Country Calendar

Biological dairy farmers in Otago grow the most nutrient dense food they can, expanding into free-range chooks & eggs, raised on pasture fed with seawater from the local coast.

A very busy young farmer is making life easier for lifestyle block owners while also giving everything she can back to the community.

A Northland family adds hydroponically grown berries to their kiwifruit orchard, giving themselves and their staff a secure future they can bank on, supplying to Kiwis and the world!

The country's first commercial coffee grower found the right bean for New Zealand conditions on a hunch, and his Northland coffee plantation is now on the verge of expansion.

This week, a very busy young farmer is making life easier for lifestyle block owners while also giving everything she can back to the community.

A couple start their own honey business to achieve a better work/life balance for their young family and find the sacrifices they’ve had to make have been worthwhile.

After Peter Barrett took over Linnburn Station and ran the numbers, he realized that if he continued farming in the traditional way, he would go broke, so he had to make big changes. Linnburn Station is a massive hill country station in Central Otago’s Maniototo district. The 9300 hectares of land had been in Peter’s wider family since 1954, run first by his grandfather, then his uncle, then by managers.

After eight months of training, a Central Otago shearer attempts a world record and uses the event to raise awareness about teen suicide after the loss of his 16-year-old daughter.

A husband and wife run a Central Otago 'fruit salad' orchard growing a huge variety of heritage berries, stone fruit and pip fruit, including hard-to-find mulberries.

A thriving business based on mānuka oil, honey and tea provides an income for dozens of people in the tiny East Cape community, north of Gisborne.

A family uses a growing method called syntropics to produce all their own food on just one hectare of land, and their favourite crop is bananas.

Two generations of a family develop a lavender farm on the shores of Lake Wanaka where they also grow herbs to create their own range of lavender products.

A traditional sheep and beef farming family take the plunge into the unknown and start growing quinoa, a crop that few others in New Zealand have attempted.

A family finds ways to bounce back and take positives from the earthquake damage their farm suffered, as they make repairs and look to the future.

Two generations of a family run a series of successful ventures including apple and persimmon orchards and a cheese factory, but now they're milking sheep to make high-value cheese.

The heart of the King Country is an unusual place to grow kiwifruit, but the location means a later harvest, resulting in good prices for a couple who also run sheep and beef.

A big Wairarapa station overlooking Cook Strait diversifies from tradition to take on new challenges, including traceable meat and honey, tourism and wetland restoration.

A sheep farming family in the remote outer Marlborough Sounds diversifies into farming hops, while they future-proof their picturesque farm by retiring marginal land.

A forager supplies restaurants around the country with food he finds in the wild and says most parts of New Zealand have a diverse range of species that can be foraged year-round.

A family who were pioneers in growing organic kiwifruit have continued to expand their operation over 45 years and now the next generation is deeply involved in the business.

The COVID-19 lockdown had a silver lining for a North Canterbury family growing vegetables for locals, with demand for home delivered vege boxes soaring through the winter.

A woman abandons a corporate career to live her rural dream, only to have it nearly ruined by the global pandemic. But she fights back and helps inspire other rural women along the way.

A woman has farmed alone since her husband died in a farm accident 13 years ago, but she gets a lot of community help to restore and conserve the native bush on her land.

A couple change career and go market gardening, but their new land turns out to be heavy clay unsuitable for growing. Instead of giving up, they work out how to make it highly productive.