RNZ: Country Life

A careful breeding programme in the tough Wairarapa Hill country produces hardy rams that can cope with most conditions the New Zealand countryside throws at them.

Wairarapa sheep and beef farming couple Amanda and Lindsey Goodman have now added dairy goats to the mix. Lindsey squeezes in milking once a day and Amanda makes award-winning fresh goats cheese.

Northland has had a good week with sunshine during the day and showers at night. There is enough rain to keep pasture ticking over which means there's still good demand for store cattle at the sale yards. Feed is tight and dryland crops are showing moisture stress in parts of Canterbury that had no rainfall in November.

Emma Johnson has edited and complied a book that looks at how our food impacts our culture and the people involved in creating local food identities. Kai and Culture - Food stories from Aotearoa is published by Freerange Press in Christchurch.

Wairere Rams - Tough Nuts, The Drunken Nanny, Kai and Culture and the Regional Wrap

In 1952, Edmund Jeff gifted his 2424 hectare property to the Salvation Army to be used for training underprivileged youths in agriculture. It's still a training farm 65 years on.

Don Shaw is an AI Technician which means at this time of the year he is up early visiting dairy farms every morning inseminating cows that have come on heat. It's a job thousands of people do between September and December. Not many would be in their 70's. Don is. He's 79 years old has no plans to retire just yet.

The new CEO of kiwifruit marketing organisation Zespri has 15 years experience marketing kiwifruit and is currently based in Singapore. Dan Mathieson sees it as an innovative move by the company to have an offshore CEO.

Hot, calm days are suiting bees on orchards, but Hawkes Bay hasn't had any significant rain for six or seven weeks and it needs some. Eastern Marlborough is drying up too so farmers are offloading lambs and surplus ewes.

Learning on the Land, Active in AI, Zespri's New CEO and the Regional Wrap.

The small Waikato town of Kihikihi is home to a space museum which has artefacts from the Russian and American space programmes, interactive activities and a real-time stream from an international space station.

New Zealander Julian Hansen has a master's degree in political science and Russian, and he speaks Thai, Russian and Khmer. Over twenty years ago he went to Cambodia to work on development projects. Tired of sitting behind a desk, he and his Cambodian wife went to live in the highlands where they grow peppercorns and avocados for both local and export markets.

The Douglas-Clifford family run a 22,000 stock unit sheep, beef and deer breeding and finishing property at Motunau, north of Christchurch. They are the proud winners of the 2017 Canterbury Ballance Farm Environment Award.

Very little grass silage has been made in dairy farming areas of the North Island so farmers are being warned they probably won't be able to buy any when they need it.

The cherries are early this year and it’s looking like a bumper crop too, says an Otago orchardist.