October 14, 2025 • 9 mins
Comedian, writer, and the voice of the FMG Young Farmer of the Year contest on his latest endeavour, Kiwi Country: Rural New Zealand in 100 Objects. The book, written with his wife, Ruth Spencer, is a tour of rural New Zealand, following the layout of a farm.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just reading the bio for this book that is about
to has been released by Tiradar and his wife Ruth Spencer.
Kywe Country Rural New Zealand in one hundred Objects. I've
had a bit of a shite past twenty four hours.
I'm going to admit it. But when I started some
sand sources into the local amp show, you know, to
(00:24):
some beautiful the forty four gallon drums, you know our
number eight wire mentality, the box thorn hedgecutter out of
the naki. This is brilliant. The book is Kiwi Country,
Rural New Zealand in one hundred Objects. It's a charming
tour of rural life in New Zealand and of course
a man who is very much ensconced thanks to his
(00:45):
fantastic worker, especially around the young Farmers competition. Trader joins us, Now,
young man, how are you sir?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Look the sun is shining out in the rain, shadow
of the white carketis and we're stook and so I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Very good good.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh that is magnificent. Hey, we are The idea for
this is a ripper key We Country, Rural New Zealand
and one hundred objects. Like I say, I'm you know,
meat safe, mangles, dunnies. I'm really I'm laughing my proverbial.
You know what's offered this.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
It's I do Hey, look at that came.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We had to the publishers at the Cane Puss and
we wanted to do something around rural innovation. And we
had to look at it and said, look, it's been
done really, really well, and there's nothing we can add
to that. You know, David Downs in the Namber eight
wide website and things like that, they keep it up
to day. So we said, what about something a little
bit broader. So they accepted this kind of sense of
of rural New Zealand, which we take.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
A pretty broad broad look at.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
It's not the kind of history of farming, it's a
history of what is really most of the country. And
I look old to find Ruth is a rural kind
of woman, even though she grew up in blend him
Off over the road. There were serialss that she worked
in garlic fields, the vineyards, all of those various things.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
So we just did what we've done.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
For twenty years of and tried to find those stories
that we hadn't seen before that we really liked and
summed up all of these little objects.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, so how do you take an object like you know,
when you think of a trig station, for instance, it's
just sat there. It feels like since Noah was a boy,
and you know they and I think if you steer
at them long enough, they almost steer back at you.
I mean, it's just all these interesting things that have
led to stories.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Look, and I grew up looking at a drink station
across across the valley in the north Way Katto, and
it had never occurred to me. You know, we do
take these things for granted. I didn't know that dudes
had to go and basically live up there for periods
of time alone, you know, painting white, little white lines
and things on the rocks so they don't fall off in.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
The middle of the night time. They could shine lights at.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The various trig stations to help map the country. It's
one of those those sort of items. And there's a
lot of other ones where you know they exist, but
you never really think about them.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
They're part of the landscape. Letter Boxes was a great one.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Ruth said, Hey, we're going to put in one of
the Wilson's plastic letter boxes and the funny thing is, look,
I see letter boxes is become I drive down the
road and suddenly now I'm seeing hundreds of them, and
you see the various colors and things. So we just
wanted to find those little touchstones.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Really yeah, a sand saucer, well, I think we ordered
sand sources then. Were they magnificent?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
They look they really are, and you know, particularly, you know,
I have memories of going and raiding my grandmother's garden
for the right kind of flowers for a sand saucer
and injuring them. And I've seen and I've judged, you know,
dozens of them. I've judged the vegetable animals. All these
are the things that are part of that kind of
sense of the A and P Show. And I think
the nice thing about that sand saucer sex it is
(03:46):
I think we've moved on to the vestiline sauces now.
But if there was one lesson that comes out of that,
there was a young woman who just kept winning things.
The young you know, the under fourteen buttonholes and various
I think because what she did was she looked for
things that nobody else into. And if you enter a
category that nobody else is into, chances are you're going
to win it. It's a great lesson for life.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah. Absolutely. I think I quite like the sands saucer though,
because there was that degree of having to protect your
hard work, you know, because it could all go horribly wrong,
a gust.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Of wind or tipping it over on the way to school.
