366 days of gratitude

A busload of Spanish farmers visited our farm today.

They were on a tight schedule and a brief visit complicated by most not speaking much English and my Spanish being rusty.

But, with the help of an interpreter, my farmer and I were able to tell some of our story and learn a little of theirs.

While we didn’t understand every word of what was said, it didn’t matter because in our hearts we were speaking the language of farming and our shared passion didn’t need to be translated.

Today I’m grateful for the passion for the land and farming which transcend national boundaries and language differences.

 

Ray Columbus 1942 – 2016

New Zealand pop legend Ray Columbus has died.

The Christchurch-born and raised entertainer will be remembered for his stylish dress, his unique dancing style and a string of hit records.

The single ‘She’s a Mod’ in 1964 cemented Ray Columbus and the Invaders a place in New Zealand music history, when it reached the top of the charts in Australia. . . .

I remember him on the TV programme C’Mon and going dewey-eyed over this song:

Word of the day

Flustrated – frustrated to the point of being flustered, flustered to the point of being frustrated.

Rural round-up

Quake cuts off milk for months – Alan Williams:

Don Galletly has been working on developing his Canterbury dairy farm but the earthquake has put a stop to that while he repairs the work already done. But with his cows dispersed to 13 other farms he won’t be producing any more milk this season.

Waiau dairy farmer Don Galletly was all over the television news but didn’t have time to watch it – he was too busy sorting out his wrecked milking shed and what to do with his cows.

The cows were dispersed across other farms in the wider district over the next two days and  the other work  then took up all his time. . . 

Govt bill gives farmers breathing room on quake repairs:

The government has unveiled three urgent bills to speed up the recovery effort following the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake.

Acting Minister of Civil Defence Gerry Brownlee says the government will today introduce a bill amending the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act and a separate Hurunui/Kaikoura Earthquakes Recovery Bill.

The latter bill – aimed specifically speeding up the quake recovery – will temporarily increase the timeframes for applying for retrospective consent for emergency post-earthquake work.

It will also give farmers the ability to ask for permission for emergency work until March next year. . . 

Meat exporters and farmers must get used to change– Allan Barber:

As if Brexit wasn’t a big enough shock, the US presidential election has really set the cat amongst the pigeons. Commentators of all nationalities and political inclinations have literally no idea how a Trump presidency will affect the world order, from trade agreements and global interest rates to immigration or deportation, let alone internal security issues and relationships with other nations.

After predictions of imminent disaster, share markets have been cautiously positive and interest rates have started to rise, while there has been an initial fall in the New Zealand dollar. This has nothing to do with our dollar, but merely reflects its relative global importance; however, it provides a small but welcome relief. . . .

Big names in farming get behind plan to reduce death and injury rate – Gerard Hutching:

Farmers need to move on from the risky culture that previous generations operated under if farming is to become a safer job, says Rangitikei dairy farmer Stuart Taylor.

Speaking at the launch of the Agricultural Leaders’ Health and Safety Action Group, Taylor said farming was no longer in its pioneering phase when people took risks and endured pain.

“My grandfather and father used to like talking about their physical toughness, and how they used to break in the land. They had that culture of endurance and overcoming pain.

Innovator wins top prize with a hay bin – Jill Galloway:

Chelsea Hirst’s design for a hay bin that cuts wastage for horses has won the Innovate competition.

Run by Manawatu based-Building Clever Companies (BCC), the contest finds the top new business ideas which could be marketed.

Five of the six best people presented their ideas to three judges, to decide the winner.

They included 11 year-old Riley Kinloch with his Kozy Kennel, a solar heated kennel for dogs, Doug Tietjens with his exercise pack, Chelsea Hirst with her hay feeder, and a quiet door closer, as well as high school student Maqueen-Davies with her SWAG kids healthy dairy food for time poor parents to put in kid’s lunch boxes.

How to spend 10 years married to a farmer – Wag’n Tales:

1) Be patient – When he tells you to pick him up at the Lone Tree Quarter and you go to the quarter of land that has the only tree on it and he tells you that he meant the quarter of land that had one tree on it when his grandfather was farming…well, that’s just how farmers think.

2) Be flexible – When he says that he’ll be in the house in 20 minutes for supper and you get everything ready and then two hours later he walks in the door saying that some salesman had stopped and that he didn’t buy anything, but time just got away from him…well, maybe he should be the flexible one. That way he can duck when you throw the plate at him. . . 

