Country Calendar - Cashmere

Television (Full Length) – 1986

This excerpt from a 1986 episode of NZ TV’s longest running show comes from the heady pre-crash mid-80s when NZ farming was getting off the sheep’s back and diversifying to stay profitable in changing times. Here Robert Hall is stocking the “hard hill country” of a farm near Taumaranui with goats. Rather than hunting goats as pests, the young industry — fuelled by “large amounts of city money” — is attempting to farm them for their cashmere wool. It offers new opportunities for women in farming, but teething problems include low yields from feral animals.

Instead of being pests they've now become hot property because it's now known that wild New Zealand goats grow one of the world's most valuable natural fibres: cashmere.
– From the narration