Country Life visits Pamu's deer milking operation near Taupo, learns about farming by the Maori lunar calendar - maramataka - and hears about the potential for banana-growing on the West Coast.

In this summer series, the Country Life team is taking you back to some of the places we've been to over the past year.

Listen to this week's Summer Series of Country Life

Dairying with deer

Not too quiet but not too flighty... it's not easy finding the perfect milking deer.

This is a big focus at Pāmu's Aratiatia Deer Milking Unit near Taupō which is finishing its third season extracting creamy, nutritious milk from a mob of red deer.

Read more about deer milking ventures here.

Maramataka another layer of diversity to a Bay of Plenty farm

Through the "beautiful wet season" that Mohi Beckham calls the past 18-months, most of the paddocks were underwater on the coastal Bay of Plenty farm which he manages.

However, the paddocks that survived were those with diverse pastures, he says. The others were left looking brown and rusty.

"I'm still learning," he admits.

"But that is one thing I have noticed."

Read more about Mohi's maramataka journey on farm here.

Backyard bananas in the Buller

In the dramatic limestone country of Buller, dramatic fruits are turning heads.

Jon Colyer, a self-taught botanist, wants locals to start planting edible perennials. And while they're not commonly found in the region, they are growing in Colyer's nursery and food forest.

"Who knows, there could be a lot more backyard bananas in the Buller."

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details