You wouldn't read about it! NOVELIST DAISY'S GREENER PASTURES

The city slicker swapped Gucci for gumboots to run a farm - and the whole family's thriving

- Aroha Awarau

US-born theatre producer Daisy Remington decided she needed a new name on social media when she went from raising her family in Auckland to becoming a farmer.

“I thought because I was moving to the farm, I needed a farming name,” she explains. “Then one day in winter I was feeding the cows and thought, ‘Whenever I’m out working in the paddock, I always end up getting hay all over me.’ So, I decided to change my online profile to ‘A Pocket Full of Hay’ because that’s literally what farming is all about.”

Raised in Orange County, in the “well-irrigated deserts of Southern California”, Daisy, 41, moved to New Zealand with her Kiwi husband Russell Clarke in 2007.

Growing up in the US with an African-American father, a European mother and a love for animals, Daisy never imagined she would move to New Zealand and change her lifestyle to raise her two children, Theodore, 14, and Tabitha, nine, on a four-hectare property on the outskirts of Auckland.

The two main reasons Daisy chose to make the big move was so she could grow organic food and to help her son Theodore, who was diagnosed with autism and who Daisy home schools.