365 days of gratitude

The plan was to be away from home for dinner.

The plan changed but my farmer forgot to tell me.

Tonight I’m grateful that my fridge, garden and pantry hold the makings for a meal for those occasions when I’m not expecting to have to make it.

Word of the day

Sedge – a grass-like plant with triangular stems and inconspicuous flowers, growing typically in wet ground; any of a family (Cyperaceae, the sedge family) of usually tufted monocotyledonous marsh plants differing from the related grasses in having achenes and solid stems; any of a cosmopolitan genus (Carex).

Rural round-up

Farmer urges quad rollover protection – Richard Davison:

Hillend farmer Douglas Jack says a $600 quad bike rollover bar saved his life last month, and wants to see more people follow his lead by installing one.

Mr Jack was putting up a break fence adjoining a field of swedes on his 400ha sheep and beef farm near Balclutha on April 5 when disaster nearly struck.

“I was on the quad bike on a wee slope, nothing dramatic, when my rear wheel hit a large swede and boompha, I was over,” he said.

Fortunately, after seeing his uncle saved by a raised deck board on his Bedford truck during a similar incident as a boy, Mr Jack had long been a believer in rollover protection on his quad. . . 

Soil health main focus of field day – Ella Stokes:

More than 200 people gathered at the Clinton Community Centre on Tuesday in a bid to learn about farming for the future.

The ”Regenerative Farming Field Day” was hosted by Beef and Lamb New Zealand.

It began with talks from researcher Dr Christine Jones and senior researcher at AgResearch New Zealand Dr David Stevens.

They both discussed regenerative farming ideas, minimising bare soil, plant growing, diverse forages and rotational grazing.

Dr Jones has a PhD in soil biochemistry and spoke on the fundamentals of soil. . . 

The right way to protect rare plants on private land –  Jamie McFadden:

To most people, wiggy-wig is an unappealing, non-descript shrub. But to those of us that know wiggy-wig, it is a New Zealand native biodiversity gem. This plant is commonly known as Muehlenbeckia astonii or shrubby tororaro and naturally occurs on the drier east from Wellington to Banks Peninsula.

Wiggy-wig made headlines last week when Forest & Bird claimed that a Banks Peninsula farmer had cleared 1000 of these rare plants. To be fair to the farmer it is the sort of scruffy shrub that you might set alight or spray and it wasn’t that long ago the Government paid farmers to clear this shrub.

The Hurunui district is home to remnant pockets of wiggy-wig. Fifteen years ago a Hurunui farmer approached me about an unusual shrub on his farm. I identified it as a very healthy population of wiggy-wig. I asked the farmer if I could collect seed so we could grow and re-establish more of these rare plants throughout the district. . . 

This lovely sheep on an altar in Pisa reminds me that sheep and shepherds have been valued for millennia. @herdyshepherd1 @woolismybread As you are now. pic.twitter.com/ro0tjMeH7O

— Gillian (@gilliantweet) May 12, 2018

How to find the best bull for your operation :

The decision you make about which bull to buy this season will still affect your business in four cow generations’ time – that’s 15 years from today. So taking the time to research your bull purchase now yields an exceptional return.

Here are B+LNZ Genetics’ five steps to find the best bull for your operation.

1) What do you want to achieve on your farm?

Where are you right now in your cattle performance and where do you want to be? Use these questions to create your breeding objective or genetic plan. For instance, you might be happy with your 95% scanning, but keen to see heavier weaners.

2) How do you choose a breeder?

Once you’ve set clear objectives for your herd, identify a bull breeder with similar objectives. Ask the breeder for genetic trend graphs. The graphs should show a positive upward trend for the traits that impact on your goals. If not, look for another breeder. . . 

In the last five years, the average value per tonne of lamb exports has only exceeded $10,000 for one month but look at this season – every month has! Explore here: https://t.co/TAhJLjZE7I pic.twitter.com/tFlQLSgeJy

— Beef + Lamb NZ (@NZBeefLamb) May 13, 2018

Q and A Lesley Wilson –  Andrew Ashton:

Following the end of a busy fruit-picking season, Hawke’s Bay Today reporter Andrew Ashton talks to project management and event management expert and current Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association president Lesley Wilson – the woman who led the Australian Access Action Group campaign that ended with the Government taking Australia all the way to the World Trade Organisation and gaining meaningful access for New Zealand apples into Australia.

What will be the key things for horticulture and ag-based businesses to come to grips with to be successful in the future?

Doing more with less is the key to providing food for the world’s ever increasing population. The recent wholesale acknowledgement that there are limited resources (land, water and people), is driving positive change in the efficient use of natural resources and the training and retention of our people. . .

Cattle industry looks to defend ‘meat’ label from lab-grown and plant-based products –  Marty McCarthy, Matt Brann:

The peak body for Australia’s cattle industry says it is considering calling for reforms to prevent lab-grown meat from being labelled “meat”.

