Country Life

Julian Goulding has swapped city life and a corporate wardrobe for bare feet, a t-shirt and life in the King Country. He's moved to Taumarunui where he has started a custom-made bow tie business, works with students at the local high school, and shuttles cyclists and walkers to the Timber Trail. He says he's never been happier.

Rain arrived onto already wet pastures in the North Island and in the South, it's becoming too cold for the grass to grow in Central Otago.

Brett Worthington is the head of the rural news department for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He explains why some Australian dairy farmers are taking legal action against the company they supply.

The changing landscape of the Clarence River, dairy woes in Australia, the Regional Wrap, 17 years of advice to life-style block owners and bikes and bowties in Taumarunui.

Last November's 7.8-magnitude earthquake has altered the course and flow of the Clarence River in southern Marlborough, creating new challenges for farmers and new possibilities for a local rafting operation.

Kiwifruit and avocados grow particularly well in Northland. Now the Malley family of Maungatapere is adding raspberries, blackberries and figs to the mix.

After hearing last week's feature about the Anzac Day service in the small town of Wimbledon, Margery Renwick wrote in. Her father was a school teacher there in the 1920s, and he and her mother used to ride a motorcycle with sidecar up to visit family and friends in Hastings.

Marlborough farmer Tim Struthers has spent several years trying to control Chilean Needle Grass on his sheep and beef farm near Seddon. The invasive weed can out-compete pasture grasses and its seed attaches easily to wool and can dig through a sheep's pelt and muscle.

More dairy herds are being dried off, or slowed to once a day milking now and there's the first snow on some North Island ranges. Southland dairy farms are also moving down to 16-hour-a-day milking in order to keep the season going as long as possible.

Agribusiness consultant Deane Carson is encouraging farmers to use petrifilm E.coli count plate kits to test water quality levels on their farms in Southland.