Country Life

This week Country Life dives underground to take a closer look at soils, from Canterbury farmers using the Japanese Bokashi system to a market gardener making garden beds as rich as chocolate cake in Taranaki. We also unpack the recently announced biodiversity credits.

Over the past 20 years, Jodi Roebuck and his wife Tanya have turned a bare paddock into a thriving market garden with an emphasis on microgreens, teachers others from around the world how to do the same.

Bokashi, the Japanese anaerobic composting system which ferments organic matter, is helping to maintain healthy soils on a sheep and dairy grazing farm in North Canterbury.

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

News that the government is looking to support a market system to help fund the huge cost of restoring nature could be music to the ears of farmers and iwi wanting to do their bit for biodiversity but facing huge costs. So what are biodiversity credits and how do they work?

This week Country Life celebrates Matariki with stories about Māori horticultural wisdom and a couple setting up star gazing experiences on their farm.

This Matariki, the stars align for Mark and Susannah Guscott - award winners bringing whakapapa and astronomy together on their sixth-generation Wairarapa farm.

The McClutchie whānau explores growing different crops, with aspirations to grow Māori medicinal plants, on their family whenua in North Taranaki.

Nick Rahiri Roskruge is Country Life's guest this week. His work in agriculture and soil science have taken him far afield looking at crops sustaining indigenous communities.

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

This week Country Life is out and about at Fieldays, meets a boy with a side hustle farming quail eggs, and chats around the kitchen table with the Harvey family about their century of farming.

Strong family support, innovation and a dash of good luck have seen the Harvey family of Wairarapa clock up a hundred years on Daisybank Farm near Martinborough. They're banking on a similar mix to see them through the next century.

Hamish Sturgeon is on his first farming venture rearing quails for their eggs. They're healthy, delicious and it's a fun side-hustle keeping the cute little birds fed, watered and healthy, the young teen says.

As Rural Women New Zealand marks its centennial year, it hopes a $250,000 boost in government funding can help fuel its mission to connect, support, and advocate for women in rural communities. President Sandra Matthews is Country Life's guest this week.

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