('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - (WHISTLES) - Always a favourite on every rural road. (DOG BARKS) - We've got over 300 varieties of fruit here. - Try that. That's beautiful. Every vintage is different. - It's old-school. It tastes just like it used to taste. - It's almost like we're trying to create a new category in the drinks market. (BIRDS CHIRP) www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 - You're like the Hungry Little Caterpillar, Tillie. - (GIGGLES) (APPLE CRUNCHES) This is really good. - Oh, look at these nice ones here, guys. - Ooh. - Look how red these are coming up. - Do you wanna try this one? - Yeah. - There you go. - So ready. Mmm. - Good? Crunchy? - Mmm. - As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And at Little Shaggery Farm in the Motueka River valley, choosing fruit for harvest is a family affair. - Try this, Dad. - Yeah. - It's kind of a little ritual that we have on an evening. Obviously, we take the kids and try and tire them out. - It's a favourite time of day for Luke Marsden, Rozmeri Leatham and their children. - They love eating around the orchard, have a bit of a graze, see what's ready. - They're real lively at this time of the night, aren't they? - (LAUGHS) Yes, they are. (CALM MUSIC) - Next morning, and with the kids at school, Rozmeri and Luke are heading off to pick today's crop. - We've got apples galore ready to pick, the pears are coming out, the plums and prunes are just ready to go, so it's kind of all hands on deck. - Little Shaggery Farm has 5ha of organic orchards with a huge range of different heritage trees. - So we've got over 300 varieties of fruit here. 150 varieties alone of just apples. It's made up of nashis, pears, prunes, plums. - Me and Luke do all the picking. February, March time is our busiest. That's when everything seems to be ready, and the orchard is a massive colour, and fruit. - We're picking some akane apples at the moment. It's just a nice really crisp apple from Japan originally. It's got a great crunch to it, nice acidity and just a really well-balanced apple for eating. - I'll let you get those high ones. - The previous owner had trialled around 700 different varieties to find the fruit best suited for the farm's climate. Some of the oldest varieties date back to Roman times. - My favourite one is the Flower of Kent. That's the one that fell on Sir Isaac Newton's head. I like taking those to the market and telling that story. Um, they're a very tart, very hard apple. They are looking really good this year. - The varieties that we've got here on the orchard are heritage, disease resistance, so they stack up to the true test of time. We've got a really long window for picking and harvest, so they stretch from January all the way through to May. So it gives us the ability to pick small amounts ` and it's just with Rozmeri and I, which is quite nice. Hello. - Well, hey, little fantail. - The orchard is certified organic, something that was very important to the couple when they were looking to buy the property seven years ago. - Before we moved back to New Zealand, I was studying organics in Australia. We were hoping for something just a couple of hectares, and we ended up finding this 25ha, a mixture of orchards, pasture, paddocks, riparian zone with the river, um, and native bush. We fell in love with it, didn't we? - Yeah. Yeah, we came and viewed it a couple of times, and just` it just felt like home straight away. - To be honest, we didn't know much about farming, so it was a big, steep learning curve for us. - It's very physical work, which is quite hard, but it's also mentally quite hard. Like, you've got to roll with nature, roll with the seasons, roll with the bugs that are coming in, good and bad, but it does make life very interesting. Every year is different. (VEHICLE APPROACHES) - The couple's harvesting most days during the season. As well as fruit for market, they make their own juices and vinegars so nothing is wasted. - Once we've picked all the apples from the orchard, we bring them in here. I've taken on the chief sorting. With Luke being out in the orchard, it lets me come in here in the cooler days. This is my favourite job. For the first-grade apples, I'm making sure that there's no blemishes and things like that. I'm making sure that the colour is good, so it'll have a good crunch, and the firmness. Some of these will go to the market, and then others will go into vege boxes that people get delivered to their homes. And then these ones, these are second grade. So they'll be sorted. Luke'll then decide which ones kind of go into the juice, which ones go into the vinegar depending on their sweetness, um, and how much juice you actually get out of them. So these apples all go down to the store, and there's usually about a kilo-plus that ends up going in. All of our packaging is paper, so it's all recyclable, because that's a big part of what we believe in and what we wanna do so we don't have any plastic. - Once the sorting is done, there's one more job before the kids get home. - This is our stall at the bottom of the Shaggery Rd. The stall gets stopped about every couple of days at least. These are the zwetschgens, the prune plums that we picked this morning, very popular with the locals. Luke's mum, Nana Daph, makes all the preserves and the chutneys and the jams, which we love to have. So the chilly bin's pretty well-stocked with the cold juices. We're actually on the Great Taste bike trail, so the bikers love stopping off and getting a cold juice on the way. - And tomorrow they'll be turning their fruit into more of that juice the old-fashioned way. (BIRDS CHIRP) (GENTLE