Craig Cox (38) faced the dilemma of many young people who want to go farming. In the past 20 years, land prices have risen way beyond their means, making the dream of buying a farm impossible for most.
When the North Otago man left school, he became a shearer like his dad, and was prepared to work his way on to a farm. Things didn’t go quite to plan but he is more than happy with how they have worked out. He is on a large lifestyle block near his native Oamaru. But it has been quite a journey to get there.
About seven years ago, he hung up his hand-piece after an international shearing career spanning the previous 13 years. Since then, he has worked his way into a new career as an agronomist and a month ago started a job with Ashburton-based Catalyst Performance Agronomy, experts in the science of soil management and crop production. The company has stores in Cromwell, Oamaru and Gore.
Mr Cox advises farmers on how to get the best out of what they plant on their farms. Shearing and the accompanying life experience provided the pathway.
‘‘You never stop learning — I’ve always been that way,’’ Mr Cox said.
He made that his aim and continued to aim high. Mr Cox went to Waitaki Boys’ High School. Big on brains as well as brawn he was a good rugby player the plan was that he would go to university. However, his dad had started shearing in the United Kingdom.
‘‘When he told me how much I could earn, I said ‘get me a stand’.’’ And that began a shearing career that would take him from the picturesque Scottish Borders to the sizzling heat of Sardinia and the extreme cold of Wyoming.
Following in his father’s footsteps, he started off in Scotland in 2002.
His first boss was Una Cameron, of St Boswells in the Borders. One of his workmates was the late great wool handlerturned-shearer Joanne Kumeroa, of Whanganui, who died in 2015.
‘‘Being a 19-year-old shearing between two tidy women shearers who beat you every day, there was nowhere to hide.’’
He learned to shear clean.
‘‘Kiwis had a reputation for being fast but not without a few nicks, and overseas they did not like that, so I got in the habit of shearing without cuts.’’
He went back and forth from New Zealand for seven years. During one season, he shore for 62 days out of the total 63 days.
After the first year, he based himself in Winton in Southland, where there were more sheep.
‘‘My father said, ‘you need to shear more. I can’t teach you any more’. There were a lot of UK and overseas shearers based there, and a lot of young people, so it was a good move.’’
His UK stints came to a skidding halt when immigration caught up with him. With no visa, he spent 10 hours in jail at Heathrow and was deported.
‘‘So that was the end of the UK.’’
His stints on the Italian island of Sardinia began: human population one million; sheep, three million. The ewes were milked by hand. The heat on the island could be extreme: he can recall it being 42degC on one day there were sheep to be shorn. Enter strapping Kiwi shearer.
Shearing was a community and family affair.
‘‘You’d be set up under a tree and shearing 300 a day. They were so used to being handled it was easy and they were small sheep, about the size of lambs. There would be a catching pen set up nearby, and someone would just pass you a sheep.’’
He particularly remembered the food laid out on a long trestle table at mealtimes. Maggoty holey cheese and unspeakable fermented goat delicacies, disgusting to the untutored palate, were regularly on the menu. He had to learn to speak Italian super-fast.
Between the European and transtasman season, he also did stints in the United States, where the sheep were huge and the temperatures low: minus 22degC and seldom reaching the single digits below zero.
‘‘If you shore 200 a day in the USA it was going good. A lot didn’t have shearing facilities, so you were outside in the wind.’’
He loved everything about the States except the ticks.
‘‘You’d tuck your pants in your socks to stop them crawling up your legs and getting Lyme disease, which is a bit like getting malaria.’’
The disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi or, rarely, Borrelia mayonii. It is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks.
He got it and spent a horrendous few days holed up in his caravan. By that stage wife-to-be Kara had joined him on the road and was working as a rousey.
‘‘I got into my clothes and sleeping bag and hiked up the temperature to 30 degrees and just shook.’’
They were incredible years, but ‘‘I could see I wasn’t getting any closer to my goal of buying a farm. The shearing was getting harder for less, and I was starting to get a sore back. It was time to use my head.’’
In that last season on Sardinia he put his back out and had to get winched upright by rope. No-one had heard of a chiropractor, but they found him one in a nearby city, who manipulated his spine back into place with a resounding crack.
‘‘I could barely walk going in but I skipped going out.’’
However, he knew his shearing days were numbered.
He gave up shearing full time in September 2014, returned home and got a job disbudding calves for the local vet; way harder work than shearing because of the bending, he said.
After that, he became a shepherd at the Pukeuri freezing works yard. He loved working with the stock and the dogs, which reminded him of how much he wanted to be involved with farming.
Then a job as an agri-manager came up at Ravensdown fertiliser co-op. It involved soil testing, making fertiliser recommendations and giving agronomy advice etc.
Not really believing he would get it without a degree, he had signed on for another Sardinian tour of duty in May 2015. The company contacted him with an offer, and he returned home in July 2015. Mr Cox began to upskill immediately.
‘‘I did a lot of courses, but the rest was because I wanted to know stuff. You don’t have to sit in a classroom to learn.’’
A month ago, he started with Catalyst as an agronomist specialising in farm systems.
‘‘It meant I could specialise instead of being everything to everyone.
The Mediterranean experience taught him about sustainability and being self-sufficient. ‘‘I get to try things at home before I unleash them on clients.’’
He processes his own home-kill and grows his own vegetables.
‘‘I would never have learned that if I hadn’t gone to Sardinia.
‘‘A mate and I have joked about going back and doing a season when were 40.
‘‘I love life at the moment. I love helping people, and that’s what I get to do every day. ‘‘I guess I’m really lucky to get a shot because I can’t imagine doing anything else now.’’
- Mary-Jo Hill
