Several major Welsh agricultural organisations are uniting to honour retired Otago sheep and beef farmers Geoff and Ailsa Neilson.
The six organisations giving the Wales International Relations Award are Farmers’ Union of Wales, Hybu Cig Cymru Meat Promotion Wales, National Farmers’ Union of Wales, National Sheep Association Wales, Nuffield Farming Scholarships of Wales and the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society.
Mr Neilson said his family were "shocked and overwhelmed" to be receiving the award.
"Boy, we are humbled."
The award would be presented at Chatsford Village in Mosgiel next month.
Mrs Neilson, who has dementia, lives in the retirement village.
Mr Neilson praised his wife of 56 years for her support through his farming career including receiving a 2013 New Year’s Honour for services to agriculture.
"She is my greatest mentor. If she had not been there to give me that support and encouragement, I would have never started."
Mr Neilson was raised in Owaka, the son of a railway serviceman.
One of eight children, he was 15 when his father died.
"I never, ever wanted to do anything else but get involved in farming."
He then worked on a sheep, beef and grain farm in Morton Mains in Southland for three years and a sheep and beef farm in Moonlight, near Middlemarch, for a decade.
He met his future wife at the amalgamation of the Young Farmers Club and Country Girls’ Club in Napier, Hawke’s Bay in 1968.
Both of them were delegates of the respective clubs.
He was the national president of Young Farmers.
At the time Mrs Neilson (nee Armstrong) was living on her family farm in Waihaorunga, near Waimate.
The couple married a year after meeting.
"We just clicked and I’ve never regretted a moment," Mr Neilson said.
After their wedding, they entered a partnership with her father on a 243ha sheep, beef and cropping farm in East Chatton, north of Gore, for seven years from 1971.
Mr Neilson was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship in 1975.
"I found a comfort with the Welsh sheep farming system."
A Welsh sheep farmer asked if his nephew could visit them in East Chatton and an invitation was extended.
The young Welsh farmer arrived for lambing in 1978.
He would be the first of more than 100 students, mostly from the Welsh Agricultural College, to live and work on the Neilson’s farm between 1978 and 1993.
"It just grew like a mushroom and we enjoyed it."
By 1978, the couple had enough money to buy a farm of their own, the 207ha sheep and beef property Airliewood in Clifton, west of Balclutha.
Airliewood was a nod to his great great grandfather’s property in England.
The Welsh visitors were treated as family and lived in the house with them and their children Dianne, now of Rotorua, and Andrew, now of Palmerston North.
Most visitors arrived about mid-August and departed after Christmas.
The visitors were put to work and earned a wage.
Welsh sheep and beef farmer John Yeomans stayed with the Neilson family twice and the experience changed his outlook on farming.
"It opened my mind," he said.
He recalled his first visit and asking Mr Neilson for a glass of milk and the response being "my house is your house, anything you want, you can have".
"It still chokes me up to think of those times," Mr Yeomans said.
Mr Yeomans was "chuffed to bits" the organisations had come together for the award.
All of the organisations had members who had stayed with the Neilson family.
Welsh expat and sheep and beef farmer Graham Evans, of Owaka, attended the Welsh Agricultural College and many of his close friends had stayed with the Neilson family.
The experience allowed his friends to look at farming from a different angle.
"They have a far broader view than they would have ever had if they had stayed in Wales."
After 23 years at Airliewood, the Neilsons sold the farm and retired to Mosgiel.
Other industry roles included chairman of Federated Farmers Otago and Southland in 1969, member of the Telford Farm Training Institute between 1973 and 1977 and Ravensdown director in 1993.
He was a founding member of the National Hydatids Council in 1979 and was its chairman between 1988 and 1991, when the disease was eradicated.
"That was a big moment."
It took him years after the disease was eradicated to get out of the habit of washing his hands after patting a dog.
The disease was eradicated by dosing dogs to purge them, so faeces could be tested for the disease.
The "terrible" disease killed people in New Zealand, some of them were farmers he had known.
"It was brutal."
Other accolades for Mr Neilson include the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal in 1990 and the Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2013.
"They just weren’t for me alone — they were for Ailsa and the family," Mr Neilson said.