MUSIC) - At Little Shaggery Farm near Motueka, Rozmeri Leatham and Luke Marsden are juicing their organic fruit. - This is one of the most exciting times. It's actually going out, harvesting the fruit, bringing it in and actually putting it into bottle. Each batch is a little bit unique. All our juice is 100% natural. We don't add any sugar at all. It's all just fruit crushed up and put into a bottle. - They use a cold-pressing technique. It's hands-on and satisfying. - I do really like doing this. Um, Luke's more of the hands-on with the apples, but this is my little parcelling-up and making it all look nice and neat. That's what I like. We have very juicy apples. I love the sound of when you've got enough of the apple cakes and the juice just naturally flows. The colours are amazing, what comes out. - Once they're milled, crushed up, we put them through our press. - It'll take just a couple of minutes to get 40 litres of juice from this stack. - So we'll look for around 400 litres of apple juice. That gives us about 1100 bottles. - We do eight high, and that's kind of the most efficient way to do it so it all fits in under the press. - Little Shaggery Farm makes six different juice flavours. They're all award winners, and Luke puts that down to the apple base. - We're using our old-fashioned heritage variety apples. The flavour that comes out of those, you can taste the difference. We've had people say that it takes them back to their childhood, how juice used to taste. - This season, they'll produce 15,000 bottles of fruit juice, and there are plans to increase production. - This is the juice straight out of the press, and all the bubbles on there, it's what we like to call the apple candyfloss, and it's so delicious. Each year with our juice, we've actually upscaled of how many bottles we've made. With the feedback that we're getting, I'd definitely love to make more juice. - Once pressed, the juice gets put into a holding tank. It'll then go into the pasteuriser before bottling, and there's nothing wasted in the juicing process. - This is what we call apple cake. So this is all the apples that have just been pressed. And that's what you get, which is a big square apple cake, and then this goes into our compost. - Composting and soil health is Luke's department. And using natural fertilisers is all part of maintaining the farm's organic certification. - We had a moment, probably 15 years ago, when we decided that organics was the path for us, and, you know, that sort of stemmed to where we are today. We're layering on our compost at the moment. We've got apple cakes on there, there's bamboo leaves, we'll end up putting some comfrey on. The soil's kind of everything. A healthy ecosystem stems from the soil. So, you know, it's really important for us that we're putting on the right inputs and it's all organic. We'll use the compost late winter, and that just goes around all the orchard trees, and that just helps with activating everything within the existing soil composition. We love the fact that it's a full circle here on the orchard. You know, we're using something, but then reusing it again as well. It's a really good feeling. (INSECTS CHIRP) (VEHICLE APPROACHES) - Luke and Rozmeri embrace the old ways of growing and selling their produce. - It's an early start for me twice a week. This morning we're heading to the farmers' market. We do two markets ` the Wednesday farmers' market and the Nelson Saturday market. It's a beautiful time of the day. - # Chomper is cheeky. He's a bit greedy too. # Sometimes he wonders to himself, 'What am I gonna do? # 'I'm just walking around # 'trying to find some food.' - This is the main way that we sell, like, the first-grade produce. - These two are your sweeter apples with more crunchier. - Today, 10-year-old Cooper has come to help out. - I really like it here. I do lots of maths. It's my favourite subject, and I like interacting with people and, like, meeting. It's really fun, and I get to help Mum, which is really cool. - Cooper's a really big help to me. His maths is amazing, better than mine, and he's really good with the people. - All good. So 14. - Yes. (BOTH GASP) - No! - Sorry. - No. That's his favourite colour. - Reds and purples are the best notes. - Cooper loves the purple. - Rozmeri enjoys promoting their produce, and it's a chance to get feedback from return customers. - How's the studio going ` good? - Yeah, good. - They like a lot of the different heritage varieties that we've got, cos we've got so many, um, and a lot of them take them back to, like, their youth of when they used to pick an apple from their grandma's garden and things like that, which is really nice. - There you go. - # Just chomping away, # he don't care what you say # as long as he's eating # that fruit all day. # He goes chomp, chomp, chomp, # and now he's blowing up like a balloon. # - And with the farmers' market over, there's one last stop, Nelson cocktail bar Kismet. - Hello. - Hey, Nick, How are you doing? - I'm very well. How are you? - Good. Thank you. - Excellent. - Got your ginger and pear shrubs for you. - Wonderful. We got, uh, World Bartender Day on Saturday, so we've got some pretty exciting cocktails planned with these ones. - Brilliant. - Rozmeri's found an unexpected new following with her latest venture, Tempus Tonics. - ...a couple of others as well. They're going to be great. - Oh, fantastic. - ...a couple of others as well. They're going to be great. - Oh, fantastic. (EASY-GOING MUSIC) (BEE BUZZES) - Today Rozmeri Leatham and Luke Marsden from Little Shaggery Farm near Motueka are checking on their cider vinegars. - I love walking in here when the door opens, and