RNZ: Country Life

Picton bee keepers Matthew Wells and Catherine Gordon lease beehives to people who want greater returns from their fruit trees and vegetables. A few kilometres away retired car mechanic Sunny Sunbeam has built an energy efficient house from re-used materials on a hilltop block overlooking Blenheim.

King Country sheep and beef farmers Neville and Leonie Walker are enjoying their alpacas so much they're becoming a viable diversification for their business. From their now converted woolshed they sell passing tourists quality alpaca knitwear, designed by Leonie. Despite little advertising, they're hard pressed to keep up with demand.

The whole of the North Island is now officially in drought, while in the South the ground is too hard for direct drilling.

Jennifer Boggiss from Heilala Vanilla in Tauranga.

A sheep and beef farm, a tourist destination and conservation work all combine to become a good money earner for the farm owners. Six thousand tourists, many from overseas, stay on the isolated farm each year, and the Stray Bus visits about five times a week over summer. Backpackers take a break in their travels to work as volunteers on conservation projects, and like Hotel California, many find they can check out any time they want, but they can never leave.

Terry and Belinda Clancy have built a bird sanctuary on their Kaituna Valley property on Banks Peninsula where they provide respite care for old, unwanted or injured birds.

North and South Island farmers are struggling to cope with the extremely dry conditions.

North Waikato sheep and beef farmer, Steve Stark.

...it's as good as it gets for a cow. David and Joanna Grigg's farm straddles the hills between the Awatere and Wairau Valleys in Marlborough and is part of a Lincoln University project driven by Professor Derrick Moot, that investigates strategies for dryland livestock farmers to drought proof their farming systems using different species of legumes. Cath Goulter's dryland farming blog

Nearly all of New Zealand's strawberry plants are grown in Katikati before heading out to commercial growers. Keith Taylor's family has been propagating stawberries there for almost 60 years.

This King Country farmer and board member of the Ruapehu Wanganui Rural Support Trust says sheep and beef farmers are sick of being blamed for not making money, and being told to improve their on-farm performance when the problem is between the farm gate and the consumer.

The North Island continues in its parched state and the South Island is not too far behind.

Howe Young has been growing vegetables for 50 years in Pukekohe and he's never seen it so dry.

Neil Charlton spends most of his time travelling the world . He's been home for summer though, looking after his friends blueberry patch.

A farmer talks about a memorable day saving a hen from a drum of molasses, courtesy of the New Zealand Sound Archives.