From mucking in to manure piles, Kiwis are getting a glimpse of the challenges of rural life during this season of Nadia's Farm. The new Three series, proudly sponsored by My Food Bag, documents the journey of former MasterChef New Zealand winner Nadia Lim and her husband, Carlos Bagrie after taking over the historic Royaburn Station in the Crown Range three years ago.
We've seen the couple take on the mammoth challenge of producing delicious, ethically raised and sustainably grown produce on the 1200 acres of farmland — and facing the trials and challenges of growing new crops.
We start this week's episode in the middle of winter with some scenic shots that would make Lord of the Rings proud. The high country farm's 700m elevation means it feels the extremes of all seasons and leads to some epic snow falls during winter.
Coming from a childhood spent in Auckland and Asia, it's still exciting for Nadia, who calls it a "winter wonderland". But as we saw last week, the snowfalls can bring with them some intense challenges — such a dramatic reduction of growth throughout the station including in Nadia's beloved market garden.
But it's not all bad news. Nadia's baby turnips — which she has force fed straight from the ground to just about every visitor to Royalburn — are better than ever, with Nadia revealing the cold temperatures have actually sweetened the vegetables.
"They've turned the starches into sugars to stop their cells from freezing," she explains. Who knew!?
Making lemonade out of lemons was a theme that carried through this week's episode. We saw results of the "absolute shitfest" that was Carlos' weather-bomb harvesting of barley and sunflower seeds. This week, Carlos headed up to Dunsandel to chat to the experts at Gladfield Malt to see if his dreams of making a Royalburn "paddock to pint" beer could become a reality.
Luckily, despite the rainfall, the barley sample got a thumbs up from the lab and the grains were steeped, germinated and dried down to malted barley— ready to become a pilsner or lager come spring.
Back on the farm, we've learnt over the last few weeks that nothing at Royalburn goes to waste. Last week we saw Nadia experimenting with a hot compost pile, which uses decomposing carcasses from the farm to create a rich compost for plants — and causes dead livestock to break down in a quicker fashion.
The pile was still going strong when "compost extraordinaire" Michael Sly stopped by to check on the state of it this week. Digging into the compost let off a cloud of steam that, judging by Nadia's expression, made us thankful to be watching from home, without smell-a-vision.
But the smell wasn't the only reason Nadia was holding her breath. If the hot compost was no longer active, it would mean they would have no compost for their fresh batch of native trees come spring — and after a hefty snowfall and minus five degree weather, it was looking a little tense. But thanks to the powers of decomposition, it was still going strong at an "incredible" 50 degrees and things were ticking along nicely for tree planting.
"It's such a relief and so incredible… it's really cool to be using something that would otherwise be wasted, turning it into a valuable resource," says Nadia.
Back to Carlos' beer-making efforts which would put any Kiwi bloke's home brewing efforts to shame — although after battling weather bombs, technical issues and devastating feed supply issues over the last few weeks, anyone would deserve a drink. To further progress his beer journey, Calros took a visit to the Altitude Brewing team in Queenstown, where he threw himself into a tasting session he dubbed "the best day of the year".
As he worked his way through about 20 different varieties — in the name of research — his beer commentary got, well, a little bit loose. (We'll let the footage speak for itself.)
It was then off to the brewery, to see the process of turning malted barley into beer, in a process Carlos compared to being in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
He and the team ground the malted barley grains to grist, before spraying it with water and stirring the resulting mash into a porridge consistency. After mashing, hops are poured in to give the beer its flavour — and then the most important brewing ingredient comes into play: time.
Carlos was dubbed a "natural" at the process, and he even claimed: "If farming doesn't work out, I'll be giving Elliot [from Altitude] my resume". Is Carlos' Brewery set to be a spinoff of Nadia's Farm? Watch this space.
Carlos and Nadia are also producing delicious local fare using their new onsite abattoir — and taking it one step further with a focus on celebrating local wild game found in the area.
Royaburn is one of the first abattoirs in the country licensed to process wild game, meaning they can increase what's coming out of the butchery without having to use more farmland to produce beef and lamb.
"It's a win-win-win – it opens the doors to such an array of delicious meats and sauces. It's a little bit of a coup," says Carlos.
But it's not a free-for-all. The game has to be sourced by a certified hunter, and MPI has many rules and regulations around how quickly it gets to the abattoir for processing. So it was with the help of commercial hunter Ethan that Carlos chased his dream of hunting down a wild deer on the property.
The pair traversed kilometres of Crown Range mountains — and startled a few deer with a couple of missed shots — before landing a kill.
The animal was then logged with MPI using GPS and a unique identification tag. Then the clock is ticking — the body has to be carried back to the station to have the meat inspected before it can be processed at the abattoir.
"We've ethically harvested a beautiful animal that's going to eat extremely well — and none of it is going to waste," explains Carlos.
"There is nothing worse than killing an animal and having that animal be wasted. That is criminal.
"To be able to take that animal, bring it here and produce something that chefs fall over themselves for, it's outstanding."
Heading into spring, and with most of the snow gone, it's time for the couple to focus on new beginnings. The time has come to put that hot compost to use and the first of 25,000 native trees be planted — as well as the market garden to be weeded. So Nadia prepares lunch for some of the hard farm workers using some of the delicious wild venison that's been commercially hunted and processed at the abattoir.
And in a twist, this week she was assisted by someone who usually doesn't spend too much time in the kitchen — Carlos.
"Carlos can be a really good cook — whether he chooses to cook, that much is another story," Nadia tells us.
Things got off to a slightly strained start when Carlos decided to get his venison-cooking method from "random YouTube clips" instead of his wife, a former MasterChef New Zealand winner and cookbook author.
But thanks to a combo of the venison, some softened blue cheese, caramelised onion and some fresh rocket from the market garden, the pair produced a tasty twist on a steak sandwich for a very grateful farm team.
If you fancy whipping up something delicious for lunch or dinner, this week's My Food Bag is a standout. Gourmet Seared Venison Medallions with New Potato Salad, Herby Ricotta & Candied Walnuts inspired by Nadia’s Farm! Delicious.
Check out more tasty Nadia inspired recipes at myfoodbag.co.nz/nadias-farm
Watch Nadia's Farm on Three and ThreeNow every Wednesday at 7:30pm.
This article was created for My Food Bag, proud sponsors of Nadia's Farm.
