- The best of New Zealand's rural heartland. - A 30-year track record's proved the doubters wrong. - One of the neighbours said, 'People aren't gonna pay to come and walk across this shitty farmland'. (LAUGHS) - And the income's been good for the next generation. - We wouldn't be here without the walkers coming through. It's enabled us to carry on farming. - We're pretty lucky to have the opportunity to be here. (DOGS BARK, SHEEP BLEAT) (WAVES CRASH SOFTLY) - Cracker day. - It's a beauty, all right. It's looking pretty sad, isn't it? - Yeah. What are we gonna do here? - Just straighten up the wires and spread the battens back out. - I'll staple, you strain. - Guy Elworthy and Abi Rowe fenced every day when they first moved back to Guy's family land on the Wairarapa coast early in 2024. This property is home to the well-loved Tora Coastal Walk, as well as being a big sheep and beef farm. The move was succession-planning in action. The Elworthys bought two neighbouring farms that form part of the Tora Walk, and Guy and Abi came back to run them. - Both the blocks had been leased out, and the cyclone hadn't helped things. The way Guy and I planned to farm, we knew we had to get some paddocks working and functioning, so we were lucky with the weather ` it was so good. We just binge fenced, made the most of it while we could, you know, get our bikes and trailers across the farm with the gear. - I don't know how more sheep didn't go through here. - Yeah. (CHUCKLES) - We were trying to keep in front of them before the paddock they were in ran out of food. - At the start, we'd had a few days, and we'd get home, and it was so overwhelming. Just sit down and be like, 'How are we ever gonna do this?' - Sit down and cry. (BOTH CHUCKLE) - But then the satisfaction of one by one ticking off the paddocks. - Yeah, it's worth it, eh? - And, you know, I was mapping them on the computer as we made them stockproof. It was just so satisfying, just one after another. - And even just seeing all the ewes locked in a paddock, that was probably one of the best feelings. - The Elworthy farm's made up of three blocks ` one inland on the Tora Road and two blocks at the coast. - Guy and I managed the two coastal blocks. They're about 1300ha in total, probably more like 800 to 900 effective. We're still (CHUCKLES) working out how effective things are. - What have we got ourselves in for? - (LAUGHS) I personally love the ruggedness. I've had a few people say, 'Do you guys actually farm there?' because it looks so steep and harsh from the road, but once you get a bit further inland, yeah, it opens up nicely, and we've actually got some really nice country out the back. (COWS MOO) - This is the farm where Guy's parents live and where the Tora Coastal Walk begins. James Elworthy, known to most by his university nickname of Sky, does the farming. His wife, Kiri Elworthy, is in charge of the walk, which has been going for 30 years. - I wouldn't call it a road. - Every group of walkers gets a briefing when they arrive. - It's quite good for us to just take a moment and talk you through a bit of housekeeping, a bit of health and safety, and then some sort of fun things about the track. The weather for the next three days looks really good, actually. So you really know when to turn up, don't you? The Tora Coastal Walk is a three-day, three-night walking adventure over private farmland. We provide all of the food. You stay in beautiful accommodation every night. The trek itself is about 46km over three days. We're here at Whakapata cottage, OK? 'It's quite nice to know that all of your big ups and downs are in this first part of the day. 'A lot of people are really fascinated by the farming side of it.' ...for the whole second part of the day. In that 30-year period, we've noticed a real shift where there is less and less knowledge about farming, and that connection with farms is not what it used to be. - We've heard that some people do the shipwreck on the first day. Do you recommend that or not? Or totally don't bother? - See how you feel. You do you! (ALL LAUGH) - The demands of running a seven-day-a-week business for six months each year is just one of the challenges the family has faced. Another was Sky being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease when he was 40. - Bit of a shock. I told the kids at the dinner table. - Well, actually, we didn't tell anyone for over a year... - Yeah. - ...because it takes a long time to come to terms with a diagnosis like that. - It's had it's challenges, that's for sure. It's not too bad a photo. - This one? But we've been fortunate. James had deep brain stimulation surgery... - Mm. - ...about five years ago, and that has made a huge difference. - Well, I just don't really think about it, to tell