Country Life

This week Country Life is in Marlborough's back country on Molesworth Station, we check out the sale action at the Feilding saleyards and learn more about Chinese mooncakes, or suncakes as one gardener views them.

It's an early start for the musterers at Molesworth Station. The bulls are out with the cows for the mating season and everyone needs to beat the heat. Country Life producer Sally Round spent a day with the stockmen, the farmer and the cook, peeling back some of the mystique of New Zealand's most famous farm.

Global demand for red meat is driving strong prices for sheep and cattle, some of the best former Feilding farmer Eric Linklater has seen in over 20 years of guiding tours at the local saleyards.

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

David Ruan says the colourful vegetables growing in his garden are like little cakes relying on the sun for energy, hence the name Suncakes Gardens.

This week Country Life is inside one of Fonterra's large dairy plants and meets a Canterbury farming couple making beautiful wool coats from their family's flock.

Driven by a desire to find a pure New Zealand wool coat, and to find more use for the bales of wool sitting idle in the shearing shed, Charlotte Bell started her fashion business The Clip. She and husband Hamish farm in Hakataramea Valley in Canterbury

A growing taste for pastries, cakes and dairy-topped drinks in China and southeast Asia is fuelling demand for New Zealand-made cream cheese. Country Life takes a tour of Fonterra's high-tech factory at Darfied to see how it's made.

Feilding livestock agent and saleyards auctioneer Alex Stewart on breaking into an old man's game, human calculators and conducting the sale.

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

This week Country Life meets a couple who've had a lifetime on the same farm, and some newcomers to the truffle industry, and the team also talk fitness with a farming-focused physiotherapist.

Indie has just finished her first harvest as a truffle hunter, showing outstanding skills for a pup. Her owners have just finished their first harvest too and are relishing life on the land after years searching for a place to call home.

Farmer Ian Buckingham was born at Lansdown Farm at Hook near Waimate 85 years ago and he's never left.

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

Constant wet weather on hilly Te Tai Rāwhiti farms has led to an uptick in injuries among farmers there. Our guest this week, physiotherapist-cum-farmer Storm Baynes-Ryan, gives in-paddock advice to help them recover, stay strong and keep fit.