While the age of 65 might spell the beginning of retirement for some, 95-year-old Albert McTainsh still oversees a farm, travels overseas, and flew planes while in his 80s.
He has become "an urban legend" in the Catlins, and has a fair few tales to tell.
Mr McTainsh is sprightly and there is a quiet air of mischievousness about him.
He has farmed his property since the mid-1960s when he took over from his father.
These days, he says he is a "placid farmer", a term he learned from the tax department when he began cutting back on work around the farm.
His father started with 29ha and bought other farms when they became uneconomic for others to run. He developed the land and more neighbouring farms were bought.
Mr McTainsh now owns 485ha and farms solely beef cattle, moving out of sheep 20 years ago as they were too much work.
"I started cutting back on the farm work about five years ago, but I still wander around the farm, checking on stock and helping shift them," he said.
"They [staff] won't let me in the cattle yards any more though," he says with a shrug and a half-smile.
He has three staff and still oversees what goes on.
He came to farming after working as a lamb killer at the Finegand meatworks near Balclutha each season for more than 10 years.
A carpenter in the off-season, he headed to Auckland and helped build munitions sheds for the Americans during World War 2, and a munitions shed and canteen at the Devonport naval base.
He then worked throughout Australia for 15 years as a carpenter.
"Once we worked in a place and didn't tell anyone we were from New Zealand. There was a prisoner of war camp nearby, there were lots of Italians and Germans kept there.
" One day the foreman said to me:
"Do you want to go back to your own country?"
"He told us he had spoken to the local member of Parliament to see if we could stay in Australia.
He thought we were escaped German prisoners! We did have fair hair back then," Mr McTainsh said, laughing.
In Alice Springs, he became interested in gliders, building one before learning how to fly. He later became a national instructor.
It was while taking nurses up as passengers in the glider that he met his future wife, Dorothy, an Australian.
The couple married in the early 1960s, and moved back to New Zealand. Mrs McTainsh now lives in a retirement home in Dunedin as she has osteoporosis.
The couple have a son, living in Australia, who will inherit the farm.
Mr McTainsh takes life as it comes. In the mid-1990s, despite nearing 80, he applied to fly in a big airshow in Japan.
"I heard the Japanese wanted two international pilots for the airshow and I was cheeky enough to write and say I was interested.
I thought they would say I was too old, but they sent me lots of forms written in Japanese to sign and then paid my accommodation and airfares. I had a blast."
The adventures seem a far cry from the placid lifestyle of the Catlins, but Albert McTainsh is part of the land now, and has no plans to leave the family farm any time soon.
