Country Life

Gianina takes a drive through remote parts of Hawke's Bay with Stephenson Transport, a multi-generation family run business still going strong.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

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A supermarket in forest form - Anisha joins researchers at Lincoln University to see how fruits, veggies and medicinal plants can coexist in a food forest.

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After devastating cyclone damage, WoolWorks' Napier plant is humming again, transforming fleece from hill country shearing sheds into the clean, dry, pressed, product ready for carpet makers and other manufacturers. Country Life takes a tour.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural newsdesk.

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Country Life checks in with the Electoral Commission about rural voting enrolments and turnout, gets stuck into a spring tidy of Gianina's garden, and visits pubs around the lower South Island to learn what makes a publican.

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How are pubs across the central South Island faring in 2026 - and what do their futures look like?

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The warmer weather means it's time to turn my attention back to the garden, bringing in the crops ready for harvest and preparing my seedlings for the coming season too.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

You can find our first diary entry and details of the garden set up, here.

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Electoral Commision chief executive Karl Le Quesne chats about rural voters, and how they can turn out to the polls in October.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural newsdesk.

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Country Life meets a New Zealander looking after rescue bears in rural Germany and visits an orchid farm in Taranaki.

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Eric Lander has grown cymbidium orchids for nearly half a century. His blooms can be found in vases from Dubai to New York, carefully bred and nurtured from large greenhouses on an old sheep and dairy farm in the lee of Mt Taranaki.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

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Set on the coast of Hawke's Bay, Te Aratipi Station offers walkers on the farm views across the bay, from the Māhia Peninsula right around to Mt Ruapehu on a clear day.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

For the original story, look here.

You can find more about Te Aratipi Station, and their new venture The Bush Table, here.

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John Pickard chats to Country Life from the German countryside where the New Zealander has an unusual job helping rescued bears learn to hibernate and regain some of their freedom.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural newsdesk.

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This week Country Life gets some tips for the coming season from drought-hardened farmers, meets a flower grower turning blooms into bouquets and balms and heads to the Clash of the Colleges where students compete in ag events.

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As farmers prepare for the impacts of the intense El Niño weather pattern, drought veterans, younger farmers and rural support specialists compare plans, share hard-earned lessons and discuss when to act before dry conditions arrive.

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Motorbikes, fencing and gumboot throwing - the Canterbury Clash of the Colleges has it all.

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A Nūhaka teacher turns flowers and plants grown in her garden into budget bouquets, balms and healing treatments in her at home Potion Room.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural newsdesk.

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This week Country Life is at a rural school in Wairarapa celebrating its sesquicentennial and visits a Taranaki piggery to hear how one farming family is adapting to major changes in New Zealand's pork industry.

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While pastoral farming saw the settlement of Tinui established over 150 years ago, things have changed as farmland's been converted to forestry and the school's roll has decreased. Earlier this month past pupils gathered to reflect on the school's sesquicentennial and its future.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

Learn more about Tinui School and its 150th celebrations, here.

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A Taranaki pig farmer is spending $2 million creating more space for pigs as welfare expectations change. Country Life visits Stanley Bros near Ōpunake to see what's involved.

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Southern Alps Sprouts owner Karen McGrath shares her business' journey.

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A wrap of conditions on farms and orchards around the country.

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Country Life looks back over the Ron Vine Collection of farming photos from the 1930s and 40s, gains insights into a King Country Māori-owned farm, and learns about on-farm biodiversity efforts in Banks Peninsula.

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Anisha joins the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust for a day to learn about on-farm native restoration.

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At Pukepoto it's about using data to 'grow more grass, make more money' and set the farm up for future generations.

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A collection of more than 1,400 photographs taken by pioneering agricultural journalist Ron Vine between 1934 and 1947 has been recognised for its unique record of New Zealand farming, land development and Māori communities during a period of profound change.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural newsdesk.

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This week Country Life is in Ōtaki finding out about the town's plans to become carbon neutral, and looks at the art of making tallow and the different qualities of raw milk.

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Can a small town plant its way towards carbon neutrality? In Ōtaki, landowners, school children, volunteers and community groups are creating a ring of native forest around the town.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

You can find more about the Ōtaki Carbon Forest Project, here.

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Anisha visits The Good Cow's milk vending station in North Canterbury.

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Interested in vending machine milk? Listen to Sally’s story on a stall near Wellington, here.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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Zoë Vaughan shares how Earth Glow converts butchery waste into balms and creams.

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This week Country Life is food foraging around Christchurch, picking flowers for a floral fundraiser and finding out what it takes to become a top young winegrower.

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Chef Adam Harrison forages produce around Christchurch for his Michelin-starred kitchen.

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New Zealand's top young viticulturists put their technical knowledge, practical skills and leadership abilities to the test in the Young Viticulturist of the Year competition.

