Farmer Dave Hunger ran open days at his theme park on his Stratford farm before he closed it on the advice of health and safety experts.

After a winter of hard work farmer Dave Hunger is just about ready to reopen his self-made adventure park to the public.

The Stratford farmer and inventor first invited the public onto his farm about six years ago, when he made a trebuchet out of a tree trunk.

At the end of last year he started opening it as Fernbrooke Farm Amusement Park, complete with a swing made out of a canoe, a massive bicycle with a tractor tyre for a front wheel and a maze made from wire and weed sheet.

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF Stratford farmer Dave Hunger has been working on safety improvements on his farm adventure park all winter, including getting a large stack of bike helmets for his different bikes.

But it soon caught the attention of health and safety advisors and in March a few of Hunger's friends suggested there were things he would need to change to be able to stay open.

"I closed myself rather than anyone closing me and I did it in response to people thinking that I was exposing myself by possibly having an accident and me ending up being prosecuted," he said.

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GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF Some of the changes include putting up signs and installing hand rails on the steps.

"I thought that I had good paper trails here, I felt safe here but you know, safety's subjective and not everyone sees it that way and so I invited four health and safety people to come through to have a look at the place and they gave me a list of 70 things they thought I could improve on."

Hunger had since cut that list back to 20, and he was hoping he would have them sorted before he opened after Christmas.

The biggest casualties had been the loss of the ET attraction - a flying bike ride - and the flying fox, while the rest of the list covered hand rails and impact absorbing material under rides as well as non-slip material on steps and helmets for the bikes, plus lots of signs.

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF Hunger has still included his sense of humour around the park.

"I'm going to have a big one at the gate where they come in setting out that parents are responsible, be careful, you're responsible for your kids while you're here," he said. "I had a small version of that but they reckon it should be bigger."

But the magic carpet pulled behind the tractor, the cow rides and the giant bikes were there to stay and a slide and frisbee-golf course had also been added.

Two staff from Worksafe had also visited the farm and talked about it with Hunger.

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF Part of the improvements included adding padding underneath the rides.

"They offered to come back and have a walk through before I reopened and I'll take them up on that, I'll be happy to have them back," he said.

While the new work would cover Hunger if there was an accident, he wasn't convinced that it had made everything safer.

"That's hard to tell because I've never had an accident here in the past so how can you get safer than that," he said.

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF While he spent most of the winter ticking things off his list, Hunger did find time to install a new slide.

"It will look safer and I will be safer but really the only place that kids are 100 per cent safe is sitting on the couch at home playing XBox, but really we have to ask ourselves is that really what we want?"

Hunger said he'd built the park as a way to get people off the couch and out doing things on the farm, and he thought he had managed to keep that attraction despite the changes.

"I have worked really hard to retain the flavour that I've got and the flavour is home made, recycled. I haven't got big flash shiny toys and people like that," he said.

1 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ Hunger, right, created the park on his Stratford farm. 2 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ Billie Stennin, 5, and Milah Topping, 6, had a great time on the barrel plane. 3 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ The sign at the start of the swing bridge warns users "it's not the falling that hurts, it's the landing". 4 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ The farm is also home to a large collection of vintage machinery. 5 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ Visitors had the chance to hold and pet chick. 6 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ The "magic carpet ride" was a hit, with calls for more after every turn. 7 of 7 SIMON O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ Milah Topping, 6, had a go at the strong man game.

"It's part of the magic, part of the attraction."