A lack of common sense

Wairarapa farmer Mark Guscott wishes people were born with a sixth sense – common sense.

This time last year the world was changing because of Covid-19. Mostly people thought it was changing for the worse. Those of us who had a bit of space to run around in thought it had changed for the better. There was no pressure to chase kids five nights a week in various activities. We didn’t have to travel to meetings. Zoom calls and house parties were still a bit of a novelty. We noticed how quiet our road was. Normally it’s a bit of a commuter zone and really busy. We ran stock up and down the road between farms and the only people out and about were essential workers, most of whom have common sense so the stock movements were a breeze.

I was thinking about common sense the other day and how rare it is. The five senses that most people are born with like sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell don’t include common sense. How good would the world be if everyone was born with common sense? There would be no tin foil hat wearers and people would know how to react when some farmer was moving sheep on the road. What would the media do for stories? Between the clowns in parliament and the no common sense brigade the media easily fill the quota for stories each day and if that gets too hard they just make something up.

The kids had their school interviews recently. The oldest is at college these days so we have two different schools to figure out. She refused to join us at the interviews saying she had volleyball practice. Not that she needed to join us, the teachers mostly love her. The two other kids still at primary school are required to join us and they run part of the interview and tell us what they need to work on, in their opinion. Gee we’re lucky with our teachers. They’re a committed bunch and all work hard for our kids. I could never do that for a job, I’m far too impatient. It was the usual result for the kids, doing well with a couple of things to work on and sometimes they were easily distracted.

The school reports will be out in a couple of weeks. An old mate from college shared one of his old reports recently and sh*t, they were brutal. The PC parent brigade would slay those teachers if those sorts of comments came home on the school reports now. To be honest, they were probably accurate, but he’s gone on to be quite successful. He grew up in a good family and, not that we needed the proof, but parenting is still more important than teaching. You can’t blame the teachers if your kids run amok.

In the Wairarapa we’re hanging out for more of an autumn break. We’ve had decent rain but we’re not in the clear yet. Our new pastures are up and away and have just had the first grazing. A bit more drilling and harvesting is going on. Calves are weaned and lambs have grown well all summer on green feed crops. They are now being shipped out and replaced with a new batch from the guys in the hills. The rams have nearly finished their work for the year and their girlfriends were looking particularly sharp. The cycle is repeating like it always does.

We’re trying to predict the future by doing our budgets for next year and updating the current year’s one to see if there is going to be any money left. It’s all looking quite rosy on the pricing front isn’t it? China seems to be back in the game and is after our produce. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is trying to get going again even if it is a bit stop, start. The labour problems around the regions don’t seem to be going away in a hurry. There is always something going on. At least Suz and I have bred our own replacements and they’re growing out nicely.