Thinking outside the lifestyle box

Growing blueberries and olives and planning an agritourism venture would be an ambitious undertaking even for full-time farmers, but the Bradburys also have day jobs. They both work from home on their 20ha farm in Colyton near Feilding; Jules runs her own accounting practice while Stu works remotely for irrigation specialists Lindsay Corporation. The US-based company acquired a previous business that Stu was a co-founder of, which patented the world's first individual sprinkler-controlled variable rate irrigation system for pivot irrigators. Free from the daily commute that many lifestyle farm owners endure, Stu and Jules have had the time to think about what to do with the property they have owned for 15 years. They initially ran heifers and a handful of sheep “just because you do”, Stu says. “But for a long time, it had niggled at us that there must be something more we could do with this block of land that's a bit more interesting than just running a few heifers around.”

Expanding Project

Besides being a tech whizz, Stu also loves planting trees, and has been developing shelter belts to protect them from the harsh winds that are a fact of life so close to the Manawatu Gorge. They also identified an area between their race and their driveway with a couple of small paddocks that they thought would be ideal for horticulture, and they eventually decided on blueberries. “Blueberries just seemed to be an option that they didn't harbour too many diseases,” Stu says. “We like the idea of having to pick your own, so not having to employ labour to come and harvest. We can just get people to come and pick their own and we can have a little ice cream shop and all the rest, so that all appealed.” Although they planned for a small site, “one thing led to another” and the project got a lot bigger. They shifted it to another, more sheltered part of the farm and ended up putting in more than 2,300 blueberry plants – which they have now fully netted – on over a hectare. They also planted some raspberry bushes. “Before we'd done that though, Jules was like, ‘I really like olive trees. Why don't we plant some olives as well?’” Stu says. “Right next door to us, we've got an area that was a 100-acre block that's being subdivided into 70 houses, so we thought we could put olives all along that side of the farm and maybe make some olive oil down the track. So we planted 700 olive trees as well." Stu admits he and Jules have a habit of their projects ending up much bigger than they originally planned. “When we take on projects, we bite off more than we can chew… and we chew really hard.”

Blank Canvas

Fortunately they had the help of Farmlands Technical Advisor Laurence Frost, who they first met at the Central Districts Fieldays in March 2024. “We hadn't done anything yet, and so he said we need to put in a cover crop and we need to do this and that, and he was just a wealth of information,” Stu says. One of the first things Laurence helped the Bradburys with was sowing a cover crop of caliente mustard before they had done anything else to the soil. The purpose of the mustard was to ‘biofumigate’ the soil and adjust the levels of nitrogen. “We put that all in, and then I worked with him on the design for how we were going to mound up all the rows,” Stu says. “He advised us on the trees to get down the sides and hooked us up with the people that could supply the trees.” Stu says Laurence has also been quick to come to their aid with any issues, such as when rabbits started ring-barking their olive trees. “He made some calls and we had 700 cardboard tree protectors turn up that we could stick around the trees. That was a mission putting all of them on, but we got the rabbits away from them.” Laurence says it makes a big difference being able to work with customers from the moment they start thinking about a project, as he can help prevent mistakes that could cause major problems later on. “The neat thing with Stu and Jules is they presented me with a blank canvas. ‘This is what we'd like to do. What do you reckon we should do?’” he says. “For me as a horticulture specialist, it's really important because the crop doesn't start until you've prepared everything.” Laurence likens the process of preparing land for horticultural purposes to building a house. “Imagine if you slap up a house and they go, ‘So where's your sewage going?’ ‘Oh, we haven't thought about sewage.’ ‘Where's your power coming from?’ ‘Oh, I suppose you’ve got to dig a trench for that.’”

Looking Locally

Prospective growers also need to ask whether the plants they are planning to grow are suitable for their property and region. Laurence says the “golden rule” is to look at what else is grown in your local area. “If people are growing blueberries locally, chances are it will work for you. If they're not growing these things locally, chances are it won't work for you. And if you wish to try, please understand there's going to be a degree of pain, be it fiscal or mental pain or both.” Laurence says prospective growers also need to think about how they are going to harvest, pack and distribute their product. If a fruit is commonly grown in an area, this will likely make it easier to access local packhouse and coolstore facilities, labour and even specialist harvesting equipment, he says. “The kiwifruit customers in Whanganui suffer because most of them have to truck their kiwifruit up to the bay. Taranaki once had five packhouses, but the climate wasn't favourable and Cyclone Bola was the final nail in the coffin.” For lifestyle farmers there is another key consideration: time. “The biggest limitations for lifestylers are fiscal and time-related,” Laurence says. “They need to really be honest and identify how much time they're prepared to throw in.”

Time-saving Tech

Stu has tackled that time equation with technology, using his tech background to create solutions that have saved him hours of work each week. He says one of the most time-consuming aspects of developing their blueberry and olive orchards has been the mowing. “While the olive trees are little, you need to keep on top of the grass. I was out there on a large ride-on mower, and that took me eight hours to mow the olive grove and two hours to mow the blueberry area.” This has all changed, thanks to the introduction of robotic lawnmowers. Stu is a beta tester for a company called Lymow, and got to try out the first Lymow mower to be brought into New Zealand. “I've got four of them at the moment running around, and one of the engineers from Lymow is going to be calling in here next month to work on some stuff with me. “I've got this two-and-a-half hectare area of olives that's all mowed by robot mowers, and the blueberries will be mowed by robot mowers too, when we get a few bugs fine-tuned.” Stu has also put his irrigation expertise to good use, not only building the irrigation controller himself, but writing the code for a server that connects data from probes in the ground with ChatGPT, giving him up-to-the minute recommendations. “I built the system that could measure the probes and interface with ChatGPT, which would go and check the weather and the forecast. I can upload some photos and ChatGPT analyses the colours of everything and sees how things are going. “Once you get some tools like that, then it frees up a lot of headspace and then you can do other things.”

Tourism Team-up

An important part of the equation for Stu and Jules is tourism, and they accidentally did a trial run for the ‘pick your own berries’ aspect this year, ahead of schedule. “We weren’t supposed to have any blueberries this season. We tried to pick all the flowers off, but as it turns out, we sort of failed a bit on getting all the flowers and we ended up with quite a few blueberries,” Stu says. “So we opened up ‘pick your own’ days for a few early followers. We put it out on social media to pre-buy a punnet on our website, and that went really well. We had quite a few people come and pick blueberries.” Stu and Jules are also part of a Manawatu agritourism group, including their neighbours Mat and Jana Hocken who recently added an agritourism element to their dairy farming operation. “There's a guy down the road that does robotic milking and he's setting up a vending machine milk bar at his place,” Stu says. “And then there's other people that provide accommodation. And just down the road from us, there's a place with beautiful garden that’s perfect for events. “So we're all working together, talking about how we can encourage more people to come to Manawatu and see the variety of things that you can do. Rather than just being about us doing something, it's more about: ‘We've got a cool farm, they've got a cool farm and they've got a cool farm.’ Make it an experience.”