Farmer Yarn No.1: Lesley Coppell

Hi there!  I’m Lesley Coppell – and super-delighted to be the newest member of the Repost Team.  You might recognise my last name – I’m lucky enough to be married to Greg’s brother, Nick.

Nick and I run a 340-hectare sheep and beef property as part of a wider family operation out of Hinemoa Valley, just north of Eketahuna.  We’re in the final throes of succession – hopefully our name will be on the title within a couple of weeks.  Woop woop!

You may also recognise me if you’re local to Wairarapa/Tararua – I’m lucky to be an ANZ Agribusiness Relationship Manager and a Shepherdess Muster Committee Member (for which Repost was also a sponsor) amongst a couple of other things.  I was also hanging out with Greg at the Repost site at the Central Districts Fielddays in the weekend.  I loved chatting to so many people!

Repost and I have an alignment of values.  We’re both committed to empowering and supporting our rural communities; it’s been a privilege to work with Rural Support Trust, particularly following the Cyclones that devasted East Coast, getting posts and support to farmers and into communities that need it. 

Also, coming from a long line of farmers myself, who have short arms and deep pockets and who have been recycling since forever (anyone else spend their childhood straightening nails and staples to be re-used??), the ability to supply a quality product to farmers at a fraction of the cost of larger retailers, and reducing waste at the same time, certainly ticks my boxes.

When Greg and Dansy asked if we could be “the Pahiatua depot” about three years ago, it was a great opportunity to start getting what we saw as a great product into the Lower North Island.  It also allowed us to be really responsive post Cyclone with having the stockpile here.

For us on farm here, we’ve been using these posts exclusively for the last three years.

Our go-to fence at the moment is 1.8M posts plus netting with a wire along the bottom and a hotwire on top.  This comes in at about $5.80/m excl – a bit more expensive, but quick to put up, low labour requirement and nothing goes through it.  Or if we’re doing a standard seven wire plus one hot, we’d not normally use battens, so that’s about $4.10/m. 

For riparian fencing, the 1.6M posts are perfect, either four or five wire, or with the shorter netting and a hotwire along the top.  The 1.6M posts are a bit cheaper so it works out well. 

This latest fence though that we did last weekend, it had a serious lean going on after 50-odd years of cattle leaning over it to eat the roadside.  We just pulled out the posts, laid the fence on the ground with battens still attached, put new posts in and stood the fence back up again.  The bottom wire needed replacing, rest was ok.  Our bottom line, like pretty much every farmer right now, is slim to non-existent. No room right now for a whole new fence - it will however have outriggers!

We mostly use the post rammer – there’s not many places Nick won’t go with the tractor/bulldozer with the rammer on the back.  He’s found that he breaks far less of these than when we were buying new ones – generally any stress points have already been broken in the vineyard.  He can count on one hand how many of these have broken over the last three years. 

These posts are effectively brand new – they haven’t been in the ground and bone-dry from the Marlborough sun.  Repost also had Hills Labs test the efficacy of the tanalising – this has consistently shown all the samples across the sites tested have come back at 100% effective.  These posts are 100% tanalised as if they were new – and hence why for vineyards, disposal of broken posts is such a huge industry problem.  I’m stoked that we as, Repost and farmers, get to part of the solution.

Best part is, while we’ve been using these posts the last three years, before that we used to take the trailer on holiday with us to Blenheim, bringing home a load of broken posts, which we then had to tidy up and strip down ourselves.  This actually works out cheaper.  Winning!

I will be taking over the “Farmer Yarns” part of this e-newsletter.  I’m really looking forward to introducing you to many amazing farmers who have stories to tell from all around Aotearoa.

Take care

Lesley Coppell