you can just smell the oakiness and the vinegar, and it just smells so comforting. It's just really a beautiful smell. - The couple uses an old French technique called the Orleans method, ageing the vinegars in oak barrels. - Yeah. - How's it smell? - It resonated with us to be able to produce something that's slow, that's complex, full-bodied, full flavour. - Oh, it smells good. - I reckon when we add some manuka honey to that, It'll come up nice. - Yeah. Sharp and then a bit of sweet at the end, eh. - Mm. - Beautiful. - The Orleans is a really old-school technique. It's the slow process of converting alcohol cider into a vinegar, and it normally takes about a year to do. We keep ours for about two years in barrel, and we're moving them between various barrels along the way, and we feel that gives a nice complex flavour and aroma to our apple cider vinegar. I sort of take on the alchemy side of things, the fermentation side. I'm just looking to see that the mother's looking nice and healthy and, uh, everything's intact. A mother's kind of like a scoby in a kombucha or a starter for a sourdough. It's the alive part and converts the alcohol across to the vinegar. - They mainly make apple cider and pear vinegars, but recently they've been trialling some new flavours. - Because we have a very permaculture kind of orchard, we figured we'd have a bit of play in regards to vinegars and the fruits that we have out there. - We just really wanted to try different fruit out, different methods, different styles, and see what it might come out with. Vinegar's underrated. You can just use it in so many different ways, and it's so good for you. I just love that. I love the process that you go through making it. Yeah, it's just wonderful. (RELAXING ACOUSTIC MUSIC) - Hey. - Hey, Flic, how are you going? - Good. - Ready to bottle? - Ready, yeah. - The slow-ageing process gives the vinegar full strength and health benefits. It's led to Rozmeri's latest venture with friend Flic Hawkridge, Tempus Tonics. - That's a beautiful colour. - It's gorgeous, isn't it? - I know. Black Doris, gotta love it. This is a plum shrub that we're bottling today. - Flic is a qualified naturopath. The pair's known each other for 20 years. - It is fun to think that we started work in a ski rental in Queenstown, and now we've had kids and moved to a whole different area and, yeah, still kind of working together now, which is really cool. - That vinegar smell up here, it's quite intense. - How's it looking? - It looks great. It's pretty dark, this one. - Flic And Rozmeri started out making health tonics. And then in a search for drinks for their kids, they came across a bit of culinary history ` shrubs. - A shrub is a very old-fashioned word for, like, a cordial. - Like an old fashioned drink based around vinegar, fruit and sugar. So we started experimenting and trying them out on friends and family. - Yeah, we tried a lot of different ones out on friends and family, so just the best ones got the cut. The vinegar that's in a shrub, it has really good health benefits. For me, it was having like a cordial for the kids and us to drink without all the additives and things, and so it really was, you know, a bonus that I could get my children drinking vinegar, to be fair, because, you know, love it or hate it, it's a very sharp taste. But you put some fruit and a bit of sugar to sweeten it, and it's perfect. - Tempus Tonics now produces six different flavoured shrubs. - Blackcurrant and mint, ginger-pear, nettle, grapefruit and pine needle, plum, and we've got a spiced apple one. - It's very refreshing with soda water, or you can have it with tap water, you can have it warm as, like, a tea. - And shrubs are having a resurgence as cocktail mixers. - We've tasted some of the cocktails and even the mocktails with it. They're just delicious. - They're still a little bit of an unknown, so it's almost like we're trying to create a new category in the drinks market. For me, it's a real privilege to be working with Rozmeri, and they're such a great, hardworking couple, and I'm excited to see where Little Shaggery Farm will go, as well as Tempest Tonics. It's exciting. (CHILDREN SHOUT, PLAY) - Little Shaggery Farm is providing an income and lifestyle that aligns with Rozmeri and Luke's philosophy about healthy living and family. With Luke's parents, Ray and Daphne, moving up from Invercargill, there's now three generations living at the property. - It's great for the kids. It's nice to have Nan and Grandad just next door. - And they're excited about the future. - We feel so privileged to be able to be here and have our family lifestyle here as well. - We can see ourselves increasing our production. We've got some scope here, which would be really nice to be able to, you know, make more juice, make more vinegar, some more shrubs as well. - It is our dream property and our dream lifestyle. We get to hang out with our children, um, and get to have fun on the orchard, as well as doing everything naturally, knowing that my children can go around and pick an apple off a tree and it's all good. - The size of the fruit on these is quite nice, isn't it? - What kind is that? - It's an idared. - Oh. - It's gonna be really good for juice. - It's a much healthier lifestyle that we really adhere to. - Next time ` a small family dairy farm saved by its customers... - I have a nice relationship with the community. - It was a phenomenal experience. They rescued us, really. - Lots of people just go, 'What can we do?' ...and the flower business that flourishes on the same farm. - I enjoy life here very much, I've got to say. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.