Five Generations, 460 Cows, and a Philosophy That Goes Against the Grain
The Cleavedale homestead has stood on its Waikato hillside long enough to have seen everything the New Zealand dairy industry has thrown at farming families — the boom years, the crashes, the long debates about intensification, the shifting conversation about the environment. Through all of it, the family that owns Cleavedale has made one consistent choice: to farm organically, and to do it well.
Now in its fifth generation of family ownership, Cleavedale has developed one of the region’s most respected organic Jersey herds. The herd currently numbers 460 cows, and their milk — richer and more complex in flavour than the output of conventional Holstein herds — is sold across the North Island through organic dairy channels that have grown significantly in recent years as consumer awareness of farming practices has increased.
“We’ve never chased volume. We’ve chased quality and soil health and animal wellbeing. Those three things, if you get them right, the rest tends to follow.”
That approach has not always been the easy path. Organic certification requires strict adherence to farming practices that rule out synthetic fertilisers, certain veterinary treatments, and the management shortcuts that conventional farms rely on. Yields are generally lower. The premiums that organic milk commands in the market have, over time, compensated for this — but the family is clear that the decision to farm this way was never purely financial.
The historic homestead itself, carefully maintained by the current generation, is listed as a heritage property. It sits at the centre of a farm that looks, in many ways, as it might have done a century ago — except with considerably more purpose, knowledge, and connection to the markets of 2026.
