Country Calendar is celebrating its 50th year on air in the next season, first going to air March 6th 1966. The first step for the 50th series, which goes to air on March 5th 2016, was the Country Calendar production team their annual general production meeting.
This meeting was held at Margrain with the whole team of twenty five people staying at Margrain with the time was spent discussing the upcoming season. The group included former presenters KerryAnne Evans, Vicki Wilkinson-Baker,now Richard Langston and Frank Torley. Frank “is” Country Calendar, he’s produced it, directed it at times, presented and now is still the voice over guy for every episode. He started in the early 70’s and has been on it almost continuously since then.
Local director Celia Jaspers is now back again at TVNZ and working on the Country Calendar team for the upcoming 2016 season.
Celia has also shot and edited an episode for the current series. The episode is based in Martinborough and Longbush on local winemakers at Limegully Wines, James Walker and Barbara Turner.
The programme theme is to show that it’s hard work trying to live a simple life. When James and Barbara went looking for a block of land to buy near Martinborough 12 years ago, their dream was of one day making wine in their own winery – it was only a pipe dream.
“We bought this place to try and be a bit more self sufficient, we’ve always lived in town, and we liked the idea of growing for ourselves and providing for ourselves” says James. “But it is hard work, you always have days when you think we’re crazy why do we do this?”.
The programme featured the township in a few sequences too. It went to air on Sept 26, Saturday 7pm. For the last few weeks Celia has been scouting new stories and plans to be shooting in the next few months. These will be from all around New Zealand but Celia assures that there will be some set in the Wairarapa.
