Country Life

Jordan Hogg from Seresin Estate in Marlborough is the Tonnellerie de Mercurey NZ Young Winemaker 2016.

Dave Te Kapa's shearing gang is pre-lamb shearing 1000 ewes a day at Snowdon Station in the Canterbury high country. Snowdon's owners, Roy Veronese and Annabel Tripp operate a Perendale stud alongside their commercial sheep and beef operation and focus on maximising stock production while, at the same time, farming sustainably.

Setting up an artisan bake house on a small rural property with a babbling brook has been a dream of Maurice Lees' for a decade or more. It's been a reality for just under two years. He's making specialty sourdough bread in Manawahe, Bay of Plenty. His bake house was built by a local Bavarian builder incorporating windows he's lovingly collected and brought back from the UK. The wooden front door comes from Paris, circa 1890. The sourdough fermentation process takes about 36 hours. The bread's baked in an oven with a stone bottom and sold to various local outlets and markets.

Huw Evans logs into his beehives in Italy and the UK from where ever he is in the world. He can tell whether the bees have made honey, whether the queen's laying eggs or whether someone's pushed the hive over on their way home from the pub.

Lamb deaths are expected following this week's cold snap which has brought snow and bitterly cold conditions to North and South Island hill country.

78 year old Murray Arnt has been whitebaiting every season since he was six. He's never missed a beat. This season he's perched on a narrow plank beside the Tarawera River in Bay of Plenty, with his pure bred Sydney Silky Jackie for company.

On weekends and on summer evenings, the carpark at Whareroa Farm on the Kapiti Coast is full. Mountain bikers, walkers and families enjoy the farm. However, ten years ago it was about to be subdivided and would have been lost to the community had locals not rallied to save it. It's a piece of land with a rich history. In World War II, Whareora was home to Camp McKay - a training camp for American soldiers. Recently a heritage walk has been opened on the farm to look back at a time when 5,000 marines lived there.

Andrew Martin has swapped the high life for a life in which he tries to life as self sufficiently as possible on a small block in the western Bay of Plenty.

The price of indoor tomatoes has shot up and early stone fruit trees are in flower in the north of the South Island.

"Buffaloes are beautiful' - that's the motto of Phil Armstrong and Annie Armstrong-Wills who raise a herd of waterbuffaloes just north of Auckland. They hit upon the unusual idea some years ago when they were looking for a lifestyle project. Along with their parents, they bought some land in Dairy Flat, imported a herd of buffaloes from Australia and got on with the job of making cheese and beef.