Farmer selling up, heading for the hills to 'go hermit'

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Retiring farmer Snow Cleaver is set to "go hermit" after his clearing sale on Saturday.

"I’m going to load up a couple of packhorses and head into the hills and go hermit and have a good break."

The sale was due to the sale of the 100ha farm Shamrock Haven, which he and his wife Michelle lease in Pukerau, nearly 10km east of Gore.

"I came here to break in horses and never went away," Mr Cleaver said.

The farm operation was a mix of dairy support and running their own dairy beef.

On the farm, domestic turkeys and pigs roam.

The sow and her piglets would be auctioned and so would the turkeys.

"There's something here for everybody — bring your own cage," he said.

A large amount of gear for Clydesdale horses would feature at the sale.

He once worked a team of six Clydesdales on the farm but sold the horses about five years ago.

A range of vintage horse carts would feature including a landau carriage which he had used to transport newlyweds.

Some wagons had transported friends in funeral processions.

"There's not many of us, those who first started on the [Otago Goldfields] Cavalcade in the heavy wagons left, the rest have gone underneath.

He and his Clydesdales featured regularly in the cavalcade, parades and ploughing matches.

A plough, which he and teammate, ploughman Doc Wilson, used to win the trophy was for sale.

"There has been a lot of whisky drunk over that."

He laughed, recalling the nights before ploughing matches, when fellow competitors offered them whisky, in the hope they would accept and it would give their rivals a competitive edge the next day.

His teammate was a good ploughman and had a good eye for it and would often accept the invitation for a tipple from competitors.

Doc was on the farm last week helping with sale preparations.

"Where there's a fresh smoke and a whisky, old Doc is always there," Mr Cleaver said.

He thanked his friends for getting the gear ready for sale day, especially Lois McWhirter, Crumpy Taylor and Jo Fletcher.

"They’ve done a power of work. Everything for sale was operational but he expected some of it would be sold as garden ornaments.

He expected some vintage machinery, including a binder and chaff-cutter, would be bought and used for its intended purpose.

A rare Swedish horse-drawn mower was his favourite piece of machinery for sale.

He recalls the last time he used the mower. A television crew was filming him when a pitman arm shaft on the mower broke.

"It sounded like a shotgun going off the horses took a bit of pulling up."