Mrs Lister (nee Hughes) turned 100 yesterday and celebrated the milestone by going for a drive in a 1925 Chrysler 50 that she and her late husband, Eric, restored in the 1970s.
One of her daughters-in-law joked the car was just like her: "She’s 100 years old, a bit rough on the outside, but she still runs well".
The usually placid, but assertive, centenarian fired up and scowled at the comparison and then came around to see the funny side of it.
She was born on May 13, 1925, the third of 10 children for Rai Valley farmers Bert and Joan Hughes.
After finishing school, she trained as a nurse, but never worked in the profession.
"I never tell anybody that because they always ask you something — like a rash — that sort of thing."
Her passion was geared more towards horticulture and gardening than healthcare.
Suddenly speaking with a plum in her mouth, she said, "Our great-great-grandfather was a gardener for the Duke of St Albans, in Oxfordshire."
"I’ve always had that green thumb, and my mother — unwittingly I suppose — taught me all the things about gardening and the names of everything in Latin and Maori."
With that green thumb, it was only natural that she was going to end up as a farmer, she said.
In 1949, she and her late sister, Barb, moved to Central Otago to work at the Moa Seed Farm — simply for a change of scenery — and it was during that time she met her future husband, Eric.
They married on October 12, 1951, and lived on a farm at Shingle Creek.
Then, in 1960, they moved to Sutton, where they had bought a blacksmith shop and a local transport carrier.
The blacksmith shop became Sutton Workshops, which manufactured stock crates.
By 1983, they had semi-retired and moved to Middlemarch, where they started the Rock and Pillar Camping Ground.
In the early 1990s, they fully retired to Shag Point, where Eric died in 1997.
A few years later, Mrs Lister left Shag Point and moved in with one of her daughters.
She spent a lot of time taming the jungle in her daughter’s garden, and keeping her green thumb busy.
And it was only recently that she had to stop doing the gardening, because her hair started to turn green as well.
It turns out she was having falls in the garden and her beautiful white hair was getting grass stains.
Since November 2023, she has been living at Ross Home in Dunedin, and loving the extra care and support.
Asked what the secret to her longevity was, she said she did not believe there was a secret.
"You just reach it. I don’t think you have any say in it. None at all."
However, she did give some credit to the ODT Code Cracker puzzles, because they had helped keep her mind active and very sharp.
This weekend, she plans to celebrate with the very large family she has cultivated — including five children, 16 grandchildren and 26 and a-half great grandchildren.
"But there’s still more work to be done. I would expect with 16 grandchildren, I’m entitled to at least 32 great grandchildren," she joked.
"It sounds a lot when you say it all together.
"Not bad for an old seed spud really."