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"Every corner of this farm she's touched something, planted something," says Pattie O'Boyle of the legacy left behind by Marangai's first farming family.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural news desk

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This week Country Life is on a high tech beef farm and visits a training centre teaching how to handle rural health emergencies.

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Introducing virtual fencing and other technology has helped the Hardwick-Smith family double the profitability of some parts of their sheep and beef hill country farm.

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With lambing well underway, sheep grazier Peter Crook shares some down-to-earth advice on how to deal with triplet lambs.

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The Rural Health Academic Centre, Ashburton, teaches young doctors and nurses how to handle rural emergencies.

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Injured feathered patients find a safe and restful spot to recuperate in Averil Osborne's ward.

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A wrap of conditions on farms and orchards around New Zealand

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This week Country Life is on farms looking for meteorites, and newborn calves, visits a herd home for cows and takes you into the world of a station cook preparing "smoko".

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Searching for a bit of space debris in a farm paddock is like looking for a needle in a haystack, except you're not quite sure where the haystack is. Country Life joins in the hunt for fragments of the fireball which shot over the lower North Island in late July.

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Spending an extra half a million dollars building a herd home for his cows means Paul Kuriger can milk for an extra month while helping protect the many waterways on his farm, Crystal Rivers.

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Back in 2021 producer Sally Round got up before the birds to meet Carterton dairy farmer Jodie James and his team to find out what happens over calving.

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Our Changing World's Claire Concannon talks to station cook Philippa Cameron.

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Tune in to Our Changing World to find out what Claire was in Duntroon for.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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Country Life visits a centre helping injured birds of prey return to the wild and an insect farm breeding beneficial bugs.

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The NZ Raptor Trust has spent the last decade helping birds of prey recover from road accidents and return to the wild.

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Bioforce grows beneficial insects, sending them around the country to gardeners and orchardists, providing a fighting force to beat back pests in tunnel houses and greenhouses, the natural way.

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Dairy farmer Amanda Jordan lives in view of one of Aotearoa's most beautiful sights, but she says visitors are playing with lives snapping photos of Mt Taranaki on the winding rural road where she lives.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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This week Country Life delves into the world of rare breeds, meets a farmer foraging seed for her native trees and heads to an olive grove on the Kapiti Coast.

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After decades farming sheep and beef on rugged hill country, Diana and Grant Crosse made an unlikely career change, swapping livestock for olive trees near Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast. The transition has brought new challenges, new skills and a whole new lifestyle, but much of their farming know-how still applies.

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Farmer Sandra Campbell shows us the native trees she's grown from foraged seed, and how they're making her farm a "nicer place to be."

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John Earney finds the value in rare, sometimes almost forgotten breeds of animal. The president of the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand says that's the key to ensuring their survival - be they farm animals or native species.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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This week Country Life digs into the arable world, meets the maker of the world's "supreme champion cheese" and learns about growing plants hydroponically in Horowhenua.

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Husband and wife duo Tony and Lisa Dale-Low traded corporate life in the city for growing fresh herbs and salad greens.

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In the heart of Taranaki dairy country, a large silver trophy has arrived from Europe. The team at Lactalis' Bridge Street plant in Eltham are the proud makers of a cheese judged Supreme Champion at the 2026 International Cheese and Dairy Awards in June. Sally Round went to meet master cheesemaker Cathy Lang.

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Scott Champion shares how the Foundation for Arable Research is working to rebuild confidence and stability in the cropping sector.

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A wrap of conditions on farms and orchards around the country.

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This week Country life talks to an American poultry farmer about her bird flu experience, visits a llama farmer and meets a family who've been farming celery for more than a century.

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For 120 years, the Franklin family has farmed celery through changing markets, wild weather and six generations of family life. Alongside the celery fields, visitors now wander through sunflower patches, butterfly houses and a bustling farmyard where one cheeky goat has become a bit of a celebrity.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

You can find more about Franklin Farm, here.

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It was the 1990s when many farms were looking to diversify. 'Why not llamas?', thought Southland spinner and farmer Janette Buckingham.

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What happens when bird flu arrives on your farm? Delaware poultry farmer and educator Georgie Cartanza shares her first hand experience of an H5N1 outbreak, the loss of 148,000 birds, and the biosecurity lessons she believes every farmer should know.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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This week on Country life, the team chat to Irish farmer and author John Connell and heads to East Timor to see how money earnt in New Zealand orchards is benefiting those back home.

