Country Life

Essenza is home to the best-smelling cow shed in the North Island. Where cattle once sheltered, Mike Jobling now roasts coffee beans.

This year, for the first time in the National Poultry and Pigeon Show's long history, a duck is the Champion of Champions. Willow, a rare Silver Appleyard duck who hales from the South Island town of Darfield, seemed unperturbed to be the 'duck horse' of 2023.

RNZ's rural news reporter, Sally Murphy, takes a look at the week's agricultural news.

Cow shed has the essence for coffee roasters, A quacking good win for Willow and the Rural News Wrap.

It's ancient, niche, sour and prickly - but what's not to love about yuzu? Country Life talks to Neville Chun about his passion for the fruit and follows it from the harvest to the brewery where yuzu zest is crafted into a Garage Project beer with the wow factor.

"It's going to be painful to go back to milking in a herringbone parlour after the speed that we're able to milk out in the rotary here," says Tom Everall, aka Tom the Young Farmer. The Shropshire native is working on a Canterbury farm for a few months before returning home to the UK.

Frano Volkman's cows will soon be snuggling up on a thick bed of woodchips and sawdust in their new 6,300m2 composting barn. The organic fertiliser formed underneath Volkman's herd will be spread onto the paddocks of his Little Wanganui dairy farm.

Wet conditions in Northland have not stopped all year destroying kumara crops. Arable farmers in Canterbury have been battling to get autumn-sown crops of winter wheat and barley in the ground as paddocks have been too wet.

Growing and brewing yuzu, a composting barn and Tom the Young Farmer, plus a round up of farming conditions around Aotearoa.

With the help of a cultural land advisor, North Canterbury farmer John Faulkner is creating a diverse mahinga kai - Māori food gathering site - on his riverside property.