Farming is no easy feat, but for Nadia Lim and Carlos Bagrie, an innovative approach to livestock farming focused on sustainability is far from horseplay - exploding sheep guts, anyone?
Giving Kiwis a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the reality behind the gumboots, Three's new series Nadia's Farm proudly sponsored by My Food Bag, documents the life of former MasterChef NZ winner Nadia and her husband Carlos, who took over the 135-year-old Royalburn Station three years ago.
Nestled at the base of the Crown Range, the 1200-acre rugged Central Otago farm is now home to a diversified farming operation, including their sustainable and ethical approach to livestock farming, where the couple strive to give their animals the best lives - and ends - possible with their free-range approach and on-farm abattoir.
In the third episode of the series, we start our hour at Royalburn in mid-January, rounding up lambs for weighing. General manager Michelle Wallis and Michael - a dog found on Facebook for $150 - get to work shepherding the sheep, with the lambs to be separated by weight so their growth can be effectively managed. The optimum size? A chunky 20-22kg.
In this episode, Nadia whips up a delicious roast lamb with artichoke - a "really easy" dish if you know the basics, the MasterChef, food writer and celebrity chef says with aplomb.
With a garlic, lemon and rosemary–infused marinade, a salsa verde and "knobbly and weird-looking" roasted Jerusalem artichokes fresh from the garden, Nadia carves her lamb and plates up - a dish of high-quality, homegrown ingredients.
Thanks to My Food Bag, you too can create this delicious recipe for slow roast lamb, artichoke and a lovely mint salsa verde at myfoodbag.co.nz/nadias-farm.
While most lambs ready for slaughter are transported in trucks to the freezing works, that's not the case at Nadia's Farm. Instead, the farm has its own operational, licensed mobile abattoir - a "revolutionary" addition - to make the lambs' end of life as stress-free as possible with no transporting, no waiting and no unfamiliar places.
Once the lambs have, ahem, reached the light at the end of the tunnel, the meat is transferred to the farm's on-site butchery. Here the meat is made into artisan sausages and lamb bacon, while larger cuts are sold directly to restaurants - including the high-end establishments you might dine in during your annual excursion around Arrowtown and Queenstown.
However, not every sheep is destined for the dinner table. Some die of natural causes, but they are still put to good use. A hot compost pile that can decompose a carcass within weeks could be the solution here, a sustainable alternative to ensure there's no waste. The decomposed carcasses form a rich compost for plants, with Nadia and Carlos' hoping to use the compost to plant native trees across the farmland.
Of course, the heat can cause some, ah, unsavoury side effects - such as exploding stomachs. Surveying her hot compost, we see Nadia wondering whether the ewe might have a gassy stomach - which could paint a scene resembling a low-budget horror film.
"Oh, it's too late now," she shrugs.
Next, we're whisked off to the chickens and the farm's solar-powered 'chicken caravan' operation; caravans that allow the chickens to nest during the daylight and lay their eggs. We're also introduced to Jodie, a former cowboy and the farm's resident egg collector - a woman who "constantly picks up chicks", but is still single.
The farm's eggs are so popular, there's actually a waiting list - and thankfully, the hens appear to be getting the job done, with Jodie counting 522 eggs from just one of their several caravans. Yet despite the demand, the overheads mean the operation isn't yet profitable - and only time will tell if they break even.
It's not only the eggs that are proving costly. In Southland, Carlos and Michelle attend an auction in the hopes of obtaining more ewes to fill their "oodles of grass" and scale up their lamb operation. However, Carlos is shocked when he's told they're selling for $300 each - times that by a few hundred, and that's one expensive investment that's not guaranteed to pay off.
After dropping a cool $90,000 on a couple-hundred ewes, Carlos and Michelle are pretty stoked with their purchase - Nadia, meanwhile, baulks at the bill, but as Carlos notes, without the "damn expensive" sheep, there's no lambs.
It's now mid-February, and 380 happy-looking ewes arrive at Royalburn. While Michelle is worried they under-bought, Carlos is concerned about the weather. It hasn't rained all summer on the Crown Terrace, and if the dry conditions continue, there will be more sheep than grass.
"Surely it's going to rain again," Carlos says. "Surely," Nadia adds.
By April, summer has continued into autumn. However, there is a positive; Nadia's home flock of chickens are thriving after three roosters who 'pecked on' the hens were culled in the first episode. Silver linings!
It's also time to check if the ewe carcass has decomposed in the high-stakes hot compost experiment, a task Nadia ominously dubs "grave-digging". She locates a skull, some ribs, and a foot - a successful result. With time, the bones should also theoretically decompose - a "good tip if anyone's looking to dispose of a body", Nadia adds. Helpful!
But as the seasons change, the farm is presented with a raft of problems and the reality of livestock farming begins to bite. Michelle is devastated as she realises the additional 2500 sheep on the property means she will have to access the farm's food stores for the winter early, as a green drought - no significant rainfall in six to eight weeks - means there's not enough grass for the sheep to get by on alone.
Unlike traditional farming, Royalburn needs a more spread out supply of lambs throughout the year - meaning there's a lot of mouths to feed with little to no grass, and the price of food skyrocketing.
"It keeps me awake at night thinking, 'how did I not see this coming?'" Michelle says. "I've got major problems right now and potentially in the future. I just don't have the feed that I need. Potentially we can't cope all year round trying to do what we're doing… It's a pretty dire situation. We're in a bit of trouble."
What happens next? We'll have to keep on watching to find out.
This article was created for My Food Bag, proud sponsors of Nadia's Farm.
