June

Job done: Russell Joblin

The Joblin’s have been getting on with farming in Hawera for a while now.  Both local to the area, Russell’s family bought 100 acres in 1960. They added to this over the years and now have 1000 acres of rolling pasture under the watchful eye of Mt Taranaki. 

Russell & Karen have taken up the challenge through their 33 years of marriage.  With a grown up family on the farm and in the neighbourhood they’ve every reason to be proud of what they’ve achieved.  So it was a strange twist of fate that saw them 18,000km away when disaster struck.

Russell & Karen were overseas at the time of the shed fire; they have been stepping back from running the farm and letting the boys take the lead. Eldest son Simon was in charge at home and discovered the fire in the morning, it had been a wet, miserable night and no one had spotted the smouldering shed in the dark. 

FMG were on the case straight away.  At the time when tradespeople were scarce and there was a long lead times on getting building work started, FMG allowed them to contact their own resources rather then impose restrictions.  Simon’s wife Philipa (the local policewoman) managed to drag local builder Kevin out of retirement to manage the project.  He had built the original milking shed 11 years earlier, and just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have another crack.

According to Russell, the experience reaffirmed just how good FMG are.  “I came home and everything was underway” he said. “We were allowed to make things happen.  We didn’t cut our holiday short and stayed on for another 10 days because we knew FMG had it under control”.  When asked how he’d sum up FMG he said “Everyone’s heard of FMG, they mightn’t be the cheapest, but at the end of the day they are there when you need them.”