Country Life

This week Country Life moves with the cows on that traditional day of the farming calendar - Mooving Day. The team's also in northern Coromandel where locals have fought back to retain their local post office and finds out about diversification in Taranaki.

June 1 is an important day in the farming calendar when dairy farmers relocate animals, typically from one farm to another, for the start of the new season. Back in 2009 producer Susan Murray stepped out with some farmers to find out what the day - now known as Mooving Day - involves.

An hour's drive from the northern tip of Coromandel, you'll find a tiny post office run by volunteers. As rural postal services shrink, the small community here - population about 1500 - has taken things into its own hands to ensure the old motto "the mail must get through".

Michelle Bauer from Venture Taranaki's Branching Out programme shares exciting new opportunities for Taranaki landowners to diversify their farming and growing operations.

Country Life speaks to farmers and growers around NZ to find out about growing conditions over the past month.

This week Country Life visits a Taranaki conservationist on the family farm, learns more about a Canterbury family making cosy coffins from their farms wool to provide a comfortable send off, and we take a dive into the archives to learn about the importance of rural broadcasting as RNZ celebrates 100 years.

As well as selling top quality wool to buyers around the world, Polly and Ross McGuckin's Yaldhurst Wools business also provides funeral homes with biodegradable caskets and ash urns made from New Zealand wool.

Informing, entertaining and connecting isolated farmers was a prime goal of the Radio Broadcasting Company, officially incorporated in August 1925 and a forerunner to RNZ. As RNZ celebrates the centenary, Country Life dips back into the archives to bring you some of the well-loved voices and shows from the rural team over the decades.

Wairarapa dog triallist Chris Shaw breaks down the difference between heading dogs and Huntaway, like young pup Miley, and what they each do on farm.

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

Former South-Taranaki mayor Ross Dunlop has led the way with conservation efforts on his family farm.

This week Country Life heads to the saleyards in Canterbury, meets a Taranaki woman weaving locally-grown wool into blankets and finds out what it's like to be a rural midwife working in a very remote part of the Coromandel Peninsula.

Rural midwife Sheryl Wright drives a winding dangerous road and even fords rivers to get to pregnant and new mothers in northwest Coromandel.

Taranaki weaver Alison Ross is trying to bring back woollen-blankets made from locally-grown wool to highlight the fibre's benefits.

Many Waitaha farmers are moving away from the traditional system of running ewes and finishing their own lambs. Now they're in the market to buy in and finish other's lambs.