('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - Always a favourite on every rural road. (DOG BARKS) - A Southland farm rescued by the humble swede. - Harvesting swedes, it did save the farm. - And it's now a thriving family business. - It's a phenomenal province for producing. We kind of forget that, I think, as Southlanders. - They're celebrating local. - It's not hard for me to turn a swede into a dish if it's delicious from the get-go. Captions by Alex Backhouse. Edited by Jessie Puru. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 - The Wilson family farm's near Winton in Southland, and February is the peak time to harvest their vegetables. But regardless of the season, Dave Wilson works at only one pace. - He cuts way too fast to keep up. I did a film of him one day and he'd done three in less than 12 seconds. You can see that he goes fast, so I'm always keeping my eye on him because... he just throws it up in the air. If they're cabbages, they're like a medicine ball. They knock you over. (CHUCKLES) - Usually you lob it towards the person so it's not going at full speed. (CHUCKLES) - Buys you another second. (LAUGHS) - Today, Dave and wife, Kathy, have a couple of helpers to share the workload. - We've got our son, Josh. He's taken a day off. Normally it's just me and Dave, or sometimes just Dave himself going hardcore. We got a family friend, Colin, staying for a couple of days. That's quite helpful, having an extra pair of hands. A lot of heavy lifting. You know about it by the end of the day. Anything out in the open is good. Like the weather, you just run with it. - Quality time with your husband. - Yeah. That's right. You usually end up discussing a lot of random topics. Keep yourself amused. - And they've spent many years in the fields harvesting. - We've been married for... how long, Dave? - Aw... 26, is it? - Yeah, I think so. I think sorta` I probably first got to know him when I came and drove his little tractor for transplanting leeks. - I'm too old for this. It's nice working in 13 degrees because you generate your own heat. I sweat every day. - Dave is in his element growing vegetables. And with their family shop to supply, plus the wholesale market, there's no time to slow down. - I think these will be ready in another week, Dave. - Early next week I'll have to see if we can sell some more wholesale or something. They're all good. They're nice and white, though. - Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful white curd. - Oh, there's one here. There you go. Look at that. Sharp as. We've got caulies here. There's 12 rows. A good 300 a row, that's about 3500. We'll probably get a 95% harvest. I want about 40 for the shop. And then, um... I might use this little batch for the shop and the other big batch over there for wholesale. - He's got 28 crops. He can only spend a few minutes on each crop, so... - Catch that one? You did well there. - (LAUGHS) Yeah. - And I've still got all my fingers too. (LAUGHS HEARTILY) Having a nice, long knife, you can take the whole leaf off at one go. It'll feed a family, that. (GENTLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) - The swede is part of Southland culture, but it's less popular these days and it does have humble origins. - It was grown mainly for sheep farmers, for the sheep to eat in the winter time. Now sheep farming is less than what it was with all the cows coming in, so there's less swede being grown. And then, probably even our society has changed a wee bit. The swedes aren't being eaten like they used to. But the vegetables date. Like, a wee while ago, we could hardly sell much beetroot, but now beetroot's popular as. My grandfather grew swedes; my father grew swedes, so, yeah, I grow swedes as well. - The swede retains a special place in the story of the Wilson family. And with good reason. - During the '80s when things were very tight` 20% higher interest rates` we sold a lot of swedes. It was good for the farm financially. Every few thousand swedes added up. That paid for a lot of the farm. From harvesting swedes, we probably saved the farm from that, yeah. They're a nice vegetable to eat. I find them nice, so, yeah. We eat them. Mrs Wilson... she'll make a shepherd's pie. She'll put potato on the top, swede, and then the meat underneath. Ooh. And with melted cheese on top. Everything's good with melted cheese. - Dave's now doing his bit to raise appreciation for the swede. This year, the farm is hosting a festival to celebrate it. - We're having a festival for the swede. They're going to have food buses and a band ` anything to promote the swede. It might come back ` you never know ` and be a big thing again. I've got plenty to harvest. (WHEELS SQUEAK) - Every morning I just wheel out the Swede Man, so everyone knows that we're open. The vege shop's been such an integral part of the venture. We