Thistles in the wind

Knocking back the thistles is Blair Smith’s recipe for avoiding discord over facts and figures.

IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN”- CAPTAIN E J Smith’s reply when asked whether the Titanic would ever sink.

I began to question my Smith lineage yesterday due to the similarity between EJ and my arrogance when the air compressor (that I vowed and declared wouldn’t make any sudden noise amongst the freshly weaned hill block lambs), saw lambs smashing through a gate in spectacular fashion when the air pressure released – similar to when trucks let off their air brakes.

While I’m no scholar, if I was ever going to write a book, the title would be ‘Tales blown in on a dusty Norwester’.

One chapter would outline the windswept day that Jane lost the weaning weight data of more than 1200 of the stud lambs with a push of a button. Given that she had a six-week-old baby, a couple of toddlers at foot and pretty much no sleep for 42 days, it was one of those pivotal marital moments when I smiled, said “that’s no big deal” and spent the next nine hours re-weighing each and every lamb.

“I did the sums on ‘should I carry on this conversation and tell her my real thoughts or should I just go out and spray thistles’. A fair few thistles got sprayed that year.”

This was pre-EID tag days when each lamb had to be manhandled, tag number called out and weight manually recorded. Now the real page-turner was three days later, Jane tells me (very) casually – that she had found the weights further down the spreadsheet, and had taken the liberty to do a data check on all the reweighed lambs and found 12 discrepancies which she wasn’t happy about.

Another key marital crossroad moment.

I did the sums on ‘should I carry on this conversation and tell her my real thoughts or should I just go out and spray thistles’. A fair few thistles got sprayed that year.

Our hills this spring looked more like mid-winter in a Soviet republic. I was beginning to wonder if Mother Jacinda had assembled a coalition to supersede Mother Nature and had the weather under a cold, dry socialist grip. However, rain arrived in late November along with the best summer growing conditions for decades. A bloody good challenge for the stud Perendales with our nil-drench policy – going from dust to knee-high clover within a matter of weeks, and a good chance to see the genetic potential of all stock – without the usual game of survival of the fittest.

I am no political beast but one issue that runs through my head while sitting on the tractor seat is global overpopulation.

No farm can keep increasing stock numbers with less inputs and expect a good outcome. I’m yet to see a sandal-sucking Greenpeace activist say on their digital soapbox “holy shite, I’ve just worked out the problem – it’s people”.

Strange that populations are out of control, yet even low-impact livestock (converters of hill country pasture to premium protein) are public enemy number one. These eco-terrorists would be better to chain themselves to the gates of the well-endowed land being converted to corporate-owned carbon mining pine trees, or questioning why the hell NZ Ag ‘leaders’ have bought into the laughable emperor’s new clothes concept of methane emission taxes on livestock. Heads should roll for ignoring science and creating economic and environmental disaster.

The good news is I’ve come up with a plan more scientific than theirs. The methane chamber they are prancing around sheep farms on their genetics propaganda tour should fit two large Labour ministers or three anaemic Green party members in it at a time. The resulting hot air can be used in lieu of fossil fuels – and as the Government is so sure that livestock are evil methane missiles, destock all Landcorp farms (saves them losing any more taxpayer money) and plant every hectare in leftover politicians, joyless university know-it-alls and impotent Greenpeace activists.