Nigel McLeod isn't the sort of bloke who would call a short-handled, steel-bladed implement useful for shifting small amounts of dirt anything but a spade.
And it is this outlook Mr McLeod has brought with him to resurrect the fortunes of the Morikaunui Incorporation station up the Whanganui River.
When he took over as manager of Morikau Station in October last year, he outlined a two-year plan to the incorporation directors, which he launched on day one.
The sheep and cattle farm covers 4900ha in a stretch of hill country that runs from Ranana to Jerusalem on the eastern side of the Whanganui River. Of that area, about 2300ha is in effective production. Mr McLeod and his wife, Lisa, left a job with another Maori trust farming operation by Lake Rotoiti.
"They'd had trouble here. I actually applied for the job before but didn't get it but then next time around they came back to us," he said.
In less than six months, he has made his mark.
"I've taken the guys off quad bikes and got them on to horses. The country's not suitable for bikes, and the farm currently has very big paddocks and not many tracks," he said.
"You can't ride a bike around this farm and expect to get a clean muster, not when the paddocks are 190ha."
Mr McLeod did the same thing when he was running the farm near Rotorua.
"Part of the problem is guys don't respect farm bikes anymore. They come to work and expect to have one and have it upgraded every two years. That's not going to happen."
Getting on horseback would halve the running cost of bikes on the station.
There are four others working on Morikau - two stockmen and two general hands.
"If we need any extra help we try and use the locals as much as we can to do stuff like docking and casual work."
Mr McLeod's next target is subdividing the paddocks on the station.
"Effectively, 43 per cent of productive land is currently in 12 paddocks. Those paddocks are about 120ha-plus in size, with the biggest of them 190ha," he said.
"You can't make money that way, but it's been like that for years."
Apart from more fencing to create smaller paddocks, they have started putting in laneways to make stock movement easier and quicker. They have already put 4km of laneways in place.
"We'll probably stop at that because when we subdivide those big paddocks we'll just cut the bottom off them and that'll create their own laneways," Mr McLeod said.
"It's a hard farm to work with two or three of us mustering in those big paddocks. We'll be there for two or three hours then we have to punch them home without no laneways. That's just inefficient use of everybody's time."
The station has a fifty-fifty arrangement with Horizons Regional Council in which 15km of fencing will be put up along waterways that bisect the station. Smaller paddocks also mean another 30km of fencing, but Mr McLeod said they'll "bowl that off within the next 18 months".
He's got contractors in to do that work and funded it without borrowing. Cutting on-farm costs has helped and meant no fertiliser has been used at Morikau this year.
"There's no point growing grass if you can't utilise it," he said.
Morikau runs about 8.5 to nine stock units per hectare, including 11,000 ewes and about 950 cattle.
Mr McLeod is not looking at upping the stock numbers by much, preferring to improve the stock performance on farm.
"We'll get to about 12,500 ewes and run about 500-600 cows and sell all the cattle at 15-months," he said.
Mr McLeod said people often tell him he's working a nice farm.
"No. It's nice land but it will be a nice farm."
He admits to being "pretty impatient" and has set himself a two-year timeline to get his plan in place.
"We've just come from another Maori trust farm that was similar in performance to here. There were two blocks but we put them together to create one of 1650ha. It was doing 92 per cent lambing when we arrived, selling all its lambs store and all its cattle as weaners," he said.
"The last year we were there we docked just on 140 per cent and fattened up everything there. We changed to have 1000 dairy grazers on the property.
"That place will make $750,000 to $800,000 net profit this year. And that's $600,000 to $700,000 more than what's been done here (at Morikau)."
Mr McLeod laughs when asked how staff reacted to his plan.
"I guess they've heard it all before. They're on board but their skill level will have to rise because we're going to be running this ship a lot faster than it's ever been run."
He's confident he will achieve his goals.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe we can do it."
He said the formula he used at Rotorua would translate to Morikau Station; it's about feeding the stock properly and subdividing into manageable paddocks.
His wife, Lisa, has a rural banking background but at Morikau she looks after the home as well as being a part-time casual farm worker-cum-musterer.
But now their focus is on Morikau Station and a bold two-year business plan.