Country Life
The Country Life team take you all over the motu to hear the extraordinary stories of every day rural New Zealand.
Episodes
This week Country Life takes a look at efforts to save soil on farms at both ends of the country and takes you to taste some traditional kai in the Bay of Plenty.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
In this episode:
- 0:36- 'Planning key' to getting winter grazing right
- 10:00 - Rural News Wrap
- 15:52 - The Soil Hacker - one farmer's quest to outsmart the weather
- 30:55...
Producer Justine Murray flexes her tastebuds on traditional kai cooked up at Otawhiwhi Marae where food and stories came together as part of this year's Flavours of Plenty Festival. It's the first time a marae has taken part in the Bay of Plenty's annual foodie event.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
With thanks to:
- Reon Tuanau and Oscar Nathan
Make sure you’re followin...
Kaipara farmer Stephen Newman is intent on improving soils and pasture in low cost, natural ways. He's now helping others too and hopes these methods will become even more useful as the country experiences more and more intense weather events like flooding, heavy rainfall and drought.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
You can find our previous episode on City to Farm, here, or ...
A round-up of the week's news from the primary sector.
The gloom and wet of winter is especially challenging for Southland's farms where pasture can go for nearly a third of the year without growth. Country Life heads south to find out how to keep paddocks and stock in good nick.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
With thanks to:
- Karl Erikson and Brad Thomas, Environment Southland
This week Country Life takes you to a dairy farm with a difference, supplying milk direct to the customer, and the team checks in at a lab where work is underway to stop a tiny pest munching through grapevines.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
In this episode:
- 0:43- One year, one hospital, one community
- 8:01 - On the Farm: a wrap of conditions around the country
- 15:25 - Harne...
It's a busy time of year for Stacey Faith, calving 300-plus cows, rearing their calves and keeping the Faith Farm's roadside milk dispensing outlet going, providing locals with milk fresh from the cows over the fence - with the cream on top.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
In this episode:
- 0:16 - Faith Farm Fresh
- 3:44 - Raw milk direct to the customer
- 7:33 - Milking time
- 14:1...
Are some grapevines better that others at naturally defending themselves from a disease-spreading pest? Michelle Thompson is running trials at Plant & Food Research in Lincoln to find out.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
With thanks to:
- Michelle Thompson, Plant and Food Research
With rural health care under the spotlight, our guest this week sheds some light on working in a small country hospital. Sophia Zohrab is among 12 med students on Auckland University's rural medicine immersion programme, sprinkled around North Island towns.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
With thanks to:
- Sophia Zohrab
Country Life speaks to farmers and growers around New Zealand to find out about growing conditions over the past month.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
This week Country Life takes you to a farm grazing pigs and cattle beneath solar panels and meets organic honey producers Shayne and Elizabeth Mackenzie, and a recent Lincoln University graduate.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
In this episode:
- 0:44 - An update on Tasman
- 2:22 - Rural News Wrap
- 7:32 - Connecting people 'from the land' with those working on the land
- 1...
Dual land use, with pigs and cattle grazing under solar panels, has unlocked new opportunities for Waitangi Farm in Waiuku. Mostly importantly say Nigel and Merrin Upchurch, it aligns with their values.
You can find photos and read more about this episode on our webpage, here.
In this episode:
- 0:16 - Feeding time at Waitangi Farm
- 5:03 - Homecoming and an ecologist's 'classroom'
- 9:10 - What is agrivoltaics?
- 12:40 - Lig...
A honey shed on a hill is buzzing with the sound of honey flowing into jars as the bees take a hard-earned rest from honey making. Country Life meets Shayne and Elizabeth Mackenzie whose organic honey is produced from hives scattered over remote parts of the northern Coromandel peninsula.
You can find photos and read more about this episode on our webpage, here.
You can learn more about Woodland's Honey, here.
With thanks to:
<...Time spent helping his grandparents on their whenua near Kāwhia inspired a love of farming for Harris Moana. Having just finished his Agribusiness studies he's now focussed on building his reo so he can act as a bridge between industry and tangata whenua.
With thanks to:
- Harris Moana
A round-up of the week's news from the primary sector.
This week producer Cosmo Kentish-Barnes is in his wet weather gear in the Tasman district meeting farmers and other rural residents, still battered and bruised from one catastrophic weather event, staring down the barrel of another deluge.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode here.
In this episode:
- 0.38 News wrap
- 6.20 Tasman's rural resilience tested by back-to-back storms
As a second weather bomb lashed the Tasman region, Cosmo Kentish-Barnes was on the ground with farmers and rural people, still battered and bruised from the first flood and staring down the barrel of another deluge.
You can find photos and read more here.
A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news desk
This week Country Life follows the trail of food scraps from the table to farms with the City to Farm project north of Auckland, meets two young farming-focused youngsters at the top of their game, and dips into the archives to head to a working farm dog sale.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
In this episode:
Food scraps from retirement villages and schools are helping to nourish a banana orchard and other farms via the City to Farm project, which aims to keep organic waste out of landfill and help curb climate change.
You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.
Find out more about the City to Farm project here .
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