Rove isn't a startup's idea of farming. It's the app we needed for our own thirty hectares — and we couldn't find it anywhere, so we made it.
We run a small lifestyle block up a hill in Northland — a mob of cattle, a flock of sheep, a coop of preposterously fluffy silkies, and a couple of dogs who think they're foremen. It's not a commercial operation. It's the kind of farm a lot of New Zealanders actually have.
And every farm app we tried was built for someone else. Either a spreadsheet pretending to be software, or a thousand-head enterprise platform with a sales team. Nothing fit the in-between — the person who just needs to know which paddock the ewes are in and whether anyone's checked the trough.
So we built the thing we kept wishing existed. We used it through a lambing season, a dry summer, and a fence that would not stay up. It worked. Rove is that app, tidied up and handed to you.
The hardest decisions are about what to leave out. A farm app that does six things well beats one that does sixty badly. We cut more than we ship.
Half a real farm is a dead zone. If it needs the internet to tick a box, it's no use at the gate. Everything works offline, then catches up.
No confetti, no streaks, no nagging. Open the app, the work is there, you close it again. The farm is the thing — we're just the notebook.
The real stakeholders. Every feature in Rove was tested against the daily question of keeping this lot fed, watered and where they're meant to be.
The cattle · 6 head
Down by the dam
The silkies
John
Oscar, foreman
This year's calf
John, Eyebrows & a protective Oscar
Luffy, mouse control
Off dutyWe're a two-person shop with mud on our boots. When you email support, you get one of us — usually between feeds.