on the wall in the house show sheep being herded down a track that still serves the same purpose 100 years later.
“It’s very grounding,” said Mark, a sixth-generation descendant of the immigrant whaler and his Māori wife, Te Aitū-o-te-rangi of Ngāti Moe.
Jury had rescued Te Aitū several years after she was captured during the Musket Wars and was being held captive on Kapiti Island.
He brought her back to her ancestral home in the Ponatahi Valley, and the story of Glen Eden (formerly Glendower) began.
Glen Eden is a 1434-hectare farm, 10km north of Martinborough.
Mark and his wife, Susannah, run a mixed farming operation of sheep, beef, arable crops such as maize and peas, and tourism.
The couple recently won the regional supreme award at the Greater Wellington Ballance Farm Environment Awards.
It’s a diversified approach to farming that started 20 years ago.
“We took over the farm in the early 2000s and not long after, there was a downturn in sheep farming,” Mark said.
“We had successive droughts, some really difficult weather events, and we lost a lot of money.
“We knew that we couldn’t keep on doing the same thing, because we would go out of business.”
Embracing the “what-got-us-here, won’t-get-us-there” philosophy, Mark and Susannah took stock of their resources.
They had some flat land with high-quality soil and good irrigation.
It was time to swap some sheep and beef for arable crops.
“We leased and sharecropped some of the land to two nearby cropping farmers and set out to learn as much as we could as quickly as we could.”
Apart from one disastrously expensive year, becoming sharecroppers helped spread the risk.
Some small hiccups became part of the learning process, spraying a paddock poorly, and a memorable time an irrigator ran over the squash harvester.
“Just a dumb mistake because I was too busy trying to do everything myself,” Mark said.
“It was a good lesson to learn because you realise you can’t farm without other people.”
The Guscotts found people more than happy to help out.
“That’s one great thing about the farming world,” Mark said.
“Everyone’s really happy to share information and advice and help each other, which I don’t think you’d get in normal business.
“People come round, and all the financials are out there.”
It probably helps that the Guscotts are not in competition with their neighbours.
As part of a farmer-owned supply company, Atkins Ranch, Mark and Susannah export 100% of their lambs directly into American supermarkets, mostly Whole Foods.
They say good marketing highlights the lamb’s holistic quality - no antibiotics or hormones and grassfed from farms that support animal welfare and sound environmental practices.
With an eye to constantly evolving and keeping ahead of the game, the Guscotts have never shied away from trying new things, even when it meant taking a risk and embracing tourism.
They built Whitimanuka Retreat, a luxury accommodation with views over the valley that backs onto an 18ha QEII-protected block of untouched native bush saved from the millers by Mark’s great-grandfather, Paddy.
After Wairarapa was officially recognised as an International Dark Sky Reserve in 2023, the Guscotts collaborated with astrophysicists from Wellington to run a Star Safari.
“The project includes installing a telescope covered by a shed that will roll back,” Susannah said.
“When you are farming, you can become very focused on everything really close up, so being able to step back and look at the stars makes you realise how insignificant you really are.”
As they ponder the meaning of that and what the future holds while their three children grow older, they play out different scenarios.
“We’re wondering about, should we do more farming, more tourism or more of something else?
“One of the kids said to us the other day, ‘You guys are always scheming’.”
“We both get excited about things,” Mark said.
“But you do have to approach ideas with a dose of realism.
“We can’t afford to do everything.”
So, will there be a seventh-generation farmer in the family?
It was too early to tell of their three teenagers, Susannah said.
“I mean, even we went off to do other things before coming farming in our late 20s.
“We will encourage them if they want to, but it’s hardcore and all-consuming, so we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Probably the same bridge John Milsome Jury built in the 1870s.
Because while time has changed some things, others remain much the same.
“We still have sheep, we still have cattle, we still have a crew of people, we’re still doing our best,” Mark said.
“The water pipes have a leak we have to find and fix. Things break and need fixing.
“It’s different but kind of the same.”
A bit like the weather.
They have rainfall records since 1931 and stories of a snowstorm in 1939 that killed thousands of sheep.
The farm has been hit by cyclones, including the Wahine storm in 1968 that left big tree stumps across the ground.
So wild weather is not new, and if it’s going to get worse, the Guscotts believe resilience will come in the form of adaptability.
“Those of us who are prepared to look at it as an opportunity will be successful,” Mark said.
“If we do get warmer winters, that means we grow more grass, which is better for animals, because we make our money in the winter, and we’ll be able to feed our lambing stock.
“Or we could even look at growing different crops.
“There’s a saying in farming that when you’re in the bottom of the gully, you can’t see the ridge, and when you’re on the top of the ridge, you can’t see the gully.
“So resilience means strengthening your skill base to take advantage of opportunities.”
Mark and Susannah have embraced one skill they never thought they would need - effective communication.
They are such converts that they go so far as to undertake psychometric or personality testing with their team.
“It’s about understanding people,” Mark said.
“You need to know what makes people tick to get the best out of them.
“It’s about making sure the people in the team are a good fit.”
Mark and Susannah believe John Milsome Jury would have been impressed by new technology, such as the Halter collars the cattle will start wearing in January.
“But that comes with its own issues because now we’ll need to become data analysts,” Mark said.
Even 170 years later, there are just as many challenges to farming.
For Mark and Susannah Guscott, however, a strong sense of whakapapa and heritage keeps them well grounded and firmly rooted to their Glen Eden farm.
- Supplied by the New Zealand Farm Environment Trust