A year on the farm: Stoked to win four good practice farming awards

It's been a busy couple of months at Alistair and Genna Bird's sheep and beef farm near Oxford in North Canterbury.

"We were weaning, a whole bunch of lambs got sent to the works and off to other farmers to finish, and we've made hay and baleage so all the sheds are full," Alistair says.

The couple's environmental practices won them a place in the final of the 2023 Ballance Farm Environment Awards - a national showcase event for the rural sector.

Putting in the application takes a lot of work, Genna says, but was worth the effort.

As well as providing detailed documentation about her and Alistair's farming philosophy, there were also farm visits by the judges.

"You get a lot of feedback from the process and questions that encourage you to develop your own ideas in the business, so that was a huge part of entering."        

To Genna and Alistair's delight, the couple scooped up a clutch of awards at the regional awards ceremony in Christchurch.

The Bayleys People in Primary Sector Award was particularly special for Alistair.

"That was probably for a lot of the community work we do promoting agriculture," he says.

"We've just had 50-odd Lincoln University students here this morning and we talked about forestry and decision-making on-farm."

Genna says the Biodiversity Award acknowledges the couple's focus on protecting the 200 hectares of native bush on the property.

"The biggest financial reward would have been to get rid of the native block and put it into something like pine trees.

 "But we put a lot of effort into holding on to that because it's a lot of what we identified as the reason why we want to be here."

Genna and Alistair also won the Innovation Award and Environment Canterbury's Water Quality Award.

Alistair Bird is also a vlogger and regularly posts farming videos on his Kiwi Farmer YouTube channel.

Watch his latest video here.