Country Life: A glimpse into country life for Kiwi kids

From videos on the small screen as people scroll, to opening up her farm to the public, Sally Newall is on a mission to share what life's like on a working farm.

The veterinarian and farmer lives on a 500-hectare farm operation in Pātoka, about 40 kilometres north of Napier, and is the woman behind Kiwi Country Kids.

In a new on-farm learning facility, she hopes to take this from the world of social media to real life.

"Part of it is about getting people on the farm and sharing what we do on the farm," she told Country Life.

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Newall started the social media page back in 2020 and it now has more than 26,000 followers across Facebook and Instagram.

"We've got awesome followers. They're great because they're really engaged."

Most of their followers are based in New Zealand, and include a real "cross section of society".

"We've got loads of ex-farmers, farmers, lifestylers, loads of people that live in town," she explained.

"We've got people that love following the page because they are retired now but they grew, you know, they lived on a farm for years and it's a lot of sort of reminiscing for those people.

"And then I hope there's a piece in there which is people that live in town and don't have any connection with farming whatsoever and we're able to show them what we do on a day-to-day basis."

The learning facility in a three bay barn just next to the family homestead is the "next step".

Newall said in an age where AI videos feed into misinformation online, it's more important than ever to get people out on the farm.

"Show them that you're genuine and show them that farmers do care about their animals and they do care about the environment and just so that people can cut through the nonsense a little bit and see for themselves."

The new build features a milking and wet area on one side, a covered indoor education and function space in the middle, and three calf pens on the other side - filled with hungry new arrivals.

From the centre space she hopes to run farm skills workshops, recently hosting a women's butchery skills night, and host visits from groups like local schools.

People will be taught about life on the farm and offered the opportunity to get up close with the menagerie of surrounding animals - goats, cows, pigs and sheep, dogs, horses, geese, rescue chooks from commercial farms, and even a few guinea fowl.

Activities range from helping feed the chickens and collecting eggs, feeding the goats and pigs, interacting with the horses, helping feed lambs or calves to watching a cow being milked and even helping make butter.

It's not all Instagram and cute animals though. The barn is also an important part of the working farm's operations.

"I put it up as a decent agricultural shed because we don't actually have indoor sort of accommodation for animals here. So nice, small, small area for our calves to be reared in."

Three calf pens were filled with new arrivals, freshly born calves, when Country Life paid a visit.

"We're Friesian bull farmers so we usually just get the straight Friesians, but we wanted to have a nice group of beef crosses so that I can steer them and then we'll have a nice big group of steers on the farm in amongst all the crazy Friesian bulls."

Sourcing them had proven challenging this year, Newall said, largely due to such strong beef and dairy returns leading to increased interest in calf rearing.

"Prices for calves have just been absolutely through the roof, especially these beef boys."

Calf rearing is no easy job. Without access to fresh milk it involves mixing up milk powder for twice daily feedings, 2.5 litres each time, dropping to once a day when they're a bit older.

Being so young, there's also a fair bit of training involved in getting the calves to feed.

"They take a while to figure out where the feeder is and it's a new shed and they don't know you and it only takes them a couple of days and then you're away."

Luckily Newall's many years as a veterinarian come in handy as she settles the new calves in.