Bruce and Andra Wallis’ Rockhill farm near Cambridge has been accepted for a New Zealand Farm Century award in 2026. Bought off the Crown in 1905 by Bruce’s great-grandfather Joseph Wallis, the Roto-o-Rangi farm has been in operation for 121 years, but has since moved from dairy to beef and has a successful quarry operation as well.
Bruce and his son Jack also grow 12 to 20 hectares of maize and make hay and silage for the local dairy farm industry from their 115-hectare property. The 240 Jersey cows were sold to a farmer in Southland back in 2019 and replaced with Charolais cattle instead, after Bruce and his wife decided to call it a day on milking cows after 40 years.
“We will never sell it, so we had to reinvent the wheel.”
Originally a peat swamp, it took years to drain the soil and start making money off the land, with the first cows arriving in 1920, some 15 years after it was purchased. “They didn’t have the machines that we have today.”
After WW1, Bruce’s grandfather, Stanley Wallis, came home and started working the farm. Stanley’s two sons, Jack and Ted, being the third generation, took over the ownership of Rockhill as the Wallis brothers and farmed the land faithfully for approximately 50 years.
After completing a Bachelor of Agriculture degree at Massey University, Bruce came home to the family farm to begin his farming career as the fourth generation Wallis on Rockhill. “I always wanted to be on the farm, because that was my calling.”
Bruce has an impressive collection of John Deere farm machinery, and his purpose-built shed is often used by Brandt Cambridge for client demonstration days. “Some of them are 30 to 40 years old,” he said. He has six tractors, one bulldozer, two balers, a seed drill, three gators, a maize planter, two ride-on mowers and even two John Deere push bikes.
But his biggest claim to fame was making national news back in 2010 when he built a baseball field in the middle of his maize paddock just like in the movie Field of Dreams. Two top Waikato teams from 1978 emerged from the maize and played in front of 400 bemused and excited local spectators. Farming used to be a real lifestyle. “You’d help your neighbours, but everyone has their own gear now or is more inclined to use contractors.”
Due to a large inventory of machinery, Bruce and Jack can handle most of the work on their cropping enterprise, which helps maintain a good profit margin. The quarry also boasts an array of heavy machinery such as digger, bulldozer and loaders used in the extraction of metal for local farms and the wider construction industry.
Bruce said extra layers of compliance had changed the way people farmed and put more pressure on landowners. He still writes everything down in a notebook, which he keeps in his top pocket. Nowadays, everything is computerised. “I know it’s a cliche, but they say you should leave it better than you found it. The farm is an absolute picture now.”
© Waterford Press Ltd 2026 – Independent Print Media New Zealand
