It’s been six years since Nadia Lim and her now family of five took on their biggest project yet: Royalburn Station.
The 1200-acre (485ha) farm in the Crown Ranges in Central Otago is wild and unpredictable. The celebrity chef and her husband, Carlos Bagrie, bought the property in 2017 and moved in three years later with their children Bodhi, 8, River, , 6 and Arlo, 2.
At times, Lim admits, it has felt more than they bargained for.
“It has been a journey of learning – starting from a very idealistic point of view, to things slowly being chipped away at to become realistic,” the 39-year-old says.
Their learning curve has been steep (to put it mildly) – and the trials of turning the land into a functioning business were documented in Three’s series Nadia’s Farm.
Looking back at the highs and often stomach-churning lows we saw onscreen, Lim says the experience taught her and Bagrie some valuable life lessons about letting go of control and “going with the flow”.
Now, with spinoff Nadia’s Farm Kitchen launching on September 10, does she have any regrets from the last chapter?
“Too many for the interview,” she laughs.
“We constantly say that if we could go back in time, we would have done things differently, but then things would have turned out differently as well.”
Since winning MasterChef New Zealand in 2011, Lim has become a household name across New Zealand and Asia, with bestselling cookbooks, TV shows and business ventures. And with every success, Bagrie has been in lockstep.
In 2013, they co-founded meal delivery service My Food Bag, which helped fund the farm, and, earlier this year, both were awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit.
But their many successes haven’t come without challenges – particularly for their relationship.
“I’ll be very candid and honest about this, and I have been over the last 18 months or so, we did get to a really low point,” Lim says.
“I think that was just the combination of so many years of running at a million miles an hour, and dare I say almost taking each other for granted when you’re together for that long.”
The couple, who have been together since they were 19, “fell into a trap” of assuming their relationship was unshakable.
But when Bagrie had to be away for a lengthy stint last year, it turned out to be a blessing.
“That gave us a bit of space to reflect on where things were at, and we both realised that we need to work on ourselves first and then get ourselves in a good place to then work on the relationship.”
Lim says the couple are now “fantastic” and “10/10″, but admits there are challenges for couples who work and live together.
Her advice: “Don’t let the fire completely die down. As long as the embers are kept warm, there’s always the potential that the fire can come roaring back up again.”
The farm is the culmination of both of their dreams. At 9, Lim already knew that she wanted to write cookbooks and host a cooking show. Bagrie, on the other hand, was raised on a farm in Invercargill, and knew he would one day go back to the land.
“When I met Carlos 20 years ago, he always said, ‘Hey, just heads up, if we end up being together long-term, one day I am going to go back into farming. That’s where my heart belongs.’”
But the bigger picture for their life together didn’t come to Lim until after her father died 11 years ago.
“I woke up one day and I said to Carlos, we’re gonna have three boys and we’ll be living on a farm. That’s what our life will be, and now we have three boys, living on a farm.”
Thankfully for Bagrie, one of Lim’s other dreams didn’t quite pan out.
“I also wanted to be married to Jamie Oliver,” she laughs.
When the couple first took over Royalburn, they kept it quiet. “We didn’t want the media to get hold of the fact that we’re farming and then find out that we couldn’t actually farm – that we’re doing it all wrong.”
Today, they worry less about hiding their mistakes. The farm is bursting with produce, free-range animals and flower crops that thrive in the rich Central Otago soil.
One of their biggest achievements is pioneering true paddock-to-plate meat, with a licensed on-site micro abattoir, where their animals can die and be butchered on the farm.
The process is said to be less stressful for the animal, and Lim says you can literally taste the difference.
“It’s sweeter, it tastes so much nicer, and that’s because I think there’s no stress to the animal – if an animal has a really good life, it’s fed really well and doesn’t have a stressful life, and then it doesn’t have a stressful end, that’s the best-quality meat that you can get.”
Lim says if the couple hadn’t been a bit “naive” going into parts of the process, they may not have taken risks, such as the micro abattoir, at all.
These hard-won lessons of farm life are front and centre in Nadia’s Farm Kitchen, which, as well as the TV series, will be launched with an accompanying cookbook.
“I’ve gone back to my roots of being in the kitchen and cooking up a storm.
“I just want people to see that with really simple, good homegrown ingredients, you can create spectacular dishes that are going to make you look like a domestic goddess – or god.”
And alongside the recipes, comes a fair share of behind-the-scenes stories of life at Royalburn.
“There are tales about the chaos of our sunflower fields growing several million sunflowers, and being snowed-in in the blistering hot summers.”
Although juggling the show, book, motherhood and her relationship can feel like a lot, Lim says she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“There is this whole idea you’ve got to make sure that your life is balanced and that you’re getting everything in and taking care of yourself and all these points – I don’t know if I actually agree with that.
“I think at some point you should be working your ass off and you should be burning the candle at both ends, burning the midnight oil – as long as that’s not forever.”
For her, balance comes from integrating the important parts of her life: involving the kids on the farm and making her many roles fit around motherhood, not the other way around.
Despite a hectic work schedule ahead it’s a promise to her boys that really makes her light up.
“I have actually promised the boys we’ll do a beach holiday when we get back from the book tour. I can’t wait.”
When she does get a rare moment to reflect, she says it’s the boys who make her proudest.
“There’s not a day that goes by that after putting them to bed, I don’t look at Carlos and be like, ‘How did we create such amazing kids?’”.
Nadia’s Farm Kitchen starts on Three / Three Now - September 10 at 7.30pm.
Nadia’s book, Nadia’s Farm Kitchen is available for presale now and out in October.