Country Life

Country Life visits the Duff family's permaculture farm in the Hawke's Bay, a farming festival in North Canterbury, chats to young Kiwi pilot Henry Phelps, who's fighting Australia's bushfires, and Gary Lancaster of the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival.

The Underground Festival brings rural folk from across the motu together to learn about regenerative agriculture, and share kai from the land. Anisha Satya toured around the event.

The Duff family's focus is working with nature when it comes to their permaculture farm and organic nursery, Kahikatea Farm.

Kiwi pilot Henry Phelps has gone from wilderness flying to helping combat Australia's bushfires, flying planes with special technology which provide photos to assist in the tracking and fighting of fires on the ground. He's not the only Phelps in the air over the fires. Sometimes his brother is flying over the same area in a helicopter, also on a similar mission. Henry chats to Country Life about his job and working alongside his brother as fires rage below.

From wild deer to huhu grubs - the Wildfoods Festival in Hokitika celebrates all foods foraged and feral. Anisha Satya talks to vender coordinator Cary Lancaster.

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

Country Life is with blade shearers from around the world in a woolshed in Tinui and immersed in the many attractions of the tiny community of Duntroon. Sir Charles Godfray is the show's guest talking about how food systems will have to change in the face of global warming.

For a town of only 100 people, Duntroon has more than its share of attractions, with a blacksmiths, a master saddler, the intriguing Vanished World Heritage Centre with its fossils, and a Heritage Trail.

Blade shearers from around the world have been sharpening their tools and their eye before the Golden Shears in Masterton under the tutelage of Allan Oldfield, a world champion blade shearer, at a woolshed in Tinui.

Sir Charles Godfray has told the Riddet Institute's Agrifood Summit our food systems will have to change in order to limit the impacts of global warming.

A round-up of the week's rural news

Country Life heads to Waipara for the Underground Festival, looks at the tradition of whiskey making in Southland and meets a biochar-maker north of Wellington.

Hops from a Wellington brewery, cotton offcuts from a fashion label and forestry slash has turned Matt Welton into a bit of a Heath Robinson. His first job was collecting scrap metal in London's East End and after careers as a prison officer and cartographer, he has come full circle, this time turning the organic waste he collects into biochar for farmers and growers on his Akatarawa property.

A look inside the Hokonui Moonshine Museum where the manufacture of this legendary spirit continues in the modern day.

A round up of news from RNZ's rural news team