Jim Howard (left) and Charlie Duncan look across the lower flats of Westoe toward the Rangitīkei River. Photo / Bevan Conley
Jim Howard (left) and Charlie Duncan look across the lower flats of Westoe toward the Rangitīkei River. Photo / Bevan Conley
Rangitīkei people have rallied around to retain and extend a farm training school - and fulfill the wishes of the owner of the well-known Westoe farm, Jim Howard.
In 2014 Howard partially gifted more than 400ha of Westoe's Rangitīkei River flats to Lincoln University, provided the land was used totrain young sheep and beef farmers.
Until the training was established, the land was leased to Hunterville's Duncan family and used to train students at the Otiwhiti Station Farm Training School. It is operated by the Duncans and private training provider Land Based Training.
Lincoln University never established training on Westoe, which Howard said was due to upheavals after the Christchurch earthquakes and changes in personnel and policy at the university.
Lincoln "bailed out of the deal" and it had taken a "frustrating" two years to dissolve the Lincoln Westoe Trust formed to run the training, he said.
"We have spent the last two years trying to unscramble that deal. It's been a very long drawn out process and that has finally happened," Howard said.
A new trust is being set up that is similar to the one dissolved, with a similar purpose. The Otiwhiti Westoe Trust aims to continue using the land to train young sheep and beef farmers.
The Duncan family, owners of Otiwhiti Station, are to buy the lower 250ha of Westoe's river flats, with the Otiwhiti Westoe Trust keeping the upper terrace and buildings. They will be leased to the training school.
Howard hopes the property will eventually become a demonstration farm for use by the wider agricultural community. That could be "a pretty major extra development" for the future, he said.
Westoe farm will be a farm training school. Photo / Bevan Conley
Being able to continue to use Westoe for training will be ideal, Land Based Training managing director Rob Gollan said.
"We can teach a lot of skills there that we can't teach on the hill country. The finishing and cropping and flat land-type skills will be able to be taught at Westoe."
The training school has 16 first-year students who live on Otiwhiti Station, and another 16 second-year students who go there to do Level 4 qualifications. Gollan estimates 50-70 graduates are employed in the Hunterville/Taihape area, and it's those young people who keep Hunterville lively.
"I get one to three enquiries a week from [landowners] who want staff," he said.
Meanwhile, the Duncans' 1679ha hill country station is in the process of changing hands in an "in-house" deal. The new owners will be the Duncans, Land Based Training and an unnamed Hunterville businessman who wants to keep farm training going.
The new owners will be known as Otiwhiti Westoe Farming Ltd.
This network of deals and relationships keeps training and farming ticking over in the region, Gollan said.
Meanwhile the Westoe homestead, once the home of New Zealand premier William Fox, has been sold. Now settling the future of the Westoe farm is making Howard very happy.
"We were up at the Otiwhiti school graduation last week and just so impressed with the young guys and girls coming out of that, and where they are going," he said.
