You’ll probably never meet someone as calm as Ange Alexander. Her peaceful demeanour naturally rubs off on you when you're in the same room. 

Married to husband Mike (better known as Smiley) for the past 25 years, the couple run Fast Harvesting based out of Tokoroa. 

“Smiley and I are very appreciative and super proud of our whole team,” says Ange. “We have several women within our team. Some have been in the bush for many years and have left, tried different things and then come back to us. Others have come with little or no experience and have worked hard to learn from the ground up, to operating some pretty technical and expensive machinery.

 “I think having a balance of men and women in the crews certainly helps, as some of the new initiatives from the women are quite different from the men, which is understandable, as we all think and see things very differently.”

Mereana Tobenhouse, aka Min, has been with the company on and off for many years, says Ange, and has been back full-time for the last six years following having her family.