WORDS & IMAGES BY ANNIE STUDHOLME
Richard Morris has done many things in his life, from contracting to flying helicopters on New Zealand’s West Coast and being a ski instructor at Mt Hutt, but farming has always been in his blood.
Having run his contracting business preparing and seeding new lawns for a decade, Richard has recently taken a step sideways, returning to his and his family’s roots working at Mt Alford Station.
“It’s funny how cyclical things are,” he says. Though it’s a challenging time for farmers with rising costs, uncertain global markets, and a wave of government policies threatening the future of sheep and beef farming, Richard says it’s simply not the time to underestimate the importance of food production and how important the agricultural industry is to New Zealand. “Personally, I think food production is really important, and I really wanted to be part of something productive.”
Mt Alford is owned by former ANZCO Foods founder Sir Graeme Harrison, who after 34 years at the helm of the company decided to go into farming with the purchase of the 1580-hectare Mt Alford back in 2015. Bounding both sides of the North Branch of the Ashburton River, Mt Alford boasts fertile, productive flats extending to steeper hill country in the Mt Alford and Pudding Hill ranges. Subsequently, Sir Graeme has added additional land. His total farm area in the Mid Canterbury region now covers more than 2,300 hectares and encompasses properties at Mt Alford, Pudding Hill, and Highbank.
Across all the farms, the operation runs a sheep and cattle breeding and finishing operation, running a total of 3,500 Perendale ewes, with plans to increase that number to about 4,000 over the next few years. Annually they calve 550–plus Angus cows, raise more than 1200 cattle including Angus homebred steers for Five Star Beef, and over 5000 lambs.
Sir Graeme is passionate about the environmental work they have completed on the farms. Since purchasing the original property, they realised its limitations, setting areas aside, permanently fencing off more than 350 hectares of indigenous vegetation and wetlands from livestock. They have also planted more than 100 hectares of exotic forestry and indigenous plantings.
With a move to run the properties as one and a focus on reducing the reliance on contractors, a new position was created. As Richard and Hannah had already been renting the homestead at Mt Alford, Richard saw an opportunity.
“Partly, I was over planting lawns and looking for something different. Farming is something I have always enjoyed and had an interest in. It happened organically.”
Richard relished returning to his roots after joining the team in February. “It’s quite varied, and I am really enjoying the work. It’s always been part of my roots, and I am happy to be back involved in the industry.”
Richard hails from a long line of farmers. His grandfather, Harold Morris, had a sheep and cropping farm in Winchmore, which was later taken over by his father, John Morris.
During his tenure on the farm, John was also heavily involved in incorporating the Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation Scheme. Initially developed in the late 1940s to provide border dyke irrigation supply to 5/8’s of the land via a gravity-fed open channel system, following the incorporation, farmers subscribed for shares to fund initial business operations such as employing staff, purchasing plant machinery, and funding easements and water supply agreements. They then negotiated an acquisition from the Crown and administration by the Ministry of Works for an irrigation scheme comprising open races.
Along with farming, John was also an avid skier and mountaineer, working up at Mt Hutt—a passion Richard also inherited. Richard remembers life was incredibly busy with his father trying to do both, splitting his time between the mountains and the farm. “He struggled with the snow sports/farming cultural divide of the time. That somewhat alienated him in both communities.” At one stage, Richie also recalls him doing a big climbing expedition to the Himalayas in India with the Canterbury Mountaineering Club. John sold the farm in 1995 but didn’t relinquish their original Ruralco account number.
After leaving school, Richard worked with Andrew and Val Jackson of Jackson Holmes Contracting. He operated many different machines there, from being part of the early team involved in the original baling business rising to the role of operations manager.
Having inherited his father’s love for skiing, Richard spent the off seasons working at Mt Hutt. In all, he did 11 winters on the mountain ski instructing, working with the ski-racing and events like Methven Big Air. He also worked as a snow groomer. There was even a brief period when both Richie and his father worked up there together as ski instructors.
Richard’s other big love was helicopters. “I had always had a long-standing desire to fly helicopters. But my parents had always told me I could do anything except fly helicopters,” he smiles.
While working for the Jacksons, Richard heard the constant thrum of the helicopter blades flying overhead from nearby Mount Hutt Helicopters. So, in 2006, he took the plunge, learning to fly and moving the family to the West Coast for a job with James Scott of HeliServices.NZ. He spent the next seven years flying hunters, doing scenic tours, and Department of Conservation (DOC) work.
Though he loved the work, the family yearned to return to Canterbury. “I loved the West Coast. Both our children were born there. Franz Joseph is stunning, but it’s isolated and unforgiving. I never really felt like I belonged there,” says Hannah.
On settling back in Methven, Richard started his own business, Morris Contracting preparing and seeding new lawns and green spaces for new sub-divisions, reworking old lawns, lifestyle block pastures, preparation and levelling, stone burring, post establishment rolling and fertiliser application. He’s been doing that for the past decade.
Richard and Hannah have recently purchased their own piece of paradise on the hill above Alford Forest, which they are developing. Sheds have already been built, with Hannah’s very own workshop next on the list to be completed. The property includes some remnant native forest and is planted with pine trees.
Though Richard has never farmed in his own right, he has remained strongly linked to agriculture throughout his career and puts a lot of value on his Ruralco account number. It remains one of the very few account numbers that had been retained by the same family throughout.
