Denise Clemens on being the first female Young Farmer finalist

Denise Clemens has always had a love for farming. Photo / Supplied

When she stops to think about it, former farmer Denise Clemens reckons she has always been a bit of a pioneer.

Clemens (then Brown) broke the grass ceiling back in 1981 when she became the first woman to make the grand final of the Young Farmer of the Year contest.

Agriculture is in Clemens' blood and she grew up helping her dad on the family farm in Mid-Canterbury.

However, it was her agricultural science degree at Lincoln University that paved the way to the grand final, she told The Country's Jamie Mackay.

"As part of that, I ended up doing a job in North Otago working part time for the North Otago Advisory Club.

"While I was down there I became involved in the Young Farmers club and got into debating, stock judging and competing in the Young Farmer of the Year competition."

The final was held in Auckland and towards the local speciality - dairying, a subject Clemens wasn't strong in.

However, she still managed to do "all right" even though she didn't take out the title.

Clemens then moved on to more farming firsts in her career, starting a business as a rural secretary, which she still does to this day.

At the time, the role of rural secretary was new to New Zealand.

"It was started here from a lady in England, where it was big business," Clemens said.

This led to her role as the general secretary of the New Zealand Society of Farm Management and secretary-treasurer for the Mid-Canterbury Rugby Union.

She also ran bookkeeping courses for farmers' wives around Canterbury, Greymouth and Bay of Plenty through the Christchurch Polytechnic, and helped set up a Diploma in Rural Secretarial Practices at Lincoln University.

While these achievements seemed groundbreaking in retrospect, at the time they were all part of a day's work for Clemens.

"When I look back, there were a lot of things I was the first woman to do, or amongst the first women to do, but at the time I didn't see myself as any different to the rest of the crew and that was the way I was treated.

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"I was just one of the guys and I had a job to do and all those jobs I did over the years I was good at and it kept me in contact with the farming area."

Nowadays Clemens has 60 acres just out of Ashburton. She still has a keen interest in agriculture, even though she and her husband leased their farm about seven years ago.

"As you get older your body just can't quite do the things that it used to do, [but] I still keep in touch with the farming community ... I enjoy talking to farmers about the what, how, why and when etc of their lives and their farms.

"I've maintained an interest in farming all my life."