Country Life

When Country Life visited North Canterbury vegetable grower Cam Booker two years ago he was getting into selling vege boxes. This year sales sky-rocketed over the Covid-19 lockdown and he says local Farmers' Market sales have bounced back nicely since then too. On Christmas Eve he's hosting a dig-your-own potato event at the Sefton market garden.

Country Life visits Tokomaru Bay where locals have banded together to save their historic wharf. Cosmo pops in to Luisetti Seeds in Rangiora which is still going strong after Vincent Luisetti started it back in 1932 and he talks to Cam Booker whose vege boxes are bouncing out the door. Also, NZ's special agricultural trade envoy looks back on the year.

Soiling your undies isn't normally encouraged, unless it's for the good of science! Students from six North Otago schools are undertaking a number of activities to assess soil health in their schools. One of the activities is burying cotton undies for six weeks to see how much they degrade. The more degraded the healthier the soil.

Kees Weytmans audits forests so that buyers and forestry companies can be sure of the volume and quality of trees coming off the hills.

At the height of the season Gisborne's Leaderbrand can churn out 90,000 packets of salad a day

Bay of Plenty kiwfruit growers are being kept awake at night over the worker shortage and calves are being weaned, drenched and vaccinated in South Otago.

Country Life chats with North Otago students who are burying cotton undies for six weeks to see how much they degrade and we're in Gisborne measuring forests and making salads...

A  Manawatū dairy farming family is enjoying spending more time together after they installed robots in their dairy shed.

Seven farms in Waikato converted to milking sheep this spring. Many didn't get to start the conversion until the cow dairy season ended on June 1st. It was all go because lambs were arriving only a month later. Fencing, milking sheds and troughs all needed changing.

Regenerative agriculture is becoming a popular catch phrase in New Zealand. Soil scientist Doug Edmeades says it's an overseas designed concept suitable for dust bowls in North America and Australia, and that is not needed in New Zealand. Topics rural, farming Tags regenerative agriculture, Ra, organic matter, soil microbes.