Farmstrong: Patrick Crawshaw faces years of fencing after Cyclone Gabrielle

Isabelle and Patrick Crawshaw at the FMG Young Farmer of the Year East Coast regional final.

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It’s been a big year for Pātoka sheep and beef farmer Patrick Crawshaw and his wife Isabelle.

Isolated by Cyclone Gabrielle, Patrick’s first trip off their 285-hectare farm was to compete in the East Coast Regional Final for the FMG Young Farmer of the Year contest.

Naturally, the whim paid off, and he was then faced with preparation for the Grand Final in Timaru in July, alongside ongoing clean-up efforts.

“Without a doubt, I’d probably have preferred to be able to prepare better for a Grand Final, given that it was my last attempt,” he told The Country’s Jamie Mackay.

“But, in the grand scheme of things, I knew the [competition] has a lot of respect, a lot of opportunity…to open doors just being a Grand Finalist.”

Now the competition was over, the focus once again returned to recovery efforts – which were progressing well, according to Crawshaw.

“It’s a long journey, obviously.”

Ongoing rain events had slowed the rate of progress for many and limited the type of work farmers had been able to undertake, Crawshaw said.

“[For] our business personally, we’ve just sort of [used] patchwork repair with netting and waratahs - once the weather breaks and we can get a tractor around and…put posts in the ground, we’ll start doing that.

“In all reality, we’ll be fencing for a good number of years.”

Crawshaw said the pair were also doing a lot of planning, and aimed to “be a bit smarter and a little bit wiser around how we do our infrastructure.”

But, he conceded that the financial hit from the cyclone was significant.

“Every bit of help is really well received and helps keep the wheels turning in the right direction.

“But in all reality, we’ve got to look quite hard at our cost structures because they are under pressure or rising - our commodity prices aren’t worth what they were 12 months ago and things like that.”

Crawshaw said the situation was “tight” and the couple now had to build themselves back up into a position to be able to harvest again and capture as much opportunity off their land as possible.

“You’ve got to allocate a fair bit of time outside of the [fencing] or whatever it might be to sort of get a handle on it and have those conversations with your bank and make sure that you’ve got everyone on the right song sheet to steer it in the right direction.”

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One final challenge Patrick accepted this year, was to join the board of Beef + Lamb New Zealand.

“If you want a job done, ask a busy person, [but] surely you’ve got enough on your plate?” Mackay asked.

But Crawshaw was thrilled with the chance to bring his perspective to the table and influence what was happening in his sector.

“It’s a really exciting opportunity and something that I’m quite humbled to be elected out of my peers for.”