Richard’s grandfather, Harold Morris, was responsible for taking out the Morris’s first account with the newly formed Ashburton Trading Society (now Ruralco). Started in 1963 by a group of farmers after competitive pricing for their businesses and a sustainable future for tomorrow, Harold was one of the first 50 farmers to sign up. And it has remained in the family ever since.
Sadly, Richard’s father passed away from Leukaemia in 2000. His mother had retained the number until recently when Richard took it over due to her ill health. “My father had held that account number for a long time. It was really important for me to keep that number. It’s not only an incredibly easy one to remember, but it’s that one connection I have to my father and the farm. It ties us back to the region in a way.”
It was also incredibly special to think that our family had been involved with the co-op since its early infancy and still was 60 years on.
And as for what the co-op means to him, “Currently, it is the warm, friendly greeting I get in the Methven store and the first name basis with the staff. They are my go-to for pipe fittings I need every time I get on the digger at our block. The staff always joke with me if I would like some pipe fittings with the dog food I might be buying at the time.”
Richard is also a volunteer for the local Alford Forest Fire Brigade, having previously been one while in Franz Joseph. He is also a keen mountain biker along with the whole family. He’s been a Bike Methven committee member and has volunteered many days on track maintenance and events.
Perhaps ironically, Sir Graeme was a co-owner of the land the Mt Hutt Bike Park sits on, along with The Bike Methven Club and 11 other shareholders. Sir Graeme later bought out the other 10 shareholders to keep this area as the great community asset it has become. It was through the bike park that they first met.
LEAVE ALL GATES AS YOU FIND THEM
Artist Hannah Kidd’s remarkable sculptures have an unmistakable rural feel. Using that most rural of materials, corrugated iron, her work embodies the spirit of rural New Zealand, with its working dogs, farm animals, wild animals and native birds to life-size farmers, All Blacks heroes with lamps on their heads, ice creams in a cone and huge lit up Kiwi slogans.
Originally from Christchurch, Hannah followed her older sister, Lauren, to Dunedin, studying at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art. She graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture.
While most of her classmates went into teaching, Hannah knew she wanted to be a practising artist from the outset. Having met Richard in 1999, she moved to Methven after graduating. Initially, she worked out of the garage at home before setting up her first proper workshop and has never looked back. Quickly gaining critical acclaim, her distinctive works have been exhibited worldwide.
Although skilled in bronze casting, Hannah found herself drawn to making “big stuff”, and for that, she needed to know how to weld. She first picked up a welder at South Pacific Seeds welding cabbage stakes before going to work for Don Johnson at Methven Engineering. “Don really taught me how to weld properly.”
Hannah started welding the framework and using a lot of fibreglass. Still, it didn’t give her the effect she was after, so she started experimenting with chicken wire and anything else she found lying around. After first trying tin, she turned her attention to using corrugated iron. Not only was corrugated iron easy to source, but it was cheap, and she knew it would last.
She now uses those skills to create delightful life-sized (or larger) sculptures from steel rods and corrugated iron as a means to investigate people and the relationships they have with their surrounding environment. They provide a fascinating commentary on New Zealand’s rural life and reflect the prevailing attitudes in rural towns.
Hannah jokes that she should have been a farmer. “I love a good A&P show,” she smiles. “We have strong rural connections without being in it. We are part of it, but we’re not. I just love all the personalities and the dynamics between them.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Hannah’s sculptures are created mainly on the fly. She does not painstakingly sketch out the pieces or work from maquettes but instead constructs the pieces entirely by eye, building the beasts as she goes.
“It’s a two-step process,” she explains. Having first imagined it in her head, Hannah finds as many images as possible of the subject and then, using chalk on a tin bench begins to draw a silhouetted outline. Using this two-dimensional outline, she works upwards, cutting and bending the steel rod into a three-dimensional frame, welding the many pieces together.
The object is then clad in welded corrugated iron, often flattened out previously, by driving over the iron with a heavy roller on a friend’s farm. Sometimes the iron is left raw, rustic, unpainted, or painted in acrylic or enamel paint. Possibly even lighting is added.
Hannah never tries to conceal the materials she uses to make her pieces. The nuts and bolts, joins, and scars of the works all add to the finished objects, helping bring them to life. Each one takes her and her assistant, Sue Bamford, hours to draw, raw, cut, bend, weld, attach and sometimes paint her creations into existence.
Her art isn’t all welding irons and bolt cutters, though. Recently Hannah has been exploring her love of ceramics and tapestry. “I have always been interested in ceramics but hadn’t really had the time. I find it very therapeutic. I make it up as I go along.”
While the urn shapes are relatively traditional, her subjects are anything but. The colourful designs feature everything from Vladimir Putin on horseback to Instagram cats, pink flamingos, cows, chickens and social media messages about missing dogs to racecourse stands. Each urn is exhibited on its own tin stand in reference to her trademark style.
Ceramics was something Hannah had been able to do with the children, whereas welding wasn’t exactly child-friendly. She runs a Clay Club in the old Mountain Gym in Methven every Friday, open to anyone, young and old, interested in giving it a go. In the future, she hopes to build her own kiln.
Hannah’s other passion is tapestry. For more than a decade, she has painstakingly collected quintessentially English tapestries from second-hand stores, repurposing them in her home studio into amazing bags and cushions. The tapestries Hannah selects feature scenes of horse-drawn sleighs, ribbon-bedecked ladies, and rolling green-gold landscapes.
Nowadays, much of her time is devoted to commissions, with her work also sold in galleries. She has just one exhibition a year.
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