Country Life

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.

Iwi are trying to reclaim their forest from mobs of wallabies which they say are killing the bush and gobbling up pasture around Rotorua. Country Life heads out on a wallaby hunt.

There's no looking back for a Golden Bay dairy farming couple who eliminated imported feed and synthetic fertilisers from their paddocks.

Young equestrian Sophia Stratford has gone to the other side of the world to learn the craft of saddle, harness and bridle making at prestigious Capel Manor College in London and is among its top students.

A wrap of news from the rural sector for the week ending 15 November 2024