originally started with just a little wheelbarrow out the front selling swedes, and they picked up some cabbage and cauli one day in town and stuck them out there and they sold like hotcakes, and that's sort of where the process of starting the veges came from. It more sort of fell in their lap, rather than planning to go out market gardening. As it got busier and busier out on the road side, Transit decided that it wasn't really that safe a option, so they kind of used that to shut the business down, basically. Came back with all these rules and regulations, said, basically, 'You need to build a shop; you need to build a big car park; you need to widen the road.' Most people probably would have gone away at that point, but Dave and his family decided, 'Nah, we're gonna do that', so they had to shift the shearing shed. This was sheep yards here, and so they did that. The shop was opened in 1990. It's always better to sell our own veges through the shop. They did sell wholesale, probably up to about 12 years ago. A little bit still goes wholesale. It mainly goes through to Central Otago. Very little will end up anywhere in Invercargill, which is a shame, because local is so important. - Yeah, well they're all the same... - Sue Frisby is the Wilsons' neighbour, and she's been serving in the shop for 25 years. - Here we are; that's $36.10, thank you. - You meet the customers. As a normal sheep farmer or dairy farmer, you don't meet your customers. We have them come into the shop. They get to see us, they talk to us, they can ask their questions. Even if they want to know how to grow something. We love sharing that knowledge. We love supporting other local businesses, because we're a local small business. Like the Robbies Pickles here. She uses our product in a lot of her jars. The local eggs, Nectar & Nest, and... honey, Drummond Honey. All local products that are fantastic. - And they're spreading the word about vegetables to the next generation. - And so, I think they employ... - You remember to put diesel in the tractor? - Yes. - Oh yeah. Just grab one each and we'll be away. - Yep. (ENGINE FIRES) - Every day, Dave Wilson is either harvesting or planting on his farm near Winton in Southland, to ensure he's producing a steady flow of vegetables to sell. And planting is often a family affair. - I've got one of my boys, Daniel. He works as an engineer in Invercargill, and he's helped me since he was a wee boy, probably 5 or 6, out driving the tractor and planting. And then I've got my daughter Hannah on the tractor, and she's been driving it since her brothers left home. All my kids know how to drive tractors, and they're all really handy. We put about 250,000 into this paddock. You're trying to harvest most of them. Right now, late February, so you're trying to get the last of the plants in. You're harvesting for the wholesale market. The shops are open. Everything's happening. - The farm is on fertile land, but Dave says it needs to be handled with care. - I like looking after the soil, so I don't want to work my soil when it's too wet. In Southland we can get rather wet. I actually like growing veges probably more than selling them. (CHORTLES) You have a nice paddock of veges, it looks nice, and then you go and destroy it. We'd been a dairy farm for a wee while, and we were a sheep farm before that, and my dad dairy farming, so we've got a history of putting fertiliser on for several generations. I actually don't put too much on, so we're relying on the existing fertility of the farm. And there's some immediate things that brassica plants and plants need in general, like boron. And then we'll even chuck a bit of selenium and things on that. That sort of makes the plants healthier, and probably healthier for people to eat as well. Wee bit faster, Miss Wilson. - OK. - He keeps spraying to a minimum. - I see it as a tool. We use it. Probably more pre-emergent, so once the vegetable's in the ground I don't tend to touch it. When it comes to the bugs, we use the spray to keep the aphids and white butterfly away. The plants need protecting when they're young. We actually have quite cool weather, so we won't get really aphids turning up until just before Christmas. And then we get into February and it's like` it's starting to get cooler again and they all slow down. We don't have a huge peak of bugs. - The Wilsons regularly invite groups to their farm so they can gain a better appreciation of what they grow and how they grow it. - We love bringing the school students into our business because they get to meet the grassroots of where things really happen. It's not about a supermarket where things just magically appear on the shelf. - Today's visitors are year 12 students from James Hargest College in Invercargill. - This is a food and nutrition class, so it makes sense that they come and visit us. So