And I preferred the sand salt to the aquajar. Do
you remember the aquajar class the scene or something and
you put the flowers in and then you had to
sort of tip it into some kind of dive water
upside down. But I think there's a kind of an
honesty about the sand salce. You've got to cover all
the stand there's a lot of rules, can't have any
sands showing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And again it talks that.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Sense of those beautiful gardens and things that you know
people would have, particularly at grandmother's. Now my mother actually
still has a beautiful flower garden. We're putting the cup
flower garden because we love to have flowers and bring
them into the house that you know they're still around,
these little things. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Absolutely. Is there a sort of a favorite story in
there that you really really tackled your fancy to write?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh look, there is any number actually the one that
I like. And you know you mentioned Young Farmers and
I will often say the events. You know, New Zealand's
not a small country, it's a big village. A friend
of mine messaged me and said, hey, look there's a
Texa dooomid lamb over at a secondhand shop in Milford.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
And I think you might like it. So we know
I got it. And it was the lamb that was.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Given to Robert Muldoon by the Young Farmers Club when
he hosted or he'd just done some hosting of the
young Father of the Year.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
That tried for Prince Charles.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Couldn't get m because that's your depity of New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
We love, we loved to stretch out.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And then I so I've had this in my collecting
for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
It's got one year.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Missing, I think because Muldoon probably tewed it off at
some stage. And then I was sitting at dinner next
to the wonderful Eric Roy who's just stepped out as
a patron of Young Farmers and you know I mentioned this,
This says I was part of the group that presented
that to Robert Muldoon, and so It.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Just has this this huge connection.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Through you know, through all these things that I wasn't
hosting young farmers at the time I bought it. But
it's just one of those things that it just sits
on my shelf and I like to look at it.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
A taxi doomy let.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
What breed is it? Oh? Look, I don't know, you're
getting too deep into it.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I think it's startled. It's a startled lad.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
It has meat and wool, Yeah, yes, it.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Does it well, it has.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
We've given it a little shampoo, but yes it does.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It does speak to both meat and wool.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So is the book out available now?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yes, it outs out in all the good all good
books shorts. You know, Ruth and I both did the
audiobook where we read a chapter each.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And it's on an ebook. And look, we.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
We wanted to make what we thought was the great
toilet book. We all grew up with them, you know,
you'd go and it's been too long when they thought it,
because they had a really good book.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
And you can dip in and out of this.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
As you like, and you're gonna you're gonna learn something,
You're going to laugh, and you're going to have a
lot of really weird facts to bring up at sometime
barbecues and Christmas parties.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
The Taranaki box door on hedgecutter, what's what's what's the
fantastic thing about that?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Look?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I have seen a lot of them working.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You had the Butler brothers, Bruce Alexander. You know, they
took old military machines and various things and made these
incredible hedge cutters.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
And there's a couple of blades. There's one up in.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Pokyadiki, and there's one at the parpit the museum.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And I love just going and looking at them.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I love looking at that where on the steel you
know from the countless revolutions it's made whacking into box
stor on hedges and things.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I just think that's that sense that New Zealand, you.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Know that biblical reference you take the sword and turn
it into the plowshare, or we took the We took
the sword and turned it into hedgecutters here in New Zealand,
and it's it's just one of those things that you
look at it and it says innovation. It tooks around
that broader thing of invasive weeds and bits and pieces
and what do you do when you don't have something
to control these?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, yeah, all brilliant and there's some there's some topics
in here that I guess you'll have a new angle
on two, like your berry crumps and the Toyota Highlaks
are quite well known, but I guess a colorful take
on that as well.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
To Rata. Yes, we we've tried to find all those
little again, those stories that people didn't hear. Controversially, no,
tractor didn't put a tractor and look, I would have
found the David Brown and.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
That would have upset the Forwards and people. The Massy Ferguson. Yea,
we would have had to go and the New Holland.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
But the tractor has touched upon in quite a lot
of subjects. We do the the why metty white horse
up on the hill there, you know, and they went
from something like fifteen thousand horses of the district down
to almost none as as machinery came in and took over.
But we do put in the grade out because to me,
that's a that's a great object when it comes to
particularly driving around the rural countryside, and that's that skill
(08:47):
of the of the greater drivers to get those cambers
exactly right.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Going through.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So much youre this, this is absolutely brilliant to right
and now you've got you going to keep busy with
the young farmers again soon too, because we must have
what the sort of region all district competitions coming up.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, districts have kicked off and I see them advertising.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I saw a Facebook post today that's say.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I think they've got sixty percent of the agricid's places
filled already for next year.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
So if any of the skills out there.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Want to get into it and we kick off with
the regional's end of January, I think.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Great stuff to right, Kerry Contry, Rural New Zealand and
one hundred objects. You've got to read this or have
a listen. Fantastic out now
Just reading the bio for this book that is about
to has been released by Tiradar and his wife Ruth Spencer.
