Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
Farm ownership was always a goal for Colm Tierney. He'd wanted his own farm since he was a boy.
He and his wife Gaynor just had to work out how to get there.
They'd met when Gaynor, who grew up in Ireland and England, came out to New Zealand for work experience as part of her agriculture degree.
"I kind of worked my way around the world and ended up in New Zealand. Colm was the manager at the Dairy Research Corporation in Taranaki so I went to work for him.
"Obviously I got a bit more than I bargained for, eight children later."
Before children the Tierneys worked overseas but made the decision to come back to New Zealand to farm.
"Unless you are born into land, at home farm ownership is a real struggle so that was the goal when we came back in 2000 we were not sure how we were going to get there but here we are, 20 odd years later - so we've kind of ticked off that box," Gaynor says.
Once, when they were offered a bonus by an employer, Colm turned it down and opted for calves instead.
"So that was our first real step into getting our own stock ....After three years we had 100 cows ready to go into our first sharemilking job and we used them as collateral for the bank and away we went."
The Tierneys bought their 75 ha farm near Ngaruawahia nine years ago but didn't start farming it themselves until last season.
They employed sharemilkers to run their newly purchased farm.
"Where we were was a good job, good area, good owners to work for so the goal was to use that income on that bigger sharemilking job to help pay this farm off and then the other reason to put a sharemilker on up here was just to leave them to it - it was their cows, their machinery so it was just like you look after that farm and we've got enough to do where we are," says Colm.
Gaynor says it was a win-win situation.
"I suppose the reality of purchasing a farm after sharemilking for five years was financially we'd have put ourselves under a huge amount of pressure if we'd just come up here and run it ourselves without the income of a larger sharemilking job."
They were sharemilking 500 cows nearby, now they farm 230.
Gaynor works on the farm when she's needed. She has governance roles with various agriculutral businesses and is a tutor for the education arm of DairyNZ.
Gaynor Tierney Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
Colm Tierney Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles
