Country Life

This year, 1250 birds were entered into the Waikato Poultry and Pigeon Club's championship show. It's a beauty pageant that organisers hope will delight members of the public so they too will decide to keep some elegant fowls.

Australian author and journalist David Mason-Jones is selling copies of his book 'Should meat be on the menu?' at the Te Mania Angus Bull Sale in North Canterbury. The book explores the widely held view that farm livestock are responsible for an enormous net production of new global warming gases.

An occasional series talking to New Zealanders working on the land overseas. Eighteen years ago Chris White was tossing up whether to buy a farm in New Zealand or to go dairy farming in Chile. He chose life in South America and loves it.

Calving's an incredibly busy time on farm but Carol Stiles manages to sneak a few minutes with vet Steve Harkness while he's working on a 1,000-cow Waikato farm.

The North Island's had a string of crispy frosty mornings which is helping dry out water logged pastures and lifting farmers' spirits. Calving is in full swing in Canterbury. Sheep farmers in Central Otago are in the thick of scanning and pre-lamb shearing.

A Gisborne based exporter, First Fresh, is sending a trial shipment of local persimmons to China within the next week to ten days. It's the first new fruit to gain market access since the NZ-China Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2008. Roughly half New Zealand's persimmon crop is grown in Gisborne and more trees have gone in the past few years.

There's a squawk-fest on Country Life - the team is at the Waikato Poultry and pigeon clubs annual show.

Sunchaser Avocados are the first avocados in New Zealand to make it to market each season. They are grown on Motiti Island where it is three degrees warmer in winter and three degrees cooler in summer than on mainland Bay of Plenty orchards. Growing avocados on an island is an expensive business so the owners count on a premium for their early fruit to make it all worthwhile.

A new, easy to use environmental monitoring system that will let farms track their environmental performance over the years. It will provide data which proves the quality of their farm environment is improving and it may help gain better access to high value markets overseas.

The entire North Island remains totally water logged. The wet conditions are putting stress on all types of farming. Only five millimetres of rain turns soils to bogs. West Coast farmers are getting bobby pens ready as they head into the busy calving period.