we like to make ourselves available for groups to come and see what happens. Welcome, James Hargest. I'm Kathy Wilson. This is David Wilson, and we're the owners of Wilson's Veggies. Dave started it with his family about 35 years ago. Back 20 or 30 years, everyone knew a grandma or an auntie that had a farm and would go visit them. So it's really important to bring the students on to the farm and get some dirt under their fingernails. So if we just come and make a bit of a semi-circle around here... - We started harvesting cabbages and caulies and carrots and selling them, and now this is our second paddock. So we've got two paddocks. We have one with carrots and parsnips and beetroots in, and then this one here. Southland, quite often, I think, has very nice-tasting parsnips and carrots and produce. We grow it in a cooler climate, and our soil does give it flavour as well. Food miles doesn't really count. It's only like 300m to the vege shop. Really at no point in the farm are we probably over 800m or more away from the vege shop. I cart stuff to Invercargill and then it quite often goes to Queenstown. So as far as food miles goes, we're pretty close. I don't use a lot of sprays, as you can probably tell. There's weeds hanging around. But we do have bugs, and if you looked around you'd probably see some damages on leaves of what white butterfly, etc do. So that's OK. I can handle a bit of that. As long as my bulb or the cabbage heart looks good, I don't get too worried about that. (GENTLE, SUMMERY GUITAR MUSIC) - Although the Wilsons devote their days to growing and selling vegetables, they retain a link to livestock farming. They have a dairy herd, and the family used to raise sheep. - We converted from sheep about 16 years ago. We were doing the market garden and the sheep, but it was just starting to become a little bit too much work. We converted to cows, although in some ways we just converted back to cows, cos Dave's grandfather used to milk cows. We have staff that run the dairy farm for us. We are hands-on, do a lot of the maintenance, and when we're required, we're on calving. It's all hands to the deck. But other than that, we leave them to it. We sort of concentrate on the vege side. - Rotating the herd around the paddocks helps with fertility and vegetable growing. (COWS MOO) - The cows are obviously, you know, pooing and that in the paddock, so it's all adding some nutrients into the soil. We regularly have the soils tested so that we know exactly where we're at with what we need, and then we can add other nutrients that are` that we're missing out on, to keep it healthy. Because healthy soil grows healthy grass. It grows healthy veges, healthy milk. - Dave Wilson likes to get his produce to market as quickly as possible, so he dispatches his crops three times a week. - The leaves on here still snap. They're not rubbery. They've been picked, what, half an hour ago, and they'll be on the truck and away, so very quick turnaround. Somebody could be eating that tomorrow. Some of it is likely to end up in a local shop or two. For it to get into a large supermarket, it's got to go to Christchurch to come back down. So we don't supply the supermarkets. So a lot of it will end up going towards Queenstown and Wanaka, cos we grow all those odd things like candy beetroot. And Invercargill's only, what, 15, 20 K's away. So, yeah, we're pretty close to our market. We are small, but then you got to look at it from the wholesaler's point of view. He wants somebody who's growing consistently, so he doesn't want me to turn up with 10 caulies tomorrow and 1000 the next day, then back to two again. He wants someone who can turn up every day with 100. So you've got to get to know your guys and be consistent. - But the Wilsons want to elevate the humble swede to fine dining. - Once a year, the Wilson family turns their vege shop near Winton in Southland into a venue for fine dining. (UPLIFTING GLOCKENSPIEL MUSIC) - We decided to do a pop-up restaurant or a celebratory dinner, bring friends, family, a lot of our producers in to celebrate what can be done with their veges. - Bit of extra labour in there. - They asked chef Ethan Flack to prepare a meal showcasing their vegetables. Ethan's recently back from 10 years working as a chef overseas. - The biggest thing I discovered back here is` more flavour. We're so lucky in Southland to have the flavour in the vegetables and the fruit and the meat. We'd maybe not have the diverse range of what producers can grow, but what they do grow is flavoursome, it's nutritious and it's delicious. - Southland. It's a phenomenal province for producing. We kind of forget that, I think, as Southlanders. Then you get a breath of fresh air of a chef, Ethan Flack, that comes along, that's worked in Europe and the UK for many years, and he comes back and goes, 'This produce