Country Calendar is back and as great as ever

Country Calendar is back, kicking off its 59th year on our TV screens. Photo / TVNZ

Tara Ward welcomes back the only show on TV that’ll have you captivated watching grass grow.

From the moment Hyundai Country Calendar returned to our screens last Sunday night, I was transfixed. The opening shot of the show’s 59th year was a beautiful work of art: a musterer on his horse, climbing up a dark ridge at sunrise. As the sky filled with soft morning blues and greys, the farmer whistled and called to his dogs and the iconic Country Calendar theme song began to twang gently in the background. It was perfection in a single frame.

Country Calendar kicked off its 59th year by taking us to Hukarere Station, a 7500ha property in West Otago, 50 minutes' drive north of Gore. Here, Quintin and Rebecca Hazlett run a certified organic sheep and cattle farm where they work in harmony with nature and embrace the property’s native biodiversity. “We’re constantly trying to find solutions to natural questions,” Quintin says.

Wait until you hear about the grass growth. Photo / TVNZ

As always, Country Calendar takes us right into the everyday life of the Hazletts. We’re there as Quintin and Rebecca begin to move a mob of sheep, with the show’s simple, understated commentary explaining things to those of us who haven’t touched real grass for a long time.

“These hoggets need to be mustered and taken back to the station. It’s time for them to be shorn,” says the steady voice of narrator Dan Henry as the sheep hurtle along a gravel road directly towards the camera.

Later, we delve into grass. “He needs good grass growth to fatten stock,” Henry tells us, followed by a more detailed explanation about the role of rotational feeding from Quintin. This episode reveals I, too, have been practising rotational feeding for many years, although mine has involved several kitchen cupboards rather than rich, green pasture.

We watch as Quintin and Rebecca move the “free-spirited” sheep 6km to the yards, and later we see their family and the shearing crew enjoy an end-of-day barbecue beside the river. It’s a team effort: everyone works hard, the hoggets behave and the sun shines all day. There are mentions of a cold, wet spring and endless depressing skies, but not today. Today, Hukarere Station has never looked better.

Hukarere Station is a 7500ha property in West Otago. Photo / TVNZ

It may have been just another week in the Hazletts' farming life, but this episode of Country Calendar was anything but ordinary. Every landscape was spectacular, from the slow glide of the river to the endlessly rolling green hills. Watching grass grow shouldn’t make for good prime-time TV, but Country Calendar always pulls it off. I was here for the turf, I was here for the worms, I was here for Quintin saying he liked a particular breed of sheep because “they don’t need their hand held”.

Country Calendar is the master of gentle, observational storytelling. The Hazletts are ordinary people, but Country Calendar took their everyday lives and made them special, as it has done for the past six decades. The show has so far survived the challenges that have had other long-running, iconic New Zealand shows like Fair Go and Sunday disappear from our screens in the past year, and continues to transcend rural and urban boundaries, showcasing a variety of unique and inspiring stories from New Zealand’s rural heartland.

Like a hogget who doesn’t need its hand held, there’s no other creature quite like Country Calendar on our screens. We must treasure it.

Hyundai Country Calendar screens on Sunday at 7pm on TVNZ1 and streams on TVNZ+.