Country Life

This week Country Life gets up close and personal with some of the animals at Massey University's teaching farm and heads to a high country station near Omarama where merino sheep run alongside shorthorn cattle.

There's a romance attached to living in the Mackenzie High Country, but does it still exist? For Simon Williamson it is the only life he knows. He grew up through the harsh winters and hot summers and loves the challenge of it.

Set on 40-hectares near the university's Palmertston North campus, the Large Animal Teaching Unit, is home to a menagerie of animals for veterinary students to work with.

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

RNZ reporter Kate Green has recently returned from parts of Southeast Asia as part of a Jefferson Fellowship exploring food security issues across the region.

Country Life meets Berwick Settle who's worked on huge dairy farms in Russia and China, joins a shearing gang for a day and finds out about the world of heritage seed saving.

In this story for the long-running programme Spectrum, first broadcast in 1972, Jack Perkins joins a Wairarapa shearing gang, on a farm near Masterton. It starts at the beginning of a day's shearing, with sounds of sheep in the yards, dogs barking and shepherd's whistling.

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

There's a story to many of the heritage seedlings which Jemma Ostenfeld grows on a patch of borrowed land in the eastern Bay of Plenty.

Twenty years ago Berwick Settle was a Southland sharemilker. Since then he's worked in some of the biggest dairy farms in the world, helping set up farms in China and Russia where cows live year round in huge barns, a far cry from New Zealand's pastoral system.

This week Country Life learns more about LIC's project to breed bulls which emit less methane, while a Waikato sheep farmer does the same, using genetics to reduce emissions. Also, from the future to the past, step back in time with the volunteers at Eketāhuna Museum.

Volunteers at the Eketāhuna Museum are getting ready to reopen. This treasure chest of curiosities shines a light on the small town's Scandinavian heritage and the challenges of running a country museum.

Alastair Reeves has followed in his father's footsteps, using genetics to help farmers solve problems on farm by breeding sheep that make for good eating, are tolerant of facial eczema and emit lower amounts of methane.

The team of scientists at LIC, the Livestock Improvement Corporation, hope to know by late next year if they can offer farmers more methane-friendly bulls.

A wrap of conditions on farms and orchards around the country.