is incredible. This is better than anywhere else in the world!' That kind of gives us a boost and an encouragement and, you go, 'Well, maybe what we do do is actually a good thing.' Pleased to have us all here... - When Dave takes you out to the paddock and he's got the soil running through his hand and he's picking a carrot or a swede and eating it, it's instantly` you're connected to a place. Our first course was focused on the swede. We've got the swede itself. I've cut it superfine, into noodles, like tagliatelle. The skin and the trim I've made into a stock, blended with a little bit of butter and made, like, a creamy sauce. So you think fettuccine in Italy; we think, maybe, swede noodles in Southland. - We gave him a little bit of instruction. We wanted to have hare on the menu, because it's one of our pests on our farm and... you know, we want to get our own back. (CHORTLES) But other than that, pretty much just to celebrate the veges in every course. - So what I'm putting on a plate here is just the raw kohlrabi. So this is out of the soil yesterday. Slice on the meat slicer, cut it with a ring cutter to look like a taco shell. Put a wee coleslaw on here with the heart of those savoy cabbages. And then a nice wee lamb taco, a little bit of mint sauce on top. Bit of an ode to my grandmother's mint sauce. We're serving on some corrugated iron, which` a nice Southland handyman serving dish, which is cool. - I have faith in his ability that whatever he does, it'll be amazing. (SHEEP BLEATS) - Out in the paddock, Dave's small mob of pet sheep are about to do some dining of their own. - When we converted to cows, I kept the last of my sheep. Once you get them into a mob of 20 or 30, you start seeing the` the quirks, and there's one or two sheep that just like eating apricots. The rammer will just about peel the banana and eat the insides. They get quite clever at it. Well, you have to deal with the soft banana or a wilted broccoli, so these sheep love it. And they're as old as the hills. Some of those sheep are probably... 12, 12 or 13 years old and got no teeth. Well` when I shear them, you have a look and there's nothing in there. They just gum it down. So that's all good. Heap of cabbage and caulies to go. I'm just sort of` doing a wee bit of stuff straight away for the shop, for the ladies to sort out, like the carrots and the beetroots. Gives them time to do that. Then for my afternoon, I'll go and pick cabbage and caulie... and I'll just keep picking away at it for the day. That's what we do. I think there's somewhere above 160 or more crates of veges going away, so... I usually do about, ohhh, maybe 45 an hour, on my own. So there you go. There's two or three hours' work. (CHUCKLES) But I enjoy it. It's nice on a fine day. It's all right on a wet day. I just put up with it. This is a cylindrical beetroot. Cooks really evenly because generally the thickness is similar, but a lot of women will bottle it up because it cooks easier. We actually sell probably more of this than the round one in our shop. - Dave often experiments, trying out new varieties to discover whether they'll grow, and what the final result might be. - These are another form of kale. A floral one, so a florist will take these and strip it down. I'm not very artistic. I wouldn't be any good at growing flowers. I'd have the wrong colour. But these are a kale flower, and they'll use them for Mother's Day, in a decoration. I like growing stuff just for the heck of it, so I'll have a crack at anything. If it fails, I don't take it personally. - There's been lots of challenges, but, gee, it's all about a journey. You know? It doesn't get any better than working out in fields like this. You've got all the space in the world and you get to work with each other, and you know, it's good. It's good. - You're mixing with different people and people coming into the shop, even though I am slightly reclusive. Yeah, you're forced to talk to people, which is probably good for me. - Yeah, we work pretty well together. It's` there's always give and take. There's always, you know, the odd few rows and... you know, grumps. - I had an old guy tell me once that when you get passed a rugby ball, you run with it. You might get tackled, you know. And there is some things that come along, but hey, you're in the game, you enjoy it, you dust yourself off and you get ready for another pass. That's how I look at life. (LAID-BACK COUNTRY ROCK MUSIC) - Next time ` when they came to New Zealand, he had big ambitions. - He's such a risk taker and I'm just the polar opposite. - We have our 3000 chooks arrive today. - His superpower is just being so patient. - But I was ready for another challenge. Now we have cattle on this place as well. - It was actually a total nightmare, but so worth it in the end. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.