When Country Calendar Came to Auld Farm
Well, that was quite something!
After months of keeping a rather exciting secret, our little corner of Western Southland appeared on Country Calendar last night.
For five days, we had the pleasure of welcoming Don, Richard and director Howard to Auld Farm, where they followed us around with cameras, capturing the people, the paddocks and our rather ambitious plans to turn grain grown on our family farm into whisky.
And what an experience it was.
Five days of filming. Twenty-three minutes of television.
One of the things that surprised us most was just how much storytelling could come out of five days on the farm.
The first cut of our episode ran to an incredible 43 minutes.
We were told that some Country Calendar stories struggle to find enough material to fill their allocated time. Ours had the opposite problem!
They had to cut nearly half of it.
Eventually, those five days became 23 minutes of television.
Twenty-three minutes to tell a story that had been generations in the making.
The things you don't see on television
There were long days, grain to be cleaned, harvesting to be done and plenty of moments that probably looked quite ordinary to us but were fascinating through someone else's eyes.
One memory that still makes us smile is watching Don, Richard and Howard — our very own Three Musketeers — making their way through the tall oats.
It was quite something seeing our everyday surroundings through someone else's eyes.
The land, the grain, the generations who had worked it before us, and the rather unusual direction we have decided to take it.
The night it went to air
On Sunday, 1 May 2022, our episode, Tiger by the Tail, finally aired on TVNZ 1.
We'd imagined watching it together and celebrating the occasion.
Instead, COVID had other ideas.
I had COVID, so there was no proper watch party and certainly not the celebration we'd pictured.
But something rather extraordinary happened anyway.
The orders started coming.
And coming.
By the end of the night, eight of our Foundation Harvest Casks had sold.
Eight people had watched our story on television and decided they wanted to become part of what we're building here.
For a family who has spent years growing grain, building a distillery and waiting for whisky to mature, that is quite something.
Just the beginning
Country Calendar has captured a particular chapter in the Auld story.
We're still building, still experimenting and still working towards the day when the whisky grown from our own paddocks will finally be ready to share.
There is a long road ahead of us, and plenty more grain to grow, spirit to distil and casks to fill.
But for now, we're feeling incredibly grateful.
To Don, Richard, Howard and the Country Calendar team, thank you for taking an interest in our little corner of Southland and giving us the opportunity to share our story with the rest of New Zealand.
And to everyone who watched last night, got in touch, placed an order or became part of our journey — thank you.
You probably have no idea just how much it means.
The most common question we got asked was did we have to pay to be on Country Calendar. The answer is simply No we did not have to pay.
Missed the episode?
You can watch Country Calendar: Tiger by the Tail, Season 57, Episode 10, on TVNZ+.