Nadia Lim with her husband, Carlos Bagrie, and their sons River, 4, and Bodhi, 6. Photo / Supplied
Nadia Lim with her husband, Carlos Bagrie, and their sons River, 4, and Bodhi, 6. Photo / Supplied
Welcome to season two of the Herald's parenting podcast: One Day You'll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
If you're a parent who's given up on reusable nappies, or binned vegetable scraps because you just couldn't lift your compost bin lid with a screaming child in your arms, you're not alone.
While many parents are conscious of living sustainably, it becomes increasingly challenging when little ones come along.
In this week's episode of One Day You'll Thank Me, our hosts talk to Nadia Lim and her husband Carlos Bagrie about the realities of living sustainably while taking on a 1200 acre farm with two kids and one on the way.
Lim, who has announced she is expecting her third child this summer, "totally agrees" that living sustainably with kids "is harder."
"Anytime you've got kids, there's stuff," says the mum to Bodhi, 6 and River, 4. "I hate stuff. But you end up with it with kids and that's really annoying. You have to be so, so onto it and super conscious of not ending up gathering stuff when you've got kids."
Something that flies in the face of a sustainable life is the onslaught of kids' toys. The demand for new plastic junk from our enamoured little ones can be a constant battle.
"That's one of my pet hates and I hated it when people brought our kids' presents," says the My Food Bag co-founder. She points to an idea from a fellow parent, where birthday party guests are told if they'd like to contribute something, $5 to $10 towards one substantial gift "would be really appreciated."
"We really try to minimise toys. We're not into buying things for the kids. It's only, you know, special, special occasions."
If Bodhi and River do want a toy, Lim says they've set up a star chart and once the boys complete the chart by helping out or doing their morning running routine around the garden "to get some fresh air into their lungs", they can go to the toy store to choose something.
"There's like 56 stars or something ... it takes a couple of months for them," she says of their charts.
"A lot of the time parents think that their kid's going to be happier if they buy them something that they really want. But actually, in truth, you find out that it's not the case. The thing that makes them happiest is just going out into the garden and kicking a ball around with them."
The family share an inside look into life on the farm in their new show. Photo /Supplied
Bagrie believes having children has only cemented the couple's endeavours to live sustainably.
"We've always had a bit of a feel towards, 'hey look, what can we do to better the environment?' And what responsibilities can we take for our own actions?"
Lim agrees they are more conscious of teaching sustainable practices and finds herself having to really think about why they're doing certain things.
"You end up trying to explain it in a very simple way to the kids, which is really helpful for yourself as well."
And life on their farm, Royalburn Station in Central Otago, provides daily opportunities to put those teachings into practice.
"Because we're on a farm, we're lucky in the sense we don't have any food waste, like zero food waste because all of our food scraps either go on the compost or get fed to the chickens," says Lim.
Since the family made their big move three years ago, the boys have experienced the realities of rural life alongside Mum and Dad.
"Family life is a lot more integrated," says Lim, while her husband notes because they don't have any extended family around to help out, the boys are often brought along as Mum and Dad work on the land.
"If, for example, I'm out in the tractor, I have to put the car seat in the tractor with me and one of the boys will spend half a day driving around," says Bagrie.
"Sometimes they'll complain about it," says Lim. "But they have no choice. Like when we only had one or two staff on the farm when we first moved down and Carlos was doing most of the farm work and I was helping out, there was no one to look after the kids.
"We had to put them in the back of the ute and drive out. And they would spend like eight hours in the back of the ute or, you know, playing around outside in one of the fields or something. They had to, they had no other choice."
But Lim says those early days were also the most exciting for her children. The boys were really into daily farming activities such as feeding lambs and collecting eggs.
"Our youngest, River, he came and collected the eggs from the chickens with me every day without fail. He got really excited with that. He'd hang out in the vegetable garden with me, helping out and digging up potatoes and everything."
But, the novelty has definitely worn off, says the former MasterChef winner and judge.
"I'll say, 'Can you feed the lambs?'" And her son will reply: "Oh, do I have to now?"
"When we see city kids, when our friends bring their kids down, they're so excited about those things.
"But our boys are the opposite. So our boys are like, 'Do they have trains? And, Sky Towers?' You know, it's typical, right? That grass is always greener on the other side."
But Lim and Bagrie, whose new show Nadia's Farm has just launched on Wednesday nights on TV3, will continue to encourage their kids to make the most of their rural lifestyle.
"Growing up in a real environment, growing real foods, understanding animals and people and how we can we produce food in an ethical manner and all of those sorts of things - I like to imagine that's going be really good building blocks for their future development and whatever career that they go off and pursue."
• To learn more about how Nadia Lim and her family teach their kids about sustainably on their farm, listen to this week's episode of One Day You'll Thank Me below.
One Day You'll Thank Me is a NZ Herald parenting podcast, with new episodes out on Sundays.