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Producer Anna Thomas travelled to Timor-Leste with assistance from the Asia New Zealand Foundation

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Thousands of Timorese have applied to join New Zealand's seasonal worker scheme, which opened to Timor Leste for the first time in 2026. Seven months of orchard work could earn them up to $40,000, considered a fortune in one of the world's poorest countries. Anna Thomas travelled to Timor Leste to meet some of the families benefiting from their remittances.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

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Producer Anna Thomas travelled to Timor-Leste with assistance from the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

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Irish writer and farmer John Connell latest book is The Wisdom of Farmers. He shares some of the pearls of wisdom he has learnt from a decade of farming with Country Life.

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Anisha Satya speaks with farmer Nigel Woodhead about his "mosaic" farming system.

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A wrap of news from RNZ's rural news desk

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The late Sir Sam Neill told Country Life he was excited by the "farming" side of wine, that and the beautiful Otago landscape where his Two Paddocks vineyard is set. We paid the actor and vintner a visit back in the spring of 2022.

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This week Country Life takes you stargazing at a farm near Lake Tekapo, goes behind the scenes of a wool auction in Napier and is with some belching cows being measured for methane emissions at a giant barn in Waikato.

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Gianina gives an update on her suburban vege garden. She's preparing to plant garlic as the stars align around Matariki.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

You can see photos and hear more about the garden set up from our previous episode, here.

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Anisha learns about Matariki, lightyears, and farm diversification on a starry night in Lake Tekapo.

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Country Life steps ringside for the "verbal boxing match" of a wool auction in Napier. Richard Kells of Kells Wool traces his experience of the wool industry from the era of skinny sheep in the 1980s to the reviving industry of present day.

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A giant barn in Waikato features 10 feeder bins for cows to graze from freely allowing their burps to be measured for methane emissions.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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Sally Round chats to Otago farmer Becks Smith about her ventures, and Braden Crosby of the Bragato Institute. Anisha Satya eats deep-friend locusts, and Mark Leishman checks out the drones fighting wilding pines in South Canterbury.

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Mark Leishman heads to a South Canterbury farm to join a drone pilot extinguishing weeds and finds out about the potential of the technology on farm.

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French grape growers are being paid to pull out vines in order to rebalance supply and demand, while those in Australia have taken out millions and turned to other crops. In New Zealand, with our Sauvignon Blanc still in demand, growers are being offered a tool to help them decide whether to mothball vines until the market improves. Braden Crosby of the Marlborough-based Bragato Research Institute explains.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

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To find the mothballing decision-making tool, go to bri.co.nz

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Anisha eats locusts at a food-grade insect farm in Dunedin.

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Otago farmer, vet and entrepreneur Becks Smith has many jobs. You might find her on a roof installing solar panels, scanning ewes in the yard or sitting in front of a microphone for her podcast about sustainability in farming. She is Country Life's guest this week.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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Gianina Schwanecke is talking bulls at a bull sale on the East Coast. Tangihau Angus stud is famous for setting the nation’s top prices. Can it do it again this year? Sally Round is at a coffee tree orchard in the Far North whose trailblazing owner Rob Schluter is on a new path to focus on the mystique of coffee and Anisha Satya sits down for a yarn on the farm with Bill Deans whose family farm in Canterbury is home to the rare and “chunky" mudfish.

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Ikarus coffee has been a trailblazer growing coffee in NZ. Fourteen years after the first successful seedlings went in, Rob Schluter has doubled the number of coffee trees on his steep farm above Doubtless Bay, and there's a new venture brewing to bring the magic of coffee to life from farm to cup.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

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For the past two years Tangihau Angus had set the top price for the breed and all bulls - breaking two national records. Gianina Schwanecke returned to see how they'd fare this year.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

You can catch our previous story on Tangihau Angus, here.

Or learn more from them directly, here.

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All 56 bulls paraded through the pen sold, for an average price of *$24,550 each. Tangihau's top bull sold for $100,000.
*Corrected price

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Bill Deans shares how planting waterways on his family's farm have provided a home for New Zealand's second-rarest native fish.

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A wrap of conditions on farms and orchards around the country for the month of June

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Country Life heads to Gore for the Tussock Country Music festival, visits a woollen mill in the heart of a remote hill country station whose farmer has fulfilled her dream of creating a hub for wool, and Nuffield scholar Lisa Portas chats about the potential for New Zealand farmers to increase the value of the fibre.

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Anisha visits Gore for a slice of the Tussock Country Music Festival - boots, utes, mullets and all!

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Taking the wool off the sheep's back and turning it into yarn within a few paces of the shearing shed has been a dream come true for a North Island sheep farmer. Patrizia Vieno has built a mini mill on her hill country station near Tinui.

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A wrap of the week's news from RNZ's rural news team.

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Wairarapa-based Nuffield Scholar Lisa Portas recently wrapped up her research looking into why New Zealand's strong-wool sector struggles to capture value despite producing a sustainable fibre.

You can find photos and read more about the stories in this episode on our webpage, here.

You can find her Nuffield Scholar report, here.

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