She was busy getting organised for the Royal A&P Show of New Zealand, hosted by the Canterbury A&P Association in Christchurch, and decided she would deal with it when she got home after the three-day November event.
"They rang just before I was going, and said they would send it again," Beverley said.
She coped with the show, came home on the Saturday, and had a garden full of 70 people on the Sunday for the Leithfield Garden Tour raising funds for the local community library and Community Centre.
Then she dealt with her mail.
Beverley Riverina Forrester, of Leithfield, became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to the wool and fashion industries.
"It is overwhelming," Beverley said.
"You do all the things you do because you enjoy it. You don’t think about anything in the long term.
"Everything has just evolved."
Her CV reads like there isn’t a day that goes by when she is not winging her way to a fashion show, to judge at a show, working from her Leithfield base marketing her products locally, across New Zealand and the world, or tackling a new project, the latest of which is co-ownership of a crossbred wool processing manufacturing unit in South Canterbury.
Product from it is being laid in vineyards, and gardens, suppressing weeds.
A bit of a "mistake" in processing the mats led to Beverley launching another product — wool coats made from the matting that had taken on some unusual colours and patterns.
She lives by the mantel her father taught her: "Every leader has a team, and every team has to have a leader."
"I just get on with things and people give me ideas.
"I take them and don’t park them. Things just evolve," she said.
She is proud of the local people in her business who have skills she doesn’t have herself.
Her "gang" of local knitters, are her trusted, loyal workers and friends, along with those who devise the patterns, sew the woollen garments, or tackle the every increasing online business sending product, via the local mailman, to places throughout the world.
Beverley has been a loyal and key member of Rural Women NZ, cutting her teeth in raising awareness of women’s strengths and achievements, via Country Girls Club, and going on to hold many positions in Rural Women, including Glenmark branch President.
She was honoured for her work receiving the Rural Women New Zealand Enterprising Woman Award, 2011, and was runner up in 2009 for the Enterprising Rural Businesswoman Award.
Wool, and fashion, are just part of Beverley’s busy life that has taken her to 52 countries. She lectured at the 8th World Coloured Sheep Congress, in Paris in 2014.
When the North Canterbury News visited she was preparing to be a hammer hand building a ramp at the local community centre in Leithfield, and she speaks highly of the neighbours and locals who provide company, share food and contribute to helping provide high-quality, un-dyed and sustainably processed wool products and hand knitted garments as part of her business.
She also goes to line-dancing once a week.
"Life is about prioritising. That is my time out. You have to have balance."
Beverley is proud of her rural heritage, and says the strangest thing is she is still very much a part of a small rural community, where she is right at home.
In the early 2000s, Mrs Forrester left her occupational therapy career after 32 within the New Zealand Health system.
Twice she set the New Zealand final year examinations in psychiatry and physical medicine, and did a post graduate course at St Batholomews Hospital London.
In New Zealand, Beverley did post-graduate courses in music therapy, neurodevelopment therapy and also qualified as a New Zealand polytechnic teacher.
Following this she partially converted a fourth-generation sheep and beef farm to black and coloured sheep near Waikari, and today her little business deep in Hurunui is flourishing. Tour parties can see first hand the wool products available, and can buy from The Wool Barn in Leithfield, a red shed at Beverley’s home, where she moved after moving from Black Hills near Waikari.
Knitting kits, including skeins of wool, patterns and needles are available from the barn or on line.
"Today there is nobody doing anything in all honesty with natural coloured wool like me," said Beverley, who has protected her products and fashion with trademarks.
Beverley exhibits her woollen crafts internationally, and is involved in every aspect of yarn production to the export of the final product.
She began selling her products and knitting kits in the United Kingdom in 2007, later opening physical shops, which she has now closed, preferring online sales today.
In 2003 she won the Her Business Network Award at the Businesswoman of the Year Awards, and the 2006 New Zealand Century Farm and Station Award, winning again in 2021. She launched fashion label Beverley Riverina Knitwear, which featured at New Zealand Fashion Week, has knitted a garment for Princess Anne, and held fashion shows in England, Melbourne, and New York, and even one on a cruise ship.
She took the whole team to Australia with her to join her on the cruise ship because "they had all contributed".
Beverley is a long-serving member of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association and is a New Zealand and international sheep judge, judging at the United States Sheep Show, and in the United Kingdom and repeatedly in Australia.
In 2015 Beverley wrote The Farm at Black Hills: Farming alone in the hills of Northern Canterbury, with the book’s royalties creating three RWNZ scholarships.