you the truth, and if I do, it's just because the meds aren't working properly. - Yeah. - You know, just alter the dose and away you go. - He's amazing, really. He never lets it hold him back. Just life as usual. If you're gonna have a vocation and have Parkinson's, farming is good, because the sheep just wait for you to make a decision most of the time, whereas people in more high-pressure jobs don't cope. They like you to stay physical, stay fit and active, which is just part of the job. - Yeah, so just carry on, really. Keep cool and carry on. - Having someone to help Sky on the farm is one of many reasons it's good to have Guy home. - Guy's a strong lad helps with the heavy lifting and chucking stuff around. He's a keen worker too. - Well, and he's willing. Sky can send him a message and just say, 'I wanna mark my calves tomorrow,' and Guy just drops what he's doing and comes around here, which is really cool. - And that also means more time for Kiri and Sky to do what they love. - It would be good to get these in the ground. (TRANQUIL MUSIC) - This rugged Wairarapa coastline is the backdrop to the Elworthy family's sheep and beef farm and the Tora Coastal Walk. James Elworthy, or Sky as he's nicknamed, grew up on the family farm on the Tora Road. - No, no, no, no. - OK. - Down the road. (ALL LAUGH) - (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) - Huh. That was lucky. - His mum started the Tora Coastal Walk in 1995. He often bumps into groups of walkers. - You come to a group of walkers, and they get a bit discombobulated, and they end up going up the wrong track, and I have to whistle them back. (COWS MOO) - Son Guy farms two blocks out at the coast. - Just come round to help Dad mark his calves, so I'll give them a jab, put a ring on their balls, ear marked and then a NAIT tag so they can` when we sell them, they're good to go. - Sky was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease when he was 40, but he's carried on farming. - 1200 ewes, 450 hoggetts and some two-tooths, 70-odd cows, some replacement cattle. I pretty much run it by myself, casual labour every now and then. It's probably not run to its full potential, but... I'm pretty comfortable. (CHUCKLES) Guy, he might take over one day, and he can pump it up. We work pretty well together, actually, don't seem to have any conflicts. - Well, I'm meant to be on a stag do in Taupo, so you're lucky I'm here. - You'd much rather be here, wouldn't you? - (CHUCKLES) - Eh? (CHUCKLES) - Sky's decision to diversify has paid off. - I make more money from carbon than farming, quite comfortably. I fenced off all the gullies 20 years ago, and planted them in trees, and that's been quite fortuitous. - Do you think you'll go for the early wean affair or...? - I'm a bit undecided. We'll see how the season goes, I think. - Price is usually better at the early one, eh? - If I've got plenty grass, I might keep them. - We're a lot drier on the coast than you are here, though. - Yeah, we're in the greenbelt. (WAVES CRASH) - As well as being drier, the coastal blocks can have pretty rough weather. The kitchen where all the meals for walkers are made is at the coast. Kiri Elworthy runs the walk and spends a lot of time here. - Hi. - Hi. - How are you going? - Good. How are you going? - Good, thanks. - I just thought we could have a bit of a chat about the menu... - Tineke McNeil is the operations manager. - OK, let's have a look. - I think the weather is getting better for barbecuing now. So what are your thoughts on that? Our focus really is on healthy, wholesome food made from scratch. We try to grow as much produce as we can with a few treats thrown in. People love the baking. The chicken curry would come out, the roast pumpkin salad would stay, the leafy green would stay, and, of course, the lemon tart would stay, and... 'We have a team of three that cook in here, and they each do five days a week.' - Justine Dunshea is one of the chefs. She's baking shortbread today. - Baking is sort of the thing that makes me happiest. So I studied to become a baker and a pastry chef and did that in Wellington for a few years and then moved out to Tora when the opportunity came up. I like where we're working. I like the kitchen. I like meeting the walkers, talking to the walkers, and, you know, we make delicious food. - In the early days, Kiri and Sky hosted the walkers for dinner at their home. They had four small children, and Kiri says it could be fraught with tension. - Because the children had to be bathed and fed and ready for bed and, uh... - Lawns had to be mowed. - Well, yeah. - Dishes, food. - Everything was on show. It was` It was... tricky, wasn't it? - Yeah. - And then, of course, it became, like, having a full-on dinner party every night of the