Matt Chisholm is a great storyteller, a popular event speaker, TV host and journalist who is now living his life on a farm. Photo / Fiona Tomlinson
Leaving the rat race for greener pastures has been both holistic and harrowing for the TV host.
Matt Chisholm is a great storyteller, a popular event speaker, TV host and journalist. But he is possibly at his most eloquent telling stories about his many failures on the land.
“Farmers have to be really pragmatic people and I’m not for a whole raft of reasons,” says Matt. “The first time I tried to put a ram harness [which identifies mating when it happens] on, it took me an hour, but the next time, I had it on in a few minutes, so I’m learning.”
It doesn’t help that Matt is surrounded by farmers with decades of experience, but he says for the most part, they are encouraging.
“My father-in-law Dennis lives next door and I see him driving past while I’m attempting to do something, and he just shakes his head!” laughs Matt. “I can’t hear him, but I reckon I can read his lips and he’s saying, ‘I can’t believe my beautiful baby daughter Ellen married this guy!’”
Ellen points out that her dad is a lovely guy really.
“He wants to help Matt, but he also doesn’t want to be overpowering,” she explains. “So he doesn’t want to say, ‘This is how you should be doing it.’ But when Matt comes to him, he will tell him the truth.”
Matt details many of his farming failures in his new book The Road to Chatto Creek – Leaving the Rat Race for Life in the Country.
The many beautiful photos in the book show Matt and Ellen, plus their children Bede, 7, Finn, 6, and Bree, 2, on the scenic and stunning land they own in Central Otago.
Matt grew up on a farm, so the love of that life has always been in him, but he says that actually running a cattle and sheep farm is a lot harder than it looks.
He shares some pretty gruesome experiences of finding one dead lamb after another and having to help animals in labour, particularly a cow in trouble, which ended in Matt reaching in and birthing the calf backwards – which is potentially life-threatening – at 1am.
Ellen says Matt is obsessed with his animals.
“He’s a bit different from other farmers because he has too much of an emotional connection to the animals, whereas other farmers separate themselves and realise that when you have livestock, you also have dead stock,” she tells.
Ellen also grew up on a farm and can see that Matt finds it difficult when he loses an animal.
“He takes it personally and feels he failed because he did everything in his power to save it,” she explains. “That’s his driving force and a vital instinct, which makes him a great farmer, but sometimes it hurts.”
The couple are also keen to point out that they’re running a hobby farm, not one on a bigger scale like many others.
“These big-time farmers don’t have the time to go around their cattle at 11 o’clock at night or 2am … they’d go mad, they need to sleep,” says Ellen. “But Matt has a small farm and he’s extremely committed, so he has the ability to check on them all pretty quickly. And he would stay up all night if he has to because he’s obsessive!”
Since moving to Chatto Creek in December 2019 there have been many struggles. In the past year, Matt has again battled with his mental health, something he has talked about openly in his first book, Imposter, which was a number-one bestseller.
“At the end of last year, I was a bit cooked again and suffering depression,” he admits. “It was ironic for someone who tours the country talking to groups of farmers about their mental health in my ambassador role for the Rural Support Trust.
“I went off my meds a bit earlier than I should have and I got to the stage where I’d been working pretty hard, and I was going to have a cruisier time, but I don’t know my limits,” he reveals. “I always work pretty hard, so I probably wasn’t meeting my basic physiological needs.
“I wasn’t getting enough sleep, and there was lambing, there were talks to give and the travel that goes with those. Not only that, there was farming and family, and there was putting in a new lawn. Plus, I was writing the book, which made me think too much about how my life was going.
“I’ve gone really hard and earned some decent money, but then I crunched the numbers and couldn’t see any money left. I thought that this new life we had wasn’t sustainable and that put me in a bit of a hole.”
Matt started murmuring about putting their brand-new house and small farm on the market, but he realised he was being a bit dramatic.
“Now I’m back on my medication and I’m really loving it again,” he enthuses. “I’ve got a bit of balance and my bounce back. I’m not so tired, which is good.”
Matt stares out of the window to his land and the hills, and says that his place at Chatto Creek has become his sanctuary.
“I can come and recharge again and take my medicine,” he reveals.
Matt was also dealing with the loss of his co-host role on TVNZ show Celebrity Treasure Island.
“I was terribly upset about it at the time because I hate injustice,” he tells. “I’m much better with it now and it helped me realise my life wasn’t going in that direction anyway. I feel like it’s almost unbelievable I was on the telly.”
Matt’s career has spanned many shows, such as Sunday, Fair Go, Seven Sharp and Close Up, as well as Country Calendar, Survivor and Celebrity Treasure Island.
He’s still working in television, but behind the camera as a director/producer for Nadia Lim and her husband Carlos Bagrie’s show Nadia’s Farm, which he really enjoys.
But mostly he’s travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand giving talks to rural people addressing his shortcomings as a farmer, which always goes down well, but also highlighting the mental health struggles so many people in the sector have.
“I’ve done 150 talks so far,” he says. “I’m always keen to get out and have a chat with people. Even though I’m 13 years sober, I’m still the last person to leave an event. I just get into these amazing chats.”
Ellen says family outings are often interrupted by people who want to talk to her popular husband.
“We’ll be at the A&P Show and I’m wrangling three children while he’s off talking to Joe Bloggs for half an hour,” she laughs. “Matt loves a good yarn with everyone and he’s quite approachable. People feel that they can come up to him and have a wee chat, and he loves that. But I do draw the line if we’re out having dinner and people come up to us while we’re eating. That’s not good.”
Matt’s frequent absences mean Ellen is taking on his farm tasks, as well as caring for the children, keeping the house running, and dropping off the kids at sports practice and school. She also works for luxury tourism company Ahipara Travel as its itinerary design manager.
Bede and Finn are now in school, but they’re both playing rugby and football at the weekends – and that’s when things become problematic.
“It’s very difficult trying to juggle everything,” she says. “I like to give everything 110%, so I’m trying to give my work 110%. I want my children to eat well, so that means cooking a proper meal. I don’t like to cut corners. They all need their homework done. The boys need to be taken to soccer and rugby practice.”
It’s something Ellen used to struggle with and she admits that while she’s still counting down the days until Matt is home again, she’s accustomed to it and gets into her groove.
Meanwhile, Matt is grateful he has a partner who can keep everything going at home.
“She’s brilliant at it – but one time, I asked her to put some feed out for our cattle and told her where they were, up on the hill,” he recalls. “She gave them a bale or two and when I got home, I realised she had fed the neighbour’s cows on the other side of the fence!”
Ellen adds, “In my defence, we used to own that land and sold it five years ago.”
But until Matt finds work which allows him to stay home more, his travelling is a necessity and something they are both coping with.
But although he had a few doubts about his new life in the country at the end of last year, he now realises it has made him feel a lot more human.
“I’m so much more concerned about the environment, the weather, the seasons, and life and death,” he says. “When I was working in the newsroom, I was really concerned about the big picture and thinking globally. I was worried about whether my grandkids would be able to live in this world.
“But now that we’ve come here, we’re so much more concerned about just living our life and basic, simple stuff: Is there enough grass out there for my sheep to get through the winter? It’s kind of simple and wholesome, yet difficult at times, but bloody beautiful, you know?
“It just makes me feel more alive and human,” he shares. “My world’s got a whole lot smaller, but I’m better for it.”
The Road to Chatto Creek by Matt Chisholm (Allen & Unwin, RRP $45) is in bookstores.
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