Nadia Lim and Carlos Bagrie moved into a rundown 1890s farmhouse, and are busy re-establishing Royalburn Station in Central Otago, as their new TV series, Nadia’s Farm, goes to air.
We’ve seen a glamorous Nadia Lim, all frocked up for MasterChef New Zealand, and now we see her as she really lives – in gumboots, jeans and bush shirts down on the farm.
But she’s in her element, with husband Carlos Bagrie, a fifth-generation Kiwi farmer, and sons, Bodhi, 4 and River, 2, and there’s another baby on the way (announced yesterday).
It’s chaos, mind you. During our photo shoot, orphaned lambs storm the kitchen, jumping on the furniture and delighting guests.
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And, as we see in the couple’s new TV show, the boys are also in their element, doing their own thing: “Bodhi and River were mouse-hunting the other day, and Bodhi managed to catch his first mouse with a stick,” Lim says.
“The camera just happened to be there to film him holding it up by the tail, while the dog jumps up.”
The dead mouse is biffed into the compost bin, which kind of sets the tone for this series. There’s no point expecting a cute, bucolic look at farm life, because farming isn’t like that, even when it is sustainable and ethical, as this one is.
It’s fair to say that life on a 485ha working farm, the largest in the Wakatipu basin, can be raw. Lim and Bagrie present an unfiltered view of what happens on a large-scale commercial property – lambs are orphaned, animals are culled (and eaten), and the couple have built their own abattoir and charcuterie.
“It could be a little confronting for some people,” Lim admits.
“And it has to be,” says Bagrie, who believes it’s important not to shy away from showing things. “This is real – food production, life and death, dealing with pests.”
Culling rabbits was a huge task when they first moved in three years ago – Bagrie would go out and drop a couple of rabbits on the back doorstep for dinner.
“The kids will say, ‘ooh, does that mean it’s bunny nuggets for dinner, Mum?’,” Lim says.
But the children are growing up familiar with the realities of farm life, and the very pronounced seasons. They measure family birthdays by what’s happening with the seasons – “if the snow has arrived, it must be the first of June and dad’s birthday’s coming”.
“To see those seasons change so dramatically, it reminds you that nothing lasts. Nothing,” Lim says. “Everything dies. Like the sunflowers – it’s this valley of golden light, and the change just happens within days. They become a sunken valley of death with their heads drooping. It is literally a valley of death.”
But this is a warm, loving family, with an archetypal New Zealand farmhouse that wraps around them through all seasons. And despite what you have seen in Nadia’s Comfort Kitchen TV series during lockdown, the Lim-Bagrie farmhouse is very old.
The couple estimate it was built in the 1890s, and when they bought the property, the house was barn red – all the walls and even the roof were painted. And the house was not in a good state.
“There were rats nests in the floor and missing windows,” Bagrie says. “It was so bad, Nadia hadn’t even been to see it before we bought it.”
“I think he was a bit scared to show me,” Lim admits. “He probably thought I might have curtailed the whole thing, but I wouldn’t have done that.”
They set about a massive renovation, but first Bagrie spent half his weeks down at the property getting the farm infrastructure set up, while Lim and the children stayed back in Auckland. “I would take a sleeping bag into the house, and it was like sleeping in a back-country hut,” he says.
In due course, the rest of the family arrived, and the house was fully re-lined with new insulation and new joinery, new bathrooms and, of course, a new kitchen for the chef who was instrumental in establishing My Food Bag, and has published numerous cookbooks. Heating is provided by a boiler, but there is also a woodburner, which is essential due to frequent power outages in bad weather.
None of the materials removed from the house was wasted – all the old iron was beaten and flattened and has been used in the couple’s Royalburn Farm Store in Arrowtown. And the original kitchen door is now the door to the farm shop.
They have kept everything stored in a shed, including wooden beams, old baths, and sink benchtops. Pieces of old farm machinery add character around the farm and the house.
“This is one of the oldest farms in New Zealand, and we want to celebrate the original pioneering spirit – it is so cool to bring that back,” Bagrie says. “We can still see inscriptions on the walls of the old stone woolshed that have been there for more than 100 years.”
Meanwhile, the couple have turned the old house into a home, although Lim says, unsurprisingly, that she hasn’t had time to do much with the house interior. “I would love to have the luxury of personalising it. One day I will get around to it. But I don’t need a big house – there’s just more to clean and look after. I could quite happily live in a little stone cottage.”
She has not brought too many treasures with her: “I am not a ‘things’ person,” she says. “I don’t have jewellery. But I have kept a beautiful cast-iron pot I bought when I got my first job at 21. It cooks beautifully – better than a slow cooker – and I will be handing it down to my grandchildren on day.”
She has also kept salt-and-pepper shakers that belonged to her grandmother, which resemble two owls. “Those owls, Oscar and Wilbur, have appeared in many shoots and cookbooks. I could have kept more things, but felt just taking one special thing was enough.”
To help keep the messier side of farm life outside, there’s a boot room, where the family can take off their dirty boots and jackets before coming inside. But Bagrie admits he made one key mistake with the renovation: “I stupidly put in a light-coloured carpet (in the living room) and regret it enormously. It has had dogs, lambs, kids and wine all over it. It’s as good as gone – we just keep rolling out the mats.”
And it’s not just lambs that occasionally make their way inside. Tomato seedlings need to be started inside the house, because even the glasshouse is too cold. “But I’m not allowed to put them on the dining room floor any more,” Lim says. “It looked like a marijuana house.”
But that’s not part of their farm diversity, which now extends to sunflower oil, honey (two tonnes a year), market garden produce, lamb (they have 4000 ewes), charcuterie, wool, pasture-raised eggs, and 700 tonnes of grain and seed. Oh, and of course, a new baby in the summer.
Nadia’s Farm screens on Three on Wednesdays, 8.40pm starting October 5, 2022
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