Kywe Country Rural New Zealand in one hundred Objects. I've
had a bit of a shite past twenty four hours.
I'm going to admit it. But when I started some
sand sources into the local amp show, you know, to
(00:24):
some beautiful the forty four gallon drums, you know our
number eight wire mentality, the box thorn hedgecutter out of
the naki. This is brilliant. The book is Kiwi Country,
Rural New Zealand in one hundred Objects. It's a charming
tour of rural life in New Zealand and of course
a man who is very much ensconced thanks to his
(00:45):
fantastic worker, especially around the young Farmers competition. Trader joins us, Now,
young man, how are you sir?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Look the sun is shining out in the rain, shadow
of the white carketis and we're stook and so I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Very good good.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh that is magnificent. Hey, we are The idea for
this is a ripper key We Country, Rural New Zealand
and one hundred objects. Like I say, I'm you know,
meat safe, mangles, dunnies. I'm really I'm laughing my proverbial.
You know what's offered this.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
It's I do Hey, look at that came.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We had to the publishers at the Cane Puss and
we wanted to do something around rural innovation. And we
had to look at it and said, look, it's been
done really, really well, and there's nothing we can add
to that. You know, David Downs in the Namber eight
wide website and things like that, they keep it up
to day. So we said, what about something a little
bit broader. So they accepted this kind of sense of
of rural New Zealand, which we take.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
A pretty broad broad look at.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
It's not the kind of history of farming, it's a
history of what is really most of the country. And
I look old to find Ruth is a rural kind
of woman, even though she grew up in blend him
Off over the road. There were serialss that she worked
in garlic fields, the vineyards, all of those various things.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
So we just did what we've done.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
For twenty years of and tried to find those stories
that we hadn't seen before that we really liked and
summed up all of these little objects.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, so how do you take an object like you know,
when you think of a trig station, for instance, it's
just sat there. It feels like since Noah was a boy,
and you know they and I think if you steer
at them long enough, they almost steer back at you.
I mean, it's just all these interesting things that have
led to stories.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Look, and I grew up looking at a drink station
across across the valley in the north Way Katto, and
it had never occurred to me. You know, we do
take these things for granted. I didn't know that dudes
had to go and basically live up there for periods
of time alone, you know, painting white, little white lines
and things on the rocks so they don't fall off in.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
The middle of the night time. They could shine lights at.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The various trig stations to help map the country. It's
one of those those sort of items. And there's a
lot of other ones where you know they exist, but
you never really think about them.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
They're part of the landscape. Letter Boxes was a great one.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Ruth said, Hey, we're going to put in one of
the Wilson's plastic letter boxes and the funny thing is, look,
I see letter boxes is become I drive down the
road and suddenly now I'm seeing hundreds of them, and
you see the various colors and things. So we just
wanted to find those little touchstones.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Really yeah, a sand saucer, well, I think we ordered
sand sources then. Were they magnificent?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
They look they really are, and you know, particularly, you know,
I have memories of going and raiding my grandmother's garden
for the right kind of flowers for a sand saucer
and injuring them. And I've seen and I've judged, you know,
dozens of them. I've judged the vegetable animals. All these
are the things that are part of that kind of
sense of the A and P Show. And I think
the nice thing about that sand saucer sex it is
(03:46):
I think we've moved on to the vestiline sauces now.
But if there was one lesson that comes out of that,
there was a young woman who just kept winning things.
The young you know, the under fourteen buttonholes and various
I think because what she did was she looked for
things that nobody else into. And if you enter a
category that nobody else is into, chances are you're going
to win it. It's a great lesson for life.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah. Absolutely. I think I quite like the sands saucer though,
because there was that degree of having to protect your
hard work, you know, because it could all go horribly wrong,
a gust.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Of wind or tipping it over on the way to school.
