Explore every episode of the podcast What Is Your Rural Legacy?

Brothers Bob and Alan Johnston grew up on the family farm on the outskirts of Ashburton in mid-Canterbury. A sheep farming business, they eventually sold the farm when it converted to dairy around 2008, finding themselves in a new financial position with some discretionary income.

Marnie Anstis has been farming her whole life. She was a teenager when her parents bought a steep, remote property in the hills behind Opotiki where she worked mustering sheep and cattle, for nearly a decade, eventually breaking a sheepfarmer’s vow to ‘never step into a cowshed’ she married a dairy farmer and soon learned to milk their herd singlehanded.

Fraser McKenszie says that he is the ‘city boy who went wrong’, determined from the age of 10 to be a dairy farmer, despite not growing up on a farm. He worked on farms from a young age, eventually buying a block of land south of Rotorua, which he and his wife Dorothy have now farmed for over 60 years.

Owen Greig grew up on a dairy farm in the Horowhenua and has now farmed his own land, in the picturesque region of Himatangi, for over 30 years. He believes that many people remain attached to the region where they grew up, and most of us have a desire to eventually give back.