Robert Butson's farming philosophy has always been to keep it simple.
The Butson family have farmed Mt Nicholas Station, a 40,000ha property on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, since 1976.
The picturesque property proved a very popular destination for participants in the Queenstown Agribusiness Symposium, who travelled there by boat.
Originally settled in the 1860s, the remote pastoral lease property is one of New Zealand's largest high-country stations.
When Mr Butson, his wife Linda, and his parents moved to the station, it was running 10,000 halfbred sheep, as well as cattle.
Mr Butson's father was an earthmoving contractor while he ran a 320ha family farm in Southland.
He admitted he did not know ''too much'' about the high country, but he had done a bit of mustering, was a keen hunter and thought the mountains might be a ''pretty good place to live''.
Keen to give it a crack, they were unsure what direction to head and it was a wool-classer who was a ''bit of a hard case'' who told Mr Butson after one year that if he wanted him back, he needed to ''buy more bourbon and get merino sheep''.
They built up the merino flock slowly and rather than buying any sheep in, they increased it from the halfbred base which, in hindsight, was a good choice, Mr Butson said.
They now ran 29,000 merino sheep and about 2300 Hereford cattle, which included 900 cows.
Robert and Linda Butson still live on the property, along with daughter Kate and her husband Jack Cocks, who have taken over management of the station, and son Dave, a helicopter pilot, and his partner Regina Bernbeck.
''We just don't complicate the system. It's proved very successful,'' Mr Butson said.
Between 7000ha and 8000ha was fertilised and grassed while the remainder of the property was native country. There was no supplementary feeding and some lucerne was grown as a buffer for ''serious situations'' to feed bulls, rams and sometimes yearling cattle.