Lizzie with one of her pieces, ‘Smoked Chicken’. PHOTO: Wanaka App

MADDY HARKER

Lizzie Carruthers wanted to be a farmer for as long as she can remember.

Born and raised on a farm in South Otago, she was helping her Dad on his farm from a very young age.

"I was the youngest of four girls and my father still calls me ‘Jim’. I was a total tomboy and wore a lot of brown corduroy.”

Lizzie still farms full-time, now on a farm she owns with husband Phill Hunt in Maungawera Valley, but the brown cords are long gone.

She’s still involved in her parents’ farm too, as are her parents. "Dad’s still there doing it at 87,” she said. "This year he was ridging the swedes still.”

Lizzie and Phill’s daughters (Hilary,18, and Fiona, 13) like farming too, Lizzie said, and Fiona even learned to negotiate her wage when she was employed by her parents to help on the farm last summer. "She was very good at it. Doing her bit for lessening the wage gap and equal opportunities,” Lizzie said.

While it could have been seen as unusual to have a young girl so keen on farming in a rural Otago community 40-plus years ago, it was never an issue for Lizzie.

"My father never thought I couldn’t do it.”

After completing school, Lizzie headed straight to Lincoln, where she completed a Diploma in Agriculture. As one of ten or so girls in the course, Lizzie stuck with it when many didn’t: the course had a 50 percent drop-out rate for the women in the course.

And after university, when many people go on a regular OE, Lizzie did hers farming style, taking an "agriculture exchange” to Britain.

A man called Tony Hawkins, whose farm Lizzie had worked on during her exchange in 1987, rang her just a couple of weeks ago as he was visiting New Zealand.

Wondering how he remembered her - from a three-day stint so long ago - Lizzie said it might have been that she drove a tractor during her stint on his farm.

"It must have been quite unusual to see a girl driving a tractor then,” Lizzie said.

Lizzie met Phill long before they became an item - she’d had a summer job in Wanaka pumping petrol at the gas station and had met him during that time. They went on to flat together, travelled overseas at "virtually the same time” but didn’t cross paths, and it was when Lizzie returned to New Zealand and resumed farming with her father while Phill was in Wanaka, that the two eventually got together.

"There was quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing,” Lizzie said, laughing. "We’d meet in Roxburgh at the halfway point.”

The pair eventually got hitched in 1993, and Lizzie moved to Maungawera to Phill’s farm, which has been owned by his family since April Fool’s Day 1929.

Lizzie has enjoyed art for as long as farming, although it wasn’t something that ran in the blood - she’s the only artist in her family.

If she had her time again, she might just have gone to art school, she said, but luckily the arts scene in Wanaka keeps her busy and engaged.

"When I came to the Upper Clutha there were so many opportunities to learn and so many courses.”

Lizzie’s just finished an annual art exhibition with friends - "it went really well” and tried her hand at etching with Ron McBurnie at an Autumn Arts School course.

She started with life drawing, and now finds herself painting mostly farm animals, a hybrid of her two interests.

She’s always reliable for an amusing caption: a recent series called ‘No Animals Harmed’ features a hatted duck (‘Tall Duck and Handsome’) a donkey (‘Don Key’) and a concerned looking dog in a shirt and tie (‘Worrying About the Sheep’).

‘Don Key’, from Lizzie’s recent exhibition.

Ideas come from her husband, friends and family, and a bit of brainstorming, she said.

Always ready for a laugh, Lizzie (a keen shooter) spent ANZAC Day at the local gun club with a group of female friends, dressed to the nines in period dress. "Practise for duck shooting,” Lizzie said.

With two daughters and a farm to run, it can sometimes be hard to find time to paint but Phill is reliable in telling her when he thinks it’s time for her to do some painting, and take a break.

Farming has changed over the years, Lizzie said, with productivity going up significantly between 1990/1 and 2011/12. In this period, dairy increased by 163 percent, beef and veal by 22 percent and lamb dropped 9 percent (but with 45 percent fewer sheep).

The increased productivity can be put down to a couple of things. One of them is more sophisticated technology and techniques. "Simple things like having a conveyor, we can now inoculate [process] all our lambs in one day when before it might have taken us three.”

The second reason is need, Lizzie said. "Because of the prices, people are farming smarter. It’s price driven too.”

Lizzie and friends dressed up at the gun range on ANZAC Day. From left: Lizzie, Vicki Cusick, Vicky Sanford, Rosa Stackhouse-Miller and Sharlene Nyhon. PHOTO: Supplied

With winter arriving there is more time for art for Lizzie, and it’s something she can spend hour upon hour doing.

"I think you go some other place, and you look up and the day is somehow gone.”

"I hope everyone can find the time to do stuff like that - it’s important for mental health. Or even better, have a job they love. Life is just too short to not do what you love.”

PHOTOS: Supplied