By Sue Newman  December 10 2011

If your surname is Smith you'll share that name with thousands of other Kiwis, most unrelated.

But in the Ashburton District, if your name is Smith, there's a fair chance you can trace your roots back to William Tayler Smith, immigrant farmer, who settled on 20 acres at Alford Forest.
That was in 1873 and today the fifth generation of Smith men still farm some of the land that was owned by their great, great grandfather.
For the family that long, unbroken connection with Mid Canterbury farmland is something of which they're proud.
There's a special feeling about walking the same land that has been walked by your forefathers, they say.
Farming practices may have changed, but the links the Smith men have with their land is enduring.
In the last quarter of the 19th century New Zealand became home to a steady influx of immigrants, keen to build a new life for their families in a country where opportunity seemed unlimited.
Most of those immigrants were from the British Isles and many chose the Ashburton District as the place to settle, to build homes and to buy farmland that was available in quantity and at a price unheard of at home.
Those early farmers often produced large families and their sons became the first generation of Kiwi-born farmers.
In the generations since those farms were passed from fathers to sons. With each generation more land was bought and often the original small holding became several large, highly productive farms with the family name on the gate.
As the years passed, subsequent generations looked beyond the farm gate, realising there were other options to farming.
Many of those family farms were sold, early settlers' names disappeared from land deeds. The multi-generation family farm became a rarity.
Not so the family of William Tayler Smith, landowner and bullock team driver.
From small beginnings his landholdings grew to include larger tracts in the Alford Forest–Springburn area and at Seafield.
William and his wife Hannah went on to have 11 children, with their second son carrying his father's name, William Tayler.
He would become the owner of Fairview farm that is still farmed by his descendents today.
The second William Tayler Smith and his wife Catherine Harvey had six children, with the eldest Allan buying the Fairview farm.
In turn this has been farmed by his son Allan and his wife Erna and now by two of their three sons Kerry and Graeme.
When Allan and Erna married they lived in a small hut on the property and Allan spent his days working as a shearer. Eventually a second house was built on the farm and he farmed in partnership with his father.
The Fairview block has grown now to 231 hectares and over the years the family bought additional neighbouring blocks as well as another block at Alford Forest.
While that's the direct line to the Fairview farm, descendents of other early Smiths continued to farm land in the Ashburton District for several generations, but none can match the Fairview line for endurance.
However, things are about to change on Fairview.
After four generations of the farm running mainly sheep and cattle, Kerry and Graeme are switching to dairying. For the fifth generation Smiths that's not a new venture, they're already farming cows with an equity partner on another block.
For them it made simple economic sense to convert the family farm as well.
Both Kerry and Graeme say there is a real sense of kinship with the land they farm, but they say there was never any pressure to become farmers. Neither son considered any other career option. Their oldest brother Stuart, however, decided to make his living as a Marlborough-based winemaker, but he's retained links with the Springburn farm, naming his wine Fairhall.
The original farmhouse, built in the 1880s has long gone and a small block with the second house on has been sold off.
New homes are on the agenda for Graeme and a farm manager.
Change may have been slow in coming to the rural sector for several generations of Smith men, with Allan saying that in his day farmers didn't need qualifications.
His sons, however, need to be both businessmen and farmers, he says.
Today at 82, Allan is still actively involved on the farm and is watching with interest as the dairy conversion takes place. He's philosophical about the change, saying it was probably the same for his father when he decided to go into deer in 1979.
When he took over, the farm was open to the howling nor'westers and he took advantage of the Government-subsidised tree planting scheme.
Many of those trees have now gone to make way for dairying's central pivot irrigators.
It's not a full-scale removal progamme, where possible belts of trees have been preserved and his sons say that any additional irrigation will be tree friendly.
As they've removed fencelines to accommodate irrigators, there has been the odd surprise at the bottom of postholes – empty whisky bottles left by long-gone fencing contractors. Most of those posts were painstakingly dug by hand; today they've been ripped out in minutes.
The Smith family also has a long association with weather keeping in the Springburn area.
Since 1913 they've checked their weather station every morning, faithfully reporting their findings to NIWA.
It's in the lap of the Gods whether the family farm will see its sixth generation, but with several of the first settler William Tayler's great, great, great children in the wings, there is every chance the Fairview farm will remain in Smith hands.

Pictured: Today it's just an old tin hut storing farm chemicals, but for Erna and Allan Smith it was home for the first few years of their marriage. With sons Graeme and Kerry, the couple take stock of the farm that has been home to five generations of their family.

Photo Kirsty Graham