Down to Earth

Hannah Miller is A Lady Butcher and her passion is to create purposeful meats.Hannah’s jam is making traditional charcuterie, the art of preserving meat, with local New Zealand ingredients. She’s gaining a fan following for her range of premium dried and cured meats from local, ethically-raised animals.She and her husband also have a restaurant and brewery, Churly’s, in Auckland. At Churly’s they do whole carcase butchery, and Hannah is committed to ensuring every cut has a place, adopting a nose to tail philosophy. The butchery itself is tucked inside the restaurant.A Lady Butcher show notesWebsite: www.aladybutcher.co.nzFacebook: A Lady Butcher FacebookInstagram: @aladybutcher A Lady Butcher (@aladybutcher) | Instagram

Sheep milking is providing the perfect value add, and creating opportunities for the whole Ravenwood family, at Wairarapa’s Fernglen Farm.Sheep tick all the boxes for this entrepreneurial family, from a nutrition, sustainability and environmental perspective.The picturesque coastal farm is home to 1300 milking ewes, which are milked once a day at a purpose-built facility on the property, near Riversdale beach. The milk, which provides a nutritious alternative to cow’s milk, is turned into a number of products, including flavoured milk and yoghurt.Cam Ravenwood has a passion for nutrition, especially its role in sports and muscle recovery, and became interested in sheep milking after seeing a newspaper cutting in 2015, his last year at high school.Fernglen Farm Website: www.fernglenfarm.co.nzFacebook: Fernglen Farm Fernglen Farm | FacebookInstagram: @fernglenfarm Fernglen Farm (@fernglenfarm) | Instagram

A tree house is part of the quintessential Kiwi kid upbringing, and now you can relive your childhood in style, thanks to Nest Tree House luxury treetop accommodation.Found in the Hakataramea Valley on Million Springs Farm, the home of Andy and Elizabeth Hayes and their three children Charlie, 12, Ayla, 10 and Hugo, 8, the treetop accommodation injects a touch of playful adventure into a luxury getaway. The farm has been in the Hayes family for six generations and was a sheep and beef farm, more recently converting to a 2000-cow dairy farming operation in 2009 when Andy and Liz took over the farm.Website: www.nesttreehouses.comInstagram: @nest.tree.houses Facebook: Nest Tree Houses Nest Tree Houses | Hakataramea | FacebookLearn more about Down to Earth at: https://youngcountry.co.nz/podcasts/#downtoearth

Website: www.aulddistillery.co.nzFacebook: Auld Distillery Auld Distillery | Scotts Gap | FacebookInstagram: @aulddistillery Auld Distillery (@aulddistillery) • Instagram photos and videosA seed-to-sip philosophy is the approach at Auld Farm Distillery, where the Auld family harvest the grain from their Southland farm and take a fresh new approach to bottling the essence of their land, their history and their story.Rob and Toni Auld combine the grain from their paddocks and pure water from their own spring in an onsite distillery, resulting is a stellar range of whisky, gin and other spirits for the discerning punter.The site of Auld Farm Distillery has been growing grain since 1883.Three generations of family – all named Robert – have worked the land in this isolated corner of New Zealand, right at the bottom of the world.Rob has always enjoyed a tipple of whisky and with a push from a Rabobank course, he created a business plan to diversify the family business and ensure opportunity for all three of the couple’s sons, in the form of an on-farm distillery.

From running personal training sessions on her front lawn while her young children slept, to a thriving online health and fitness platform, Kate Ivey is inspiring people to adopt a healthier lifestyle that is sustainable long-term.Founder and trainer of DediKate, Kate Ivey Fitness, Kate runs her business from a farm near Twizel, where she lives with her husband Mark and their three children. DediKate now has about 1700 members across New Zealand and Australia.Online Personal Trainer | Fitness, Health and Inspiration (kateiveyfitness.com)They offer a 7-day free trial if you’re keen to try it out for yourself.https://www.facebook.com/kateiveyfitnessInstagram: @kateiveyfitness)

Scott Jimmieson has realised his dream of becoming a farmer, and he’s keeping it local with his new online shop business, Local Food NZ, connecting farms with consumers.The online farm shop and home delivery service in the Manawatu and Wellington regions offers free-range eggs from Scott’s farm and honey and coffee from other local producers. The Local Food NZ business started in 2019 and their direct-to-consumer model was amplified by the Covid lockdowns. They also wholesale a number of eggs to cafes and restaurants.Scott always knew he wanted to be a farmer, going to work in the dairy industry straight out of high school before travelling overseas and coming back to New Zealand to start his egg farm.Living the dream in London and walking into the Tescos stores, he noticed all the free-range eggs. Doing some research, he discovered about 45% of the market was free-range while in New Zealand, it was only about 14%. He thought it could only go one way here.Website: www.localfood.nzFacebook: Local Food NZ Instagram: Local Food New Zealand (@localfoodnz)

Tapping into the potential of native New Zealand honeys, lifelong mates Edward Eaton and Wilbur Morrison are creating a buzz with their Buzz Club mead.The 24-year-olds went from experimenting with different flavour profiles, brewing in their garage on the weekends, to launching a range of premium sparkling mead naturally brewed from native New Zealand honey.https://thebuzzclub.co.nz/https://www.instagram.com/buzzclubmead/

The Mangamarie Sunflower Field, established by farmer, photographer and mum, turned sunflower entrepreneur extraordinaire, Abbe Hoare, is turning heads for all the right reasons.She and her partner Emile de Greeuw, and their two girls Florence, 8, and Maeve, 2, have a 90-hectare farm at Mangamaire, just south of Pahiatua. Their ultimate dream is to one day buy a bigger farm that will sustain their family, but for now, they’re constantly looking for ways to diversify their operation to make this happen.Abbe's social handles and websites:https://www.sunflowerfield.co.nz/ www.instagram.com/mangamaire.sunflower.field www.photosforjean.co.nz www.instagram.com/photos_for_jean www.facebook.com/omatafencing/

Rebecca catches up with Delwyn Tuanui from The Chatham Island Food Co and learns about how he chased his dreams from the ground up.Running around Melbourne in his early 20s with a chilly bin full of Chatham Island blue cod, knocking on the doors of the city’s top chefs, Delwyn Tuanui knew he had a special product.Social media handles and and website links to check out Chatham Island Food Co for yourself:- Instagram handle @chathamisfoodco- Facebook account @ChathamIslandFoodCo Website: Chatham Island Food Co | Ocean to your Door – Chatham Island Food Company www.chathamislandfood.com#fromthegroundup #agriinnovators #primaryindustries #nzfarming #nzfishing #youngcountry #ruralchat #agchatnz