There is no better example than Nadia Lim that there are two sides to everyday life — it is just that most of us try keep the chaos locked down.
The evening before I spoke with her, she had to shower a dirty farm dog who had found the compost heap, she found rotting bananas shoved down the bath plug hole by one of her beloved little boys which took an hour to unblock, the kids were yelling, a delivery truck got stuck right on the children’s bedtime and she had to feed them peanut butter on toast after accidentally burning the leek pie in the oven.
Turn the page to the morning after, and we are talking about a successful celebrity chef, marketeer, PR agent, writer, television host and sales agent who runs a farm on the Crown Terrace, near Arrowtown, with husband Carlos Bagrie.
"When things get that bad, all you can do is laugh. I just internally laugh about it," she says about the hectic evening.
Within eight months she has filmed and launched the new Three series and cookbook Nadia’s Farm Kitchen, which also features recipes from the two previous Nadia’s Farm series.
"The feedback has been amazing on it. I was a bit dubious because people really loved Nadia’s Farm show and this format is a bit different. I thought ‘are they going to mind?’, but the most common feedback is it should be one hour."
The series this time has more of the chef cooking in the kitchen than being outside on the farm like the previous two. The reasons behind the switch was because she missed her "happy place", plus the businesswoman knows when to end on a high.
"They wanted to do season three of Nadia’s Farm, but we kind of felt like we had done so much on the farm that was shown on the TV shows and we are not doing anything new on the farm now. We were thinking if we are doing a third series, there is not going to be anything new to show, it is business as usual," Lim says.
"The show had gone so well and when things go well my philosophy is you end on a high, before trying to push things."
The last television cooking series Lim did, Nadia’s Comfort Kitchen, was during the Covid lockdown in 2020 and was all shot at home on their phones.
It was not until she stepped back in front of the camera with her kitchen tools and ingredients that she realised how much she missed what she does best, cooking.
"We just thought how about instead of a farm show with a bit of cooking what about a cooking show with a bit of farm in it. It felt a natural progression."
The show still includes Lim getting out on the farm, as well as visiting and showcasing other local producers such as the strawberry farm in Luggate, a dairy farm and an orchard.
"There is that element of primary food production, but I am getting the chance to see it right through to the end to the final dish."
She then decided to put all the recipes into a book for her loyal fanbase and those wanting to learn how to cook the dishes.
"It includes a lot of everyday dishes that we would have maybe once every week or fortnight at home like our lamb ragu with gnocchi, right to our celebratory dishes we might have like my Aunt Pippa’s cherry trifle, which we only cook once a year."
There are also short stories about family life on the farm — her favourite part, she says.
The book again was all a "self-serving" exercise, but only in the sense she did all the work.
"I do all of it, the conception of the book, I do the marketing, the sales and PR. I organise the book tours, talk to retailers, I do the recipes, write them up, I do the cooking and all the food styling.
"I am meticulous."
But she is also authentic, because in the same breath we are back on the farm, talking about that burnt leek pie.
One in 10 of her trial recipes can be a blunder, she says.
"If you are experimenting in the kitchen, I must have it written down because I can potentially develop it into a recipe and test it until I get it right. Otherwise, I will completely forget a recipe.
Lim speaks about her "side dishes" helping pay the mortgage and the 1200-acre Royalburn block being a bit of a "pit" in the sense farming is hard to make lucrative right now.
"I am just trying to hustle; it can all easily end. The farm is a big pit, in some sense, and it just keeps digging a deeper hole."
At the core of Lim and behind her success is a rural mother who speaks about her children Bodhi, River and Arlo fondly, and she advocates for the farming lifestyle being wholesome and comforting.
"It can be good to get away, but I kind of miss the kids straight away when I do. It is one of those ‘love-hate’ relationships, and you have just got to laugh on those harder days."
