Sarah and Warwick Armstrong built their house within a year of arriving in New Zealand.

“Someone suggested New Zealand, we’d never been here but we thought why not,” Sarah told me when I visited the couple on their 20 acre Runciman block recently. “For a few weeks, we had no keys to anything – no car, no house – it was incredibly liberating.”

Back in Devon they had a small holding – what we would call a small farm – of 8 acres; Sarah worked fulltime on the farm and looked after their two girls, Georgie and Charlie. When Warwick wasn’t working in IT he also worked on the farm and the couple were both involved in the very active small farmers association.  

When they touched down in Auckland, the Armstrongs had no intention of going back into farming. Until they found that like so many cities, Auckland’s quarter acre sections and house were rapidly disappearing, giving way to town houses and apartment living. So they began looking further afield – so to speak – and found Pukekohe. 

“We’d never been to New Zealand and we’d never built a house before.” They had however renovated a 13th Century farmhouse back in Devon so got to work. Nine months later moved out of the garage and into their breathtaking home on the top of a hill.

Warwick Armstrong.

“At night – it’s so quiet. If you go outside, all you see is stars. It’s just magic,” Sarah said – and from the sound of her voice the magic hasn’t worn off during the eight short years since they moved into the house.

It wasn’t long before they began hand rearing orphaned lambs and have built up to a small flock of sixteen or seventeen, with twelve breeding ewes.  

They also hand rear calves – something new for the Armstrongs.

And that’s not the only difference. Something most New Zealand farmers take for granted has the Armstrongs quite bemused.

“We didn’t have loading races in England. Trucks had ramps that are built in, so we didn’t need one.  It seems a big investment for something that isn’t used much,” Warwick said.

Getting the animals on the truck isn’t the only thing we do differently here, Warwick and Sarah discovered. In the United Kingdom farmers of any size have to fill in movement books if even one animal is moved off the farm – even if it is only going to the neighbours to visit their ram or bull.

“Everything was noted – every movement. There’s much less red tape in New Zealand,” Warwick said.

It is also easier in New Zealand to grow things – something the Armstrongs find both a good and a bad thing. While they don’t consider themselves to be organic as such, they try to use as little chemical intervention as possible. 

Sarah Armstrong.

However they have found they are using more herbicide than they used to – the weeds grow just as fast as everything else.  

In Devon Warwick was a member of the Devon Rural Skills Trust, established to preserve the region’s traditional rural skills. As such Warwick learned how to build drry stone walls, hand shear – and grow and maintain traditional hedges. Including gorse hedges. 

“Back in Devon I planted gorse seeds to grow a traditional gorse hedge – and they didn’t take,” Warwick said with a laugh at the irony. “Here it grows easily but I have to get rid of it.”

Sarah gets frustrated with people who consider small farmers to be little more than pretend farming.

“We’re not softies just because we like to know our stock is well loved, well cared for and well fed. They’re loved to bits and then sent away. We work hard, we still have to manage our stock and our feed, still have to rotate stock.  It’s not just a hobby.  It’s really satisfying to put food on your table you know you have harvested off your own property. I don’t buy beef or lamb, I don’t buy eggs. I make all my own jam. Recently I took a friend a gift – and it all came off the farm: mushrooms, feijoas, figs, jam.  It’s wonderful.”

As well as running the small block, Sarah is currently a Real Estate broker for Michael Boulgaris Rural Real Estate, while Warwick has established a handyman service that caters mostly to the local rural community.   Most of his work is through word of mouth referral and he enjoys the freedom of working when and where he likes.

“Our life is as simple as possible. I enjoy my work and the freedom it gives me. It is very satisfying that I can help my clients enjoy their properties.  I could always use a bit more work though.”

While there are naturally some things about Devon the Armstrongs miss, they clearly love their new home.   

“It’s a slower pace of life; the whole way of life is much is so much easier.”

There is one thing about New Zealand that puzzles Warwick slightly and that is the lack of clotted cream.

“Does anybody make it?  With all the dairying you’d think they would. Devonshire cream tea isn’t made with that stuff out of a can.”

The third largest of the English counties, Devon has a population of around 1,109,900. The county town is the cathedral city of Exeter, and the county contains two independent unitary authorities: the port city of Plymouth and the Torbay conurbation of seaside resorts.

In addition to Devon County Council itself, much of the county is rural or National Park land. 365 square miles (950 km²) are occupied by Dartmoor and as a result of its rural land use it has, by British standards, a low population density.

The county is home to England’s only natural UNESCO World Heritage Site -  is the Dorset and East Devon Coast, known as the Jurassic Coast for its geology and geographical features. Along with its neighbour, Cornwall, Devon is known as the “Cornubian massif”.

This geology gives rise to the landscapes

of Dartmoor and Exmoor, both National Parks. Devon has seaside resorts and historic towns and cities, plus a mild climate, accounting for the large tourist sector of its economy.