She and husband Carlos Bagrie show the successes and failures of producing food on a working farm at their Arrowtown property, Royalburn Station, on their TV show Nadia’s Farm.
In one episode, she prepared a rabbit shot by Mr Bagrie into nugget-sized portions, coated with panko bread crumbs.
Ms Lim revealed the bunny nuggets were a big hit with their children to a grower and industry-people audience at the New Zealand Grain and Seed Trade Association conference in Christchurch.
She challenged them to do more rabbit dishes — "bunny burgers and butter bunny" — at dinner parties and only unveil the main ingredient to guests at the end.
The couple are not afraid of deviating from the traditional sheep and barley station with new ideas.
That includes a new farm shop, 3500 egg-producing free-range and pasture-raised chickens, plant pots made of wool, crop growing at elevation, commercial market gardening, a mobile micro-abattoir, bee hives and composting systems using dead stock, abattoir waste and cattle and chicken manure.
Other adventurous trials on the way include oversowing seed by a drone.
Another episode shows them taking on leasehold land at Motatapu Station to expand the ewe flock for year-round lamb supply.
"The reason we agreed to do the show was purely because if you think a generation ago most Kiwis had a direct connection to farming through uncles and aunties or grandparents or close friends," she said.
"But today it’s more rare than common, and most Kiwis haven’t even set foot on a real working farm, and because of that we are becoming more and more disconnected with how our food is produced, on scale, and gets to our plate."
She said farmers had to get more confident about telling the whole farming story or others would fill in the gaps.
"That’s what we’ve tried to very much do for our TV show and the response has been amazing. The most common feedback we get is ‘we love how you fail and make so many mistakes’.
"Thanks, I think — but they really like to see the ups and downs, the failures and the triumphs you have as well, so it really is about telling the
full story."
Ms Lim understands the show is rating highly across the age groups, and popular with both urban and rural families.
"We get a lot of feedback from farmers as well as the urban audience.
"Farmers really appreciate that we are not sugar-coating it and we’re actually being really honest with our mistakes.
"The urban audience love [learning more] because, for example, they had no idea that egg production drops so rapidly when daylight hours went down, or they didn’t realise how hard it is to be organic."
Her market garden, which is just under 2ha is at the moment struggling to be financially viable because of excessive labour costs from organic weed control. They are looking at using more machinery.
Ms Lim said they try their best to be spray-free with their arable operation.
She pointed out that one of the reasons they could get away from using chemicals is because of their dry, arid climate, and because there were no other arable farms around them.
They do not like to box themselves into calling themselves organic, conventional, regenerative or any other category, as they believed all farming systems had a place, she said.
"Every farm is different and you have to look at the situation, right, and weigh up the pros and cons and do the best in your heart for the land that is still going to be financially viable so that you can continue to earn a living."
Mr Bagrie’s passion is on the arable side of the farm business, with 500-700 tonnes of grain and seed produced a year from the likes of sunflowers for oil, phacelia seed, peas for seed and barley.
Naysayers told them growing sunflowers would never work because of Royalburn’s high elevation.
Last year they were the last farm in the country to harvest in May, and refused to use desiccants to harvest earlier, but got a top tonnage — only to discover the seed had high moisture levels.
Nevertheless, they learned that their low input costs probably made it one of the most profitable sunflower crops per hectare in the country.
Similarly, the barley harvest had its highs and lows, with the first paddock yielding 9.5t/ha, only for the third to produce about 3.5t/ha.
All was not lost; tests showed it was perfect for malting, and sold to Altitude brewery, it won a silver medal at beer awards.
TIM.CRONSHAW@alliedpress.co.nz
