Country Life

Welcome rain has fallen in the North and South Island. Substantial snow has fallen in Central Otago but elsewhere in the south lambs are growing well in good conditions.

Regenerative agriculture in Northland. What do we taste and why do we like it? The deer industry is looking to attract skilled, enthusiastic newcomers.

There are some jobs that you just wouldn't mind having – Dr Roger Harker's is one. Part of his job is finding out what people like to eat and drink... and why. As head of the Consumer & Product Insights team at Plant and Food Research, Roger's work focuses on flavours – and more recently, emotions – associated with new products.

When Hans Michel was in town and plugged his rural adress into the GPS just for interest, it didn't give him directions, it just told him to drive a long way. And it is. Hans and his family live almost self-sufficiently near Tarata in the Taranaki Hills. They farm Wiltshire sheep on their picturesque, incredibly tidy property; milk goats to make dairy products, generate electricity, hunt for meat and grow an abundance of fruit and vegetables.

Waikato welcomed a drink this week and the West Coast is flush with grass.

A prolonged dry spell in rural Fiji has small landowners struggling to survive. A severe water shortage means it's only available for household use, not farming. Livestock are being sold and vegetable crops are failing.

Businesses are moving to Kerepehi's new industrial park and the school roll is growing.

Country life meets a European couple who have create their piece of paradise deep in the Taranaki hills. And Kerepehi, population 429. The local school principal calls it 'The City of the Hauraki Plains.'

 

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Graham Berry has a dairy farm just south of Franz Josef. The born-and-bred West Coaster borrows water from a creek on DOC land to drive a 55-kiloWatt, hydro-electric scheme.

Japanese brides like white orchids, so Pieter Rensen grows them. They're also in demand for Japanese funerals. Each year Pieter grows more than 300-thousand stems of only white, miniature cymbidiums in his greenhouses near Pukekohe.