Country Calendar

She's a children's author, runs Kids Farm Safety Days.

She's a country calendar TV star, a pilot, and I'm sure there's many other things I am missing off my list.

Harriet Bremner-Pinkney joins us now.

Welcome into the show, Harriet.

So, yeah, it's tough on people and, yeah, it's a bit of a grind.

But, yeah, like I said before, hopefully there's some light at the end of the tunnel and some sun to come yet.

I do want to talk about Country Calendar.

You were on Country Calendar in May.

She's a children's author, runs Kids Farm Safety Days.

She's a country calendar TV star, a pilot, and I'm sure there's many other things I am missing off my list.

Harriet Bremner-Pinkney joins us now.

Welcome into the show, Harriet.

So, yeah, it's tough on people and, yeah, it's a bit of a grind.

But, yeah, like I said before, hopefully there's some light at the end of the tunnel and some sun to come yet.

I do want to talk about Country Calendar.

You were on Country Calendar in May.

A chateau in France next, eh?

But no, this is the cautionary tale of watching too much Country Calendar.

[laughs]

Right.

Well, you're drinking the wine, you see, [laughs] in the, in the case of a vineyard.

That, that's exactly it.

So no, we, we, we fell in love with all that part of it as well, so it wasn't just the, the bucolic, you know, Country Calendar dream, the, you know, the, the idea of mountains and...

You know, it wasn't that.

So let's hear the first track.

Country Calendar.

Jesse got it all.

You didn't give me enough time, I knew that too.

It's Hillbilly Child by the Alan Morehouse Band, better known to all of us as the Country Calendar theme.

And so many Kiwis are still opting for lives in the countryside outside big cities.

It's a dream that never fades.

The book is The Farm.

Bruce Ansley is with us.

free-to-air audiences, Country Calendar is still king.

And in this book, you write, escaping to the country lies somewhere deep in the psyche of many New Zealanders, perhaps a subliminal remnant of pioneer lodged in our gut, a yearning to clear a patch, plant a seed, grow sturdy sons and daughters, in your case, sons, strong in the arts of self-sufficiency.

And that's still true,

Obviously, she was on TV before that.

But food storytelling was probably restricted to things like country calendar.

yeah which remains actually probably one of the great bastions of food writing that still continues if you're willing to broaden your definition

yeah yeah

And it's, yeah, it's fun to read about that stuff and to learn about another culture and another food tradition.

But you need to be telling your own food stories alongside that.

Yeah, I think there's a big divide between recipe writing, that sort of food writing, and almost food commentary, right? Because everybody talks about country calendar.

It doesn't matter what walk of life or what part of New Zealand you come from.

Hello, Jeremy.

Now, did you watch Country Calendar last night and that excellent program on fielding agricultural? Hi.

Hi.

No, I was out

You sound like my son.

Rightio.

You didn't see Country Calendar.

You watched the rugby.

Yeah, there's a romanticism I feel too sometimes about life on the farm, you know, and you look at the Clarkson's, maybe it isn't a romanticism now given Clarkson's farm.

You know, oh my God, that's like the most popular show around and like Country Calendar in New Zealand is like the longest running, still most popular show in New Zealand.

So

there