Country Life

There are cheese and eggs on Country Life's menu this week with visits to poultry and goat farms. The team also takes a closer look at what's in the pipeline for farmers to help lower methane emissions.

Avian flu has been found on an Otago chicken farm for the first time. It's something the poultry industry has spent months preparing for and we take you inside a North Island chicken farm to understand what biosecurity measures are in place.

Thanks to goat's milk, Andrea Gauland son's eczema cleared up within two weeks. It was the excuse she needed to start farming dairy goats 25 years ago and she's still loving the whey of life.

A cow pill, vaccines, and specially treated grass-seed are among products it's hoped will be in farmers' methane-busting toolkits in the not-too-distant future.

This week Country Life's learning about the art of making garden trugs and growing heirloom tomatoes, also the benefits of biochar on a farm growing trees, sheep and beef in the Far North.

Could biochar be the black gold for integrated forestry and farming operations like Pārengarenga Incorporation in NZ's Far North?

Meet Anthony and Angela Tringham, of Curious Croppers, the couple growing heirloom tomatoes using agroecology principles.

Tony Hitchcock has been crafting trugs - wooden garden baskets - for several years using untreated willow or hazel and poplar sourced locally from around Golden Bay.

Increasingly dry conditions across much of the North Island has farmers growing nervous about feed heading into summer, while down South the fine weather has led to good lamb weights.

Country Life gets the low down on greenhouse gases, chats about wallaby control in Bay of Plenty and is with schoolkids helping restore habitat for the endangered Canterbury grass skink.

Young school students plant habitat for an endangered skink and learn about biodiversity at a nature reserve on a North Canterbury dairy farm.

Standing at the wallaby control fence in Rotorua, biosecurity expert Dale Williams gives Country Life an update on efforts to control the pest.

A round-up of the week's news from New Zealand's primary sector.

RNZ Climate Correspondent Eloise Gibson talks about agriculture's role in the production of greenhouse gases, what people get right and wrong about methane, and explains exactly what the ETS is.

This week Country Life chats to a young woman learning the ancient craft of saddlery, meets a dairy farming couple who no longer use imported feed and synthetic fertilisers and heads out on a hunt for wallabies in the Bay of Plenty.