Country-Wide April 2023

Read Country-Wide April 2023 online here. Country-Wide is New Zealand’s only dedicated pastoral and arable farming magazine, available on subscription.

Will to live is a rural health charitable trust founded in 2018 by Elle Perriam after her partner, a young farmer, took his own life.

Farmers arrived by boat, water taxi, motorbike and plane from all over the top of the South, including D’Urville Island, to attend a Pelorus Sounds field day.

Recent pasture growth rates have been huge, but Trevor Cook writes there’s frustration with low liveweight gains.

Rob and Marie Burke have done the hard yards at Puketira Station and are still looking for ways to increase revenue and improve practice.

Story and photos by Louise Savage.

Efficiency and consistency are the hallmarks of a Southland couple’s farming operation who are out to enjoy their last 10 years of farming. Terry Brosnahan reports.

Photos by Chris Sullivan.

There’s years of clean up and rebuilding waiting for the victims of Gabrielle. Photographer Louise Savage lives in the thick of the flooded Gisborne region and post-flood went to visit some of the locals dealing with the cyclone’s aftermath.

An 80-year-old English poplar fell onto stockyards on the Northland farm of former agriculture minister Sir Lockwood Smith during Cyclone Gabrielle, costing him $20,000 to reinstate.

By Glenys Christian

Who’d want to be a farmer? Drought, floods, disease, falling prices, rising costs and overbearing government regulation would crush many, but farmers are a hardy bunch.

In the third part of our large-scale farm manager series, Paddy Boyd has made a career out of managing the Mackenzie Basin’s Haldon Station and its people.

By Terry Brosnahan.
Photos by Chris Sullivan.