Country Life

Lance and Makereta Roper's 62-hectare property near Lincoln produces 500 to 800 tonnes of red peeled onions a year, as well as growing pumpkins, peas and beans. The family business employs eight full-time staff and is the largest grower of red onions in the South Island.

Areas of Manawatu that never see snow received up to 15 centimetres on Thursday, Rotorua city had snow flurries, and outlying areas like Mamaku and Rerewhikaaitu had heavy snow on the ground.  Flood waters also covered paddocks in southern Wairarapa. In the South Island the forecast snow arrived in Canterbury. Between 5 and 20 centimetres of snow was common across the Plains.

A summer with lower sunshine hours, combining with a late harvest when birds damage fruit, is making for very poor olive oil volumes this year. Some growers are over 50% down. Olive oil producers from Northland and Waiheke have been hoping to buy oil from Wairarapa, but the crop drop is nationwide.

Pining for Nuts, Red Onion Royalty, A Memoir on Kohlrabi, Just a Drop and the Regional Wrap.

Māori kiwifruit growers will now have a collective voice in the industry and hopefully soon some seats at the Zespri table thanks to the new Māori Kiwifruit Growers' Forum. It's a sign of good things happening in Māoridom, says the chairman of Ngai Tukairangi iwi, which has a $100 million kiwifruit portfolio.

Every year for the past twenty, Otorohanga businesses have chipped in to put on a party for the district's farmers. It's their way of saying 'thank you' to the farmers for spending money in the town.

Northland continues to be very wet making ground conditions difficult particularly with calving now underway. In Canterbury prices for top sheep and cattle dogs have remained strong at the 61st annual Ashburton Sheep and Cattle Dog Sale.

Orders for avocado trees have sky-rocketed in recent years. Stephen Wade's nursery has gone from selling five- thousand trees a year 15 years ago to 150-thousand today.

Iwi Fruit, Otorohanga's Big Night Out, Taking Orders and the Regional Wrap.

The newest drench guns can now be fired every second or so; they record and send information about every shot, calibrate automatically taking into account the weight of the animal and ensure workers are delivering drenches correctly.