And I preferred the sand salt to the aquajar. Do
you remember the aquajar class the scene or something and
you put the flowers in and then you had to
sort of tip it into some kind of dive water
upside down. But I think there's a kind of an
honesty about the sand salce. You've got to cover all
the stand there's a lot of rules, can't have any
sands showing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And again it talks that.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Sense of those beautiful gardens and things that you know
people would have, particularly at grandmother's. Now my mother actually
still has a beautiful flower garden. We're putting the cup
flower garden because we love to have flowers and bring
them into the house that you know they're still around,
these little things. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Absolutely. Is there a sort of a favorite story in
there that you really really tackled your fancy to write?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh look, there is any number actually the one that
I like. And you know you mentioned Young Farmers and
I will often say the events. You know, New Zealand's
not a small country, it's a big village. A friend
of mine messaged me and said, hey, look there's a
Texa dooomid lamb over at a secondhand shop in Milford.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
And I think you might like it. So we know
I got it. And it was the lamb that was.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Given to Robert Muldoon by the Young Farmers Club when
he hosted or he'd just done some hosting of the
young Father of the Year.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
That tried for Prince Charles.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Couldn't get m because that's your depity of New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
We love, we loved to stretch out.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And then I so I've had this in my collecting
for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
It's got one year.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Missing, I think because Muldoon probably tewed it off at
some stage. And then I was sitting at dinner next
to the wonderful Eric Roy who's just stepped out as
a patron of Young Farmers and you know I mentioned this,
This says I was part of the group that presented
that to Robert Muldoon, and so It.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Just has this this huge connection.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Through you know, through all these things that I wasn't
hosting young farmers at the time I bought it. But
it's just one of those things that it just sits
on my shelf and I like to look at it.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
A taxi doomy let.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
What breed is it? Oh? Look, I don't know, you're
getting too deep into it.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I think it's startled. It's a startled lad.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
It has meat and wool, Yeah, yes, it.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Does it well, it has.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
We've given it a little shampoo, but yes it does.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It does speak to both meat and wool.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So is the book out available now?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yes, it outs out in all the good all good
books shorts. You know, Ruth and I both did the
audiobook where we read a chapter each.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And it's on an ebook. And look, we.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
We wanted to make what we thought was the great
toilet book. We all grew up with them, you know,
you'd go and it's been too long when they thought it,
because they had a really good book.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
And you can dip in and out of this.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
As you like, and you're gonna you're gonna learn something,
You're going to laugh, and you're going to have a
lot of really weird facts to bring up at sometime
barbecues and Christmas parties.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
The Taranaki box door on hedgecutter, what's what's what's the
fantastic thing about that?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Look?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I have seen a lot of them working.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You had the Butler brothers, Bruce Alexander. You know, they
took old military machines and various things and made these
incredible hedge cutters.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
And there's a couple of blades. There's one up in.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Pokyadiki, and there's one at the parpit the museum.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And I love just going and looking at them.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I love looking at that where on the steel you
know from the countless revolutions it's made whacking into box
stor on hedges and things.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I just think that's that sense that New Zealand, you.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Know that biblical reference you take the sword and turn
it into the plowshare, or we took the We took
the sword and turned it into hedgecutters here in New Zealand,
and it's it's just one of those things that you
look at it and it says innovation. It tooks around
that broader thing of invasive weeds and bits and pieces
and what do you do when you don't have something
to control these?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, yeah, all brilliant and there's some there's some topics
in here that I guess you'll have a new angle
on two, like your berry crumps and the Toyota Highlaks
are quite well known, but I guess a colorful take
on that as well.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
To Rata. Yes, we we've tried to find all those
little again, those stories that people didn't hear. Controversially, no,
tractor didn't put a tractor and look, I would have
found the David Brown and.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
That would have upset the Forwards and people. The Massy Ferguson. Yea,
we would have had to go and the New Holland.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
But the tractor has touched upon in quite a lot
of subjects. We do the the why metty white horse
up on the hill there, you know, and they went
from something like fifteen thousand horses of the district down
to almost none as as machinery came in and took over.
But we do put in the grade out because to me,
that's a that's a great object when it comes to
particularly driving around the rural countryside, and that's that skill
(08:47):
of the of the greater drivers to get those cambers
exactly right.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Going through.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So much youre this, this is absolutely brilliant to right
and now you've got you going to keep busy with
the young farmers again soon too, because we must have
what the sort of region all district competitions coming up.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, districts have kicked off and I see them advertising.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I saw a Facebook post today that's say.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I think they've got sixty percent of the agricid's places
filled already for next year.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
So if any of the skills out there.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Want to get into it and we kick off with
the regional's end of January, I think.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Great stuff to right, Kerry Contry, Rural New Zealand and
one hundred objects. You've got to read this or have
a listen. Fantastic out now
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