‘The yellow beetroot is wonderful when roasted, the candy-striped beetroot is best pickled,” says Kathy Wilson, as husband David cuts a piece from each to show off the vibrant colours.
The Wilsons own Wilson’s Vege Stall, which can’t be missed by anyone travelling on the SH6 Winton-Lorneville Highway in Southland.
The stall is unmissable because, for one, it’s the only vendor on a very long stretch of highway, and two, there’s a man-sized turnip looking at you when you pass it.
They also milk 600 crossbred cows in a mostly grass system, across 210 hectares.
In 1908 David’s grandfather Henry Wilson came from Scotland as a six-month-old baby.
Eventually he milked and also ran a few hundred ewes.
When David’s father, Ken Wilson, was 18 he bought the farm from Granddad, who in turn bought a nearby farm for Ken’s brother.
David milked and supplied various factories in the late 1960s, but as factories such as Nestlé and Ryal Bush closed down, he transitioned to sheep.
Locals know the crossroads near the vegetable stall as Wilson’s Crossing, so named because Granddad had 12 siblings who all owned land in the area.
What was unusual for the time was that some of the sisters also bought land.
“Dad converted to sheep in 1969. He started with 145 acres [about 59ha]. Then bought 170 acres across the road. We have grown it from there,” David said.
The current farm is 210ha, cut in half by the Winton-Lorneville Highway.
The stall as it is today really came about because of political change.
David said he left school at 16 to help his father on the farm.
But in 1986, with a change of government and subsidies falling away, his dad could not afford to employ him any more and he had to make other plans.
“As a family we’d previously supplied a couple of thousand swedes to the wholesale market every week. In those days you were allowed to sell swedes by the roadside, but nothing else,” he said.
The swedes sold successfully on the roadside stand.
With that success in mind David, his brother Ian and father began buying other vegetables from the wholesale market and also sold those.
“That started the idea that we could expand. In 1986 we started growing our own vegetables.”
But with the law allowing only swedes to be sold, both the council and Transit wanted the family to close the stand.
David said the only way around the rules was to expand.
To do that they needed to keep both the council and Transit happy by creating ample off-road parking, and had to widen the highway at their own expense, along with a “raft of things that would probably put most people off”.
David said the self-service stand was profitable enough that he and his family decided to go all in, so they made the required changes.
In 1997 David and Kathy tied the knot and carried on with the stall.
In 1998 they bought out the family and took over the farm operation and ran 1800 Romney sheep.
In 2010 they doubled the stall size.
But then, just like in 1986, the market was about to play its hand again and the Wilsons had to decide if they would forge ahead or let the market decide their fate.
Not only was the stall doing well, but David turned over a lot of produce at the Invercargill wholesale market, which was part of Foodstuffs, with a daily truckload of cauliflower and cabbages heading to Invercargill.
Woolworths had always distributed vegetables from distribution centres and had for 35 years never bought local.
But around 2011 Foodstuffs also began pulling out from buying locally, too.
David said the stall did not meet Foodstuffs’ new requirements as a supplier – he was a one-man band, could not supply all year long, did not freight outside the province and had his own retail stall – so they lost them as client.
But by expanding the stall and then beginning to trade at the Invercargill farmers market in 2015, the Wilsons managed to keep selling the same volumes they always did, even after they lost Foodstuffs as a client.
David said their aim was always to supply locals with produce that was almost the same as something grown in “your own backyard”.
They now grow on about 10ha every year.
Kathy said a huge benefit of being dairy farmers is that they can rotate vegetable paddocks every year, often using paddocks that have not had any vegetables planted in them for 14 years.
“We simply get rid of the grass and plant veges,” David said.
The main benefit is that fresh paddocks have no disease or pest burden.
To this end they don’t have a specific spray plan and nor do they blanket spray, and say they are bordering on organic with the small amount of spray they use.
As David is in the paddocks each day, he keeps an eye on pest burdens and controls only when necessary.
“Many of the crops don’t need anything. If you catch aphids at the right moment you can nail that population and don’t need to go back in, just by being observant and knowing your veges,” Kathy said.
There is also no waste.
Sheep eat waste from the stall and cows clean up the paddocks when not being milked in winter.
The shop is run to fit the Wilsons’ lifestyle and is closed between September and February.
There are a number of reasons for this decision.
During the wettest winter months getting tractors into paddocks to cultivate would destroy the soil, and it’s also too cold to grow new stock for spring.
With the soil in mind their cows are also wintered off.
Over Christmas holidays too many shoppers leave Southland and their client base shrinks, only swelling again in late January.
“We worked out it’s too expensive to operate through that period”.
This break also helps ease any disease or pest burden.
The Wilsons ran 1800 ewes, but converted to dairy 17 years ago.
“We were too small a sheep farm, the veges sort of held the sheep up. We couldn’t afford to pay staff to help with sheep. Dave would dag lambs 11 o’clock at night, and then be off to the wholesale market at five in the morning. With dairy we could actually afford staff,” Kathy said.
The dairy farm now has a manager, Jeff Kinraid, and two staff, mother and daughter duo Laura and Sally Thorn.
The manager’s wife, Rachael, pitches in with rearing calves and relief milking when needed.
David basically flies solo when it comes to growing, with a student who helps him pick on Saturdays, and Kathy also heavily involved in harvesting and organising the stall.
The stall has for over 20 years been run by two local women, Sue Frisby and Louanne Roxburg, who share the job, with a student picking up the slack over weekends.
The Wilsons struck it lucky when it comes to soil.
Soil mapping shows they are on Waikiwi silt loam, a good free-draining soil.
Peat bog starts on one of their boundaries, and on their other boundary river gravel dominates.
They grow about 30 lines of vegetables, which include four types of beetroot, three types of carrot, fennel, kohlrabi, zucchini, marrows, cucumbers, pumpkins, yams, leeks, cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli.
The swedes are also still there.
A lot of propagating is done in tunnels, and planting is staggered, with new crops going in every two weeks.
Many of the crops hold well in the ground through winter.
David and Kathy said there are massive benefits to growing as far south as they are.
They often hear some vegetables can’t grow in their climate, but Southland frequently has high temperatures and long days.
They also believe vegetables that grow for longer are more nutrient dense. The sugars get time to set, and they therefore taste better.
David said when they were cut out of wholesale and began supplying the farmers market in Invercargill, they realised they needed an edge.
That edge was supplying the sort of variety that supermarkets did not necessarily stock.
“We kind of introduced kohlrabi to Southland. We’d cut a wedge and give people a try. Now we sell a lot of kohlrabi. Most people hadn’t heard of it 10 years ago.”
They send a few vegetables to local and Queenstown restaurants and David takes a truckload to Invercargill three days a week for some wholesale supply.
They also have a website and they courier boxes to the Southland public.
David said their biggest challenge is the small population of Southland.
Weather always plays a role, but, said Kathy, “Southland will get you down but it will never let you down”.
David said staying positive is a must in this industry. It’s easy to get in a mindset that everything is against you when, for example, magpies pull out all the seedlings you spent hours planting.
It is not yet clear if any of the Wilson children want to farm.
Daughter Hannah is still at school, but loves growing things.
Middle son Daniel is doing an engineering apprenticeship.
Eldest son Joshua has gone over to harvest in the United States a few times, and contracts to another farmer in Southland when he is back home.
What is important to the Wilsons?
“We want to grow fresh and local and support our Southland population.”
And although they both love cows, market gardening is their favourite as they are inspired by trying new things.
