Strong Voices

Few people know the roads of rural Waikato better than Eddie Bennett. For years he delivered stock feed and fertiliser to farmers, carted frozen chickens and did courier deliveries.

These days Eddie, a former dairy farmer, works as a canvasser for the IHC Calf & Rural Scheme, travelling along many of those same roads. His job is to visit farmers who support the fundraising scheme by donating stock to raise money for people with intellectual disabilities.

Eddie, 85, covers a huge area surrounding Morrinsville. Last season he received 158 pledges from farmers in the Morrinsville, Waitoa, Te Aroha and Hamilton areas.

He and his wife Pam spend five or six weeks every year visiting up to 200 farms. He plans it carefully, calling the farmers first and designing his route to avoid travelling the same roads twice.

“The main thing is to keep the clients you have already got. That is the hardest thing. Picking up one or two new ones is a bonus.”

Eddie says he and Pam love getting out on the road. “We can take our lunch and have it under the trees. That is the main thing – to enjoy being out and spending the day on the road listening to farmers.”

Eddie has no thoughts of retirement. “What for?” he asks.

Eddie started work on a dairy farm in 1969, long before IHC even thought of asking farmers to rear calves in exchange for a pair of gumboots. Eddie says he was working for wages at first, but when the farm was sold he bought his first 130 cows and became a sharemilker. That was followed by another 130 cows, and the herd funded them into their own farm three years later – “95 acres for $100,000, that was in Orini, just out towards Gordonton”.

They farmed there for only seven or eight years until Pam became unwell. They sold the farm and moved to a 12-acre block in Ng?ruawahia, where they lived for 28 years before moving to Cambridge two years ago.

Above: Pam and Eddie make a day of it when they are out on the road visiting farms.