Wairarapa’s Roger Barton reflects on those waxing hysterical about the terrible things farmers do to their land and livestock.
It seems that part of a farmer’s day job these days is attempting to defend our ability to produce food for an ever-discerning public. A mix of social (actually, unsocial) media and TV documentaries’ attempts to paint us in the dark corner while enlightened individuals tell us just how it should be done.
I was sorely tempted to call this column “Hamish from Hypocrite Hollow”. The mythical “Hamish” could be anyone, but in this case he is a well-known Flim Flam producer.
After waxing hysterical about the terrible things farmers do to their land and their livestock the mythical “Hamish” then decides to drop the “H” from his name and just become Amish. But that would be a major departure from what “Hamish” really wants to do. You see the Amish don’t fly private jet planes or helicopters. Besides if I really wrote what I wanted to, the illustrious name of the Country-Wide magazine might be dragged into disrepute and that I want to avoid.
With a boundary of the Tararua ranges, there is always a reservoir of possums to reinfiltrate our QE2 areas. To be fair the numbers are very low, thanks to the quality of the 1080 programmes that have run for some time.
We’ve just had a lovely run of frosts. In some shady places it has remained for a few days along with ice in puddles. I like getting winter in the winter as opposed to in the spring. The latter option gets very costly. Scanning has been and gone. Finished in the early 180s which is behind last year by about 15%.
They are two very contrasting years with this last autumn having quite a lot of low-quality feed around courtesy of the very growthy November and December. Plus facial eczema raised its head again. At least we have a modicum of FE resilience through our flock to minimise the damage.
On the environmental front we have just planted another wetland area as part of our Farm Environment Plan. To be honest I avoided much of that work. In my defence I was crutching ewe hoggets.
Barbie and the South Wairarapa Young Farmers club planted just short of 600 trees and assorted plants on a Sunday afternoon. We nearly pulled the pin due to the weather being cold and wet but the team were keen and just hit the job hard. It was quite a nice little fund-raiser for them and we enjoyed their company later in the warmth of the kitchen over a few beers and a bite to eat.
The next bit of environmental work will be targeting possums when the Radiata pines put out their pollen catkins around July 20. I get another chance as the Lombardy poplars come into leaf from September 20.
With a boundary of the Tararua ranges, there is always a reservoir of possums to reinfiltrate our QE2 areas. To be fair the numbers are very low, thanks to the quality of the 1080 programmes that have run for some time. The memory of shooting 130 possums in a night just sounds like a folk legend of yesteryear now. In the earlier days the possum control work was really around TB control but these days it is almost entirely environmental.
A few months ago I mentioned a thunderstorm event which created a monumental flash flood. This is giving us ongoing problems with loose gravel in the stream bed. The gravel is potentially a great resource but it doesn’t lend itself to just landing happily in a nice corner. I can see this event taking 10-plus years to fully settle down again.
Meanwhile, the stream wants to do things which cost machinery time and frustration. I really wonder why God doesn’t get a resource consent to do his work sometimes. It would have to be more orderly, surely?
Luckily for our downstream neighbours we do manage these gravel issues otherwise there would be some interesting stuff happening in high-water events.
Having sold a few lifestyle blocks a few years ago it is slightly frustrating to see the relative lack of understanding around maintenance and the issues that will arise at some stage. Especially with some houses being in close proximity to the stream.
Perhaps, like my aforementioned mythical friend “Hamish”, we should just leave it to nature?