 

Quote of the day

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.  – C.S. Lewis who was born on this day in 1898.

He also said:

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

And:

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

And:

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

And:

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

And:

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

And:

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

And:

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

And:

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

November 29 in history

800 – Charlemagne arrived at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III.

939 – Edmund was crowned King of England as his half-brother Aethelstan died.

1394 – The Korean king Yi Song-gye, founder of the Joseon-Dynasty, moved the capital from Kaesŏng to Hanyang, today known as Seoul.

1777 – San Jose, California, was founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe.

1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murdered 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea in order to claim insurance.

1807 – The Portuguese Royal Family left Lisbon to escape from Napoleonic troops.

1830 – November Uprising: An armed rebellion against Russia’s rule in Poland began.

1832  Louisa May Alcott, American novelist, was born (d. 1888).

1845 – The Sonderbund was defeated by the joint forces of other Swiss cantons under General Guillaume-Henri Dufour.

1847 – Whitman Massacre: Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War.

1849  Sir John Ambrose Fleming, British physicist, was born (d. 1945).

1850 – The treaty, Punctation of Olmütz, signed in Olomouc meant diplomatic capitulation of Prussia to Austrian Empire, which took over the leadership of German Confederation.

1864 – Indian Wars: Sand Creek Massacre – Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacred at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Spring Hill – Confederate advance into Tennessee missed the opportunity to crush the Union army.

1872 – Indian Wars: The Modoc War began with the Battle of Lost River.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph for the first time.

1890 – The Meiji Constitution went into effect in Japan and the first Diet convened.

1893 Elizabeth Yates became the first woman in the British Empire to win a mayoral election when she became Mayor of Onehunga.
  

1893 – Ziqiang Institute, today known as Wuhan University, was founded by Zhang Zhidong.

1898  C. S. Lewis, Irish writer, was born(d. 1963).

1899 – Spanish football club FC Barcelona was founded by Joan Gamper.

19920  – Elizabeth Choy, Malaysian-Singaporean educator and politician was born (d. 2006).

1910 – The first US  patent for inventing the traffic lights system was issued to Ernest E. Sirrine.

1913 – Fédération Internationale d’Escrime, the international organizing body of competitive fencing was founded in Paris.

1917  Merle Travis, American singer/guitarist, was born (d. 1983).

1922 – Howard Carter opened the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun to the public.

1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd became the first person to fly over the South Pole.

1932 Jacques Chirac, French President, was born.

1933 John Mayall, British blues musician, was born.

1943 – Janet Holmes à Court, Australian businesswoman and philanthropist, was born.

1943 – The second session of AVNOJ, the Anti-fascist council of national liberation of Yugoslavia, was held determining the post-war ordering of the country.

1944 – The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome was performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

1944 – Albania was liberated by the Albanian partisans.

1945 – The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was declared.

1947 – Malcolm Grant, New Zealand-English lawyer and academic was born.

1947 – The United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine (The Partition Plan).

1950 – Korean War: North Korean and Chinese troops force United Nations forces to retreat from North Korea.

1952 – Korean War: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfilled a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.

1953 – Jackie French, Australian author, was born.

1958 – John Dramani Mahama, Ghanaian historian and politician, 4th President of Ghana, was born.

1961 –  Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission – Enos, a chimpanzee, was launched into space.

1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

1963 – Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831: A Douglas DC-8 carrying 118, crashed after taking-off.

1965 – Canadian Space Agency launched the satellite Alouette 2.

1972 – Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) released Pong (the first commercially successful video game) in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

1987 – Korean Air Flight 858 exploded over the Thai-Burmese border, killing 155.

1990 – The United Nations Security Council passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing “use all necessary means to uphold and implement” United Nations Security Council Resolution 660″ to restore international peace and security” if Iraq did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

2007 – The Armed Forces of the Philippines laid siege to The Peninsula Manila after soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes staged a mutiny.

2007 – A 7.4 magnitude earthquake off the northern coast of Martinique.

2009  – Maurice Clemmons shot and killed four police officers inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington.

2013 – LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 crashed in Namibia, killing 33 people.

2014  – Taiwan local elections, the Democratic Progressive Party won a landslide victory.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia