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Handy Landys (from left), Sophie Gualter, Tessa Schmidt, Oscar Beattie and team leader Matty Rissi ready for work.
Farmers needing extra hands to herd heifers, plant trees, build fences or clean up under woolsheds are offered help by a new and unusual bunch of workers -- Handy Landys.
This group of mostly Lincoln University agriculture students offers skills and labour to the agriculture sector.
With support from the Rural Support Trust, the service is free to farmers; all the students ask in return is the experience and opportunity to network as they begin their careers in the sector.
Their website says the idea came -- as all good ideas do -- during a session at the pub. Now about 100 strong, they will muck in wherever they're needed, in the spirit of the Student Volunteer Army which mobilised after the Canterbury earthquakes.
Farmers can go to the website and register their task; a Handy Landys co-ordinator will assess the requirements, then schedule an appropriately skilled group of volunteers.
Recently, four Handy Landys – second-year Lincoln students Sophie Gualter, Tessa Schmidt and Oscar Beattie, and a team leader, fourth-year student Matty Risi -- turned out to help familiarise first-time heifers with the milking platform on Peter and Adele King's dairy farm near Burnham.
The Kings had about 135 in-calf heifers returning to the farm that day for the first time since weaning. As each truckload arrived they were introduced immediately to the milking platform before going out to pasture.
Adele King says they were impressed and grateful for the help; the Handy Landys team put their backs into urging the heifers into the rotary stalls. The animals are reluctant the first time through, and the Kings aim to introduce them to the milking platform three times before calving.
Now the Handy Landys look forward to native tree-planting, sorting a hazelnut harvest, fencing, painting, and general tidying. Completed jobs include helping a Selwyn District farmer with a "40 years overdue" cleanup under his woolshed.
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