Country Life

Wi Pere Trust in Gisborne has a mixed portfolio of horticultural crops from kiwifruit to oranges, mandarins, grapes and persimmons. The Trust is looking at expanding its citrus because of market demand and aims to employ Wi Pere stakeholders on the orchards.

Ursula Hayward and her husband Mark have recently won an award for a new tube feeder for calves that removes some of the stress of the procedure and reduces the chance of injury.

North Island calves and lambs need more sun on their backs and, in the South Island, Otago is having a great spring.

A one-thousand dollar reward is being offered for the Red Vented Bulbul. An unwanted pest, the bird may have taken up residence in the Bay of Plenty.

Daryn Rickwood and Louise Penny were leading an urban life before they bought and moved onto a 20 hectare block near Wellsford. They've started raising goats for meat and have plans to milk them too. The goat meat's sold at farmers markets and the novice farmers are delighted that more people have a taste for it than they'd expected.

Central Otago is rapidly changing. Intensive irrigation has transformed once semi-arid valleys into lush pastures that support a growing dairy industry. St Bathans based landscape artist Grahame Sydney is refusing to acknowledge this new green in his paintings and he is concerned that farming practices in the region are increasingly driven by maximising income with no view of the long-term effects or sustainability.

Cows are still recovering on Carol and Kay O'Donaghue's Waikato farm following the worst season for facial eczema they have ever seen.

In Bay of Plenty gold kiwifruit are flowering and bees are being deposited around orchards while in Canterbury baleage contractors are flat out and recently sown kale and fodder beet crops are emerging.

Glentunnel sheep and beef farmer Warrick James is the President of the 2016 Canterbury A&P Show, the largest agricultural and pastoral show in New Zealand being held in Christchurch at the ASB Agricultural Park from Wednesday 9th to Friday 11th November.

David Anderson, his son Neil and daughter-in-law Leah Stone have set up a tiny, licensed abattoir on their farm, half an hour from Whangarei. It can process up to 30 animals each day and puts through buffaloes, goats, sheep, cows and even alpacas.