week. - Drinking. - Yeah. And the guests would want to stay till sort of midnight, and that's just not sustainable. - Fat and alcoholic. - And divorced. (LAUGHS) - And divorced. - We still provide all the food that's put in the fridge for them with instructions on how to cook it, and then they look after themselves. - Today, Alex Nugent is delivering meals to the three cottages where walkers stay. He knows to keep a watch on the weather. - Everybody, if they're coming to live out here for the first time, learns the ropes pretty quickly, so things like hanging on to car doors... (ENGINE STARTS) ...and, you know, our road closes quite a lot too. But the wind is probably more of a challenge than anything and can rip Gladwrap off beautifully plated-up food, you know? So there's a whole lot of strategies we have to deal with that. (GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC) - What are we planting today? - We're planting flax and kahikatea. - Whenever they get the chance, Kiri and Sky head to their conservation block. - It's an uplifting place to be, that's for sure. We come in here a lot on a Sunday, and we joke that it's better than going to church, actually, yeah. So do you want to put your one there? - It's quite soft here, isn't it? - Yeah, it is quite soft. (THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!) - That should do the trick. - We're really focused on planting things that would have been here originally, and kahikatea is one of them. There are no remnants of kahikatea at all. But, yeah, it'll be exciting to see these grow. We dreamed of fencing this off for a long time before we could actually afford to do it, and that was actually quite good in a way, because if we had done it years ago, we probably would have just done a conventional farm fence, and we have just got such a terrible deer problem out here now. And so we bit the bullet and fenced the whole 10ha in deer fencing, and that has just made such a difference to the regeneration. Now that we've taken care of the deer issue, we can start focusing on other pests. We're targeting rats with this bait. Bait station - totally empty. It's called possum pindome, which is ironic, but it's really effective on rats. It's a first generation poison, which means that if an animal such as a dog ate a dead carcass which had been poisoned, the dog itself would not be. So that's quite important on a farm, we think. We're not planting anything under the mature beech trees. We're finding it's a lot more effective to let the regeneration happen naturally, and just by birds dropping seed and that kind of thing, you get a really robust seedling then. The kids have come on the journey with us. If they're home, we come for a walk up here. It'll be really nice to know that we will leave a beautiful legacy for our kids. - Farming this land at Tora on the Wairarapa Coast is a big undertaking. (WHISTLING, DOG WHINES) Guy Elworthy and Abi Rowe took on the challenge less than a year ago. - Yeah, I'll walk up there and stop them coming back around that way. - We'll just keep in comms. - Communication is key. - (LAUGHS) - Today, they're bringing stock down to the yards. - It's quite hard. That's why I'm walking and Abi's on her horse. Makes it a lot easier. We do have quads, and we can get around most of the farm. But, yeah, it makes it a lot easier when you don't need to worry about where tracks are. (WHISTLES) (DOGS BARK) Pays to have a decent team of dogs. I love my dogs, but I don't go crazy about dog training and that sort of stuff. They learn it when they're at work. Start taking them to work quite young, and we seem to get the job done. Might not look pretty, but we get there. (CHUCKLES) (WHISTLES) - Abi's horse is called Rocky. - I've had him since a foal. He was broken in as a 3-year-old. He hasn't really done a huge amount of miles, but he's just like having a pet Labrador, really, and, yeah, I look forward to riding him more on the farm here. It's the perfect country. (WHISTLES) (DOGS BARK) - The family's recently bought this neighbouring coastal block, and Guy and Abi have come back to farm it. Fencing and building up stock numbers were their priorities at the start. - Half the ewes we bought were on farm here, which was good and bad. They were good sheep, but they were very cunning. - They knew every hole on the property, didn't they? - Yep. - They were pretty good at escaping. - Yeah, but we knew we had to break the cycle. - When they poked out, we'd just muscle them to the yards and put a pink tag in the ear. - And they escaped out of the yards multiple times. And within 24 hours, some of them had gone right to the back of the farm. It took us a good couple of weeks to be able to get them down to a deer pen and hold them, and, yeah, they went on the