RNZ: Country Life

A new, easy to use environmental monitoring system that will let farms track their environmental performance over the years. It will provide data which proves the quality of their farm environment is improving and it may help gain better access to high value markets overseas.

The entire North Island remains totally water logged. The wet conditions are putting stress on all types of farming. Only five millimetres of rain turns soils to bogs. West Coast farmers are getting bobby pens ready as they head into the busy calving period.

Brett Worthington from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the Murray Darling Basin irrigation scandal and Murray Goulburn has announced its milk intake is less than expected.

First Pick, Smart As, Across the Ditch and The Regional Wrap.

Over a hundred two-year-old bulls went under the hammer at the 50th Te Mania Aberdeen Angus bull sale at Conway Flat. All but one sold and prices were buoyant. While the auction was going on, locals cooked up a feast for the farmers who had come from around the country to attend the sale.

When 17 year old Carlos Delos Santos arrived in New Zealand from the Philippines he hopped on a push-bike and went looking for work, He couldn't tell a cow from a bull yet was given a chance on a dairy farm as a relief milker. Now, 16 years later. Carlos and his wife Bernice are well on their way to farm ownership. Earlier this year they were judged one of the top dairy farming couples in the country at the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards.

Internationally acclaimed artist Graham Hoete, aka Mr G, is travelling around New Zealand painting murals on the walls of Farmlands stores. They tell the stories of the local area.

The East Coast soils are absolutely chocker with water, especially on the flats, which are of minimal value for grazing. Canterbury's very wet too and there's and at least 100 millimetres of rain's forecast for the next couple of days.

A Lower Hutt Rudolf Steiner School is looking for farmers nationwide who'd be happy to host two 15 year old students for two weeks in mid September. Students are expected to work 5 to 7 hours a day as well as help with household chores. A koha contribution is given towards their living costs. The farms don't have to be biodynamic or organic, the farmers just need to have an empathy with this style of farming. Parents arrange travel to and from the farm. Hosts must agree to a police vetting check. For more details: jfwraight@gmail.com

Talking Bull at Te Mania, Milking It and Loving It, Worth a Thousand Words, Finding Farmers and the Regional Wrap.

Pinoli Premium Pine Nuts have planted about 550,000 European stone pine trees on 550 hectares in Marlborough. Pinoli is the only commercial pine nut producer in the southern hemisphere.

Food fads come and go. At present a procession of so-called 'super foods' are dangled in front of us, promising, if not eternal life , then eternal "wellness". We have kale, micro greens, coconut water, quinoa and the implication that anything containing gluten will lead to an early grave. This set former NZ Dairy Board PR guru Neville Martin ruminating on the vagaries of food fashion, and he was prompted to pen a memoir on growing kohlrabi.

Lance and Makereta Roper's 62-hectare property near Lincoln produces 500 to 800 tonnes of red peeled onions a year, as well as growing pumpkins, peas and beans. The family business employs eight full-time staff and is the largest grower of red onions in the South Island.

Areas of Manawatu that never see snow received up to 15 centimetres on Thursday, Rotorua city had snow flurries, and outlying areas like Mamaku and Rerewhikaaitu had heavy snow on the ground.  Flood waters also covered paddocks in southern Wairarapa. In the South Island the forecast snow arrived in Canterbury. Between 5 and 20 centimetres of snow was common across the Plains.

A summer with lower sunshine hours, combining with a late harvest when birds damage fruit, is making for very poor olive oil volumes this year. Some growers are over 50% down. Olive oil producers from Northland and Waiheke have been hoping to buy oil from Wairarapa, but the crop drop is nationwide.