Living the Pōrangahau dream: a journey from the woolshed to farm management | On Farm Story

So I grew up on farm my whole life, in the wool sheds and then on farm. My parents went from being shearing contractors to working on farm so I've always been on a farm and always wanted to be. And then I was fortunate enough after high school to get into Smedley Station and do my cadetship there and been farming ever since. Very lucky to know what I wanted to do at a young age, it's all I wanted to be. People say it's hard work and it's long hours and all but if you're passionate about it there's nothing easier in the world because you love what you're doing. You get to bring up your family in an area like this and even though we don't own land, we get to treat land like we do own it, so you can't beat that. I'm Baden Anderson and alongside my wife Shea are children Phoebe, Molly and Colby. We're fortunate enough to be managing the Wormsey Canning Estate property here in Porongahoe, Central Hawke's Bay on the east coast of the North Island. We're very fortunate to live in the Porongahoe community. Porongahoe is paradise, it's got everything we need. We've got hunting, we've got diving, we've got fishing, we've got a wonderful sports club, great country club, golf course, tennis, netball, we've got a bit of everything. So with Shea being employed full-time in town at the local college it's great to have school holidays and be able to have the kids here and have Shea on farm sometimes as well to help out going back to the whole bringing the kids up on the farm. It's great to have them here and get them involved and learning from doing. So after graduating Smedley I went shearing for a couple of years, did two main shears shearing and then looking out the window in the woolshed realised how much I miss my dogs. So I went back shepherding so yeah I've been lucky along the way I've worked with some really good employers that have taught me a lot, taught me how to be a decent farmer and to get the results that you're trying to chase. This property consists of 512 hectares, 470 hectares effective, calving down 130 cows and some R1 heifers or R2 heifers. All Angus cows with a trading component in the older cattle that'll go to Hereford and then lambing 2,300 ewes and lambing 300 hoggarts with 500 dry hoggarts alongside them. Porongo is pretty well known for being summer dry and not summer safe at all. So when I came here we needed to implement policies that meant we could make money every year and in a summer drought we still could try and get our ewes and lambs, still get a higher percentage, still have a bit of an avenue to go down on fattening our lambs and that. So I implemented a policy of putting in cow and plantain and we really wanted to increase weaning weights and weaning percentages, just a lot more summer cropping and just being able to flatten the line a bit of income. Yeah it's affected how much expenditure we're having but it's meant we've flatlined our scanning results and weaning results and certainly putting a lot more meat out the gate. Three years ago between the Smedley Foundation and AgMart New Zealand they came up with some scholarships that were available to Smedley ex-cadets. I applied for the Rabobank Farm Managers Scholarship and was lucky enough to gain it, created a lot more thought-provoked ideas, a lot more leadership and changed the way I think about a lot of things, even being a dad is different. So after doing that in 2024 we did project presentations on what we'd changed in the 12 months since being there, which was on growing our equity and our personal growth as we need to look out for ourselves to try and get there one day into land ownership. We need people in the agriculture industry and the whole industry too, not just as shepherds. We need people in the stores, we need people in the sheds, we need young people in agriculture and schools need to push it. So massive gratitude to the Smedley Foundation and AgMart for putting these scholarships forward and to be able to create an environment that people can learn and get better and it be funded through that scholarship is pretty amazing really.