truck with the drys at scanning. - Today is a bit of a test for Guy and Abi. - We're draughting lambs off their mums, taking the fats out, taking the stores off, and then we'll weigh all the fats again just to make sure that they're up to weight. And then they can all go on a truck. Truck's coming at 11.30 so a little bit under the pump now. (SHEEP BLEAT) - Weaning is always in our sights as our first income for the year, really. Everything we've done over the last seven months is preparing us for today, and to try and have the biggest lambs as we can to try and maximise income coming on to the farm. - And Abi likes what stock agent Carl Petersen is seeing on the scales. - What weight are we going down to? - It was 36.5 to 7. As long as we've got some good cover on them. - Most of them are nice and round. - Yep. They're nearly all going. - Oh, it's awesome. The hard work we've put in over winter and over spring ` it's good to see the end product looking so good. Hey, hey, hey! First time on a truck for these ones, yeah. - Yeah. (CHUCKLES) - First and last. - They haven't actually really wanted to go up the ramp today, but anyhow, we're getting there. Nearly there, only a few more to load. - The success of the Tora Coastal Walk, which was started by Guy's grandmother, is the reason Guy and Abi are back here farming. They regularly help out with the walk. - Pre-season, before the walk starts, it's all hands on deck, tidying up the gardens and clearing some weeds and getting all the vegetable seedlings in the ground. - We have to do the luggage everyday for the walkers from night to night. The mailman does it on the weekdays, and then we do it on the weekends. It's not too bad, only takes a couple of hours a day ` so four hours a week. The walk's really important. That's the whole reason we're here, really. - It's enabled the purchase of more land. It's enabled us to have a wage off the farm and through the walk. To carry on farming, we need the walk. So, yeah, we're more than happy to be part of it and take on more and more as the seasons go by. - And the walk's also provided employment for others over the years. Kiri and Sky are hosting the team tonight. - KIRI: We're really lucky with the staff that we attract. We have an amazing team, some of whom have lived in the community already for years, and then others that have come in specifically to work for us, and we've provided accommodation, which you kind of have to when you are in the wops, I guess. We create our own little family, really. We have a lot of fun. - Oh God. (LAUGHS) - Tineke McNeil lives locally. - Well, I started with the walk 10, 11 seasons ago, I started cleaning and, um, then sort of rolled into catering, and now I look after operations. I love chatting with the walkers. It's one of my favourite parts of the job. - Hey, guys, it's dinner time. Come and grab a plate. - There were plenty of doubters when the Tora Walk was first mooted. - James' mum was involved, then she approached the neighbours. They all thought it was a bit of a joke. One of the neighbours said, 'People aren't gonna pay to come and walk across this shitty farmland.' (BOTH LAUGH) - But the success of the venture has proved them wrong. - The most rewarding part of what we do with the walk is seeing the transformation in people. I mean, modern life is challenging, and by the time they've walked for three days and we've laid all the food on for them and they've been out in nature, they're just different people, and... - They're relaxed. - ...yeah, having that ability to have an impact on someone's well-being every day of the week is pretty cool. We're starting to think about what life is gonna be like after being here. We've got other children that are really keen to be involved in running the walk. I'm thinking they'll have amazing ideas that I didn't think about and new energy. - And Guy and Abi are already looking to the future. - If you look at the sort of country behind me and... (DOG GROWLS) Oi! Cain! You think you can't really grow good stock on this sort of land, but you can if you do it right. We've done a lot better than what we thought we were going to. We've actually produced some good lambs, and the cattle are doing awesome. We were unsure of what we were getting ourselves into when we first came back. But, nah, I think we should be all right, yeah. (COW MOOS) Next time ` - It's been a long journey to get here, to build our whanau up to be in the position that we are now. - it's always been a high-intensity lifestyle for this South Waikato farmer. - How did you start milking? So we started farming in jail, whanau. - I think when you've been through things, you just wanna show others. If we can do it, you can do it. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.