Experts think a commercial industry to supply meat grown from stem cells in a laboratory is achievable within the next decade and there is also rising demand for plant-based meat alternatives.

France recently banned the use of the words “meat” and “dairy” on vegan and vegetarian food labels, while farm lobby groups in the United States are calling for cell-grown and plant-based replicas to be labelled as such.

Cattle Council of Australia chief executive, Margo Andrae, said her organisation did not want to see a repeat of the dairy industry’s battle over the term “milk” and “dairy” and was considering its own defensive options.

Did you know, the income from #wool used to pay for an entire winter’s feed? Now wool has very low margins – time to celebrate natural fibres and bring back tweed! #sheep #Romsey #ewes pic.twitter.com/I3VHHWIZH6

— Dr Jude Capper 🥛🐄🧀 (@Bovidiva) May 12, 2018

KiwiBuy Kiwi Beg KiwiFail

KiwBuild was supposed to add 100,000 houses for those struggling to get into their first home.

But KiwiBuild has turned into KiwiBuy or even KiwiBeg.

The government buying houses that were going to be built anyway will put public money at risk without adding a single extra dwelling to the nation’s housing stock.

The housing shortage is caused by an imbalance between supply and demand.

There are several reasons for that including a consent process akin to trying to run through a river of treacle in gumboots.

Not PC gives some examples of the hoops that add time and cost to the process:

. . .In recent months, for example, and like every regular applicant for building consents, I’ve spent many, many hours replying to council’s Requests for Further Information (RFIs). These days it’s often less about being a designer than it is about being a lawyer, explaining the building code clauses to the processor at the other end of an email.

The simplest RFI responses are to tell the questioner where precisely in the document set they can find the answer to their question, already addressed. But in recent months it’s been getting worse. Among other things, in order to keep things moving I’ve been required to tell council the make and model of a shower and the finish of a bathroom cabinet; the colour of bedroom carpets (accompanied by a calculation to show they’re bright enough); the normal process by which to pour a concrete footing in engineered soil, to abandon approved details because the territorial authority has decided they don’t like them, and to replace them with those they’ve now decided they do; to discuss the acoustics of polystyrene sheets (that are not being used for acoustic purposes); to resupply calculations and statements that the processor has already received, but lost; to explain why handrails are not required on steps with fewer than two treads, and how an opening window into an open lightwell allows light and air into a room; to draw up a list of a project’s “construction and demolition hazards”; to provide mechanical ventilation rates for areas we’ve shown will use natural ventilation; to draw up simple diagrams because processors are unable to read fairly standard plans; to confirm the use of smoke detectors (when they’ve already been clearly placed and labelled on drawings); and (in the absence of council finding anything else to ask about) to draw a detail of a bathroom splashback — just some examples of recent Requests from processors, all of which have wasted my time and theirs, unnecessarily dragging out the consenting process, and all at the time and expense of clients who were once very eager to build. . .

The worst example that I’ve come across was an applicant being asked to draw on a plan where the furniture would go.

If the government was really serious about a long-term solution to housing it would be addressing problems with the Resource Managment Act and building regulations.

It would also ensure council staff stop playing silly beggars with the consent process.

Until that happens KiwiBuild, KiwiBuy and KiwiBeg will be KiwiFail.

 

 

 

Quote of the day

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define. Madeleine Albright who celebrates her 81st birthday today.

May 15 in history

1252  Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorised but also limited, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

1514  Jodocus Badius Ascensius published Christiern Pedersen‘s Latin version of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, the oldest known version of that work.

1525 The battle of Frankenhausen ended the Peasants’ War.

1536  Anne Boleyn stood trial on charges of treason, adultery and incest; she was condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

1567  Mary, Queen of Scots, married  James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, her third husband.

1602  Bartholomew Gosnold became the first European to see Cape Cod.

1618 Johannes Kepler confirmed his previously rejected discovery of thethird law of planetary motion.

1648  The Treaty of Westphalia was signed.

1701  The War of the Spanish Succession began.

1718   James Puckle, a London lawyer, patented the world’s first machine gun.

1755 Laredo, Texas was established by the Spaniards.

1756 The Seven Years’ War began when Great Britain declares war on France.

1776  American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructed its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independencefrom Great Britain.

1791  Maximilien Robespierre proposed the Self-denying Ordinance.

1792 War of the First Coalition: France declaresdwar on Kingdom of Sardinia.

1793 Diego Marín Aguilera flew a glider for “about 360 meters”, at a height of 5-6 meters, during one of the first attempted flights.

1796  First Coalition: Napoleon entered Milan in triumph.

1800 George III survived two assassination attempts in one day.

1811  Paraguay declared independence from Spain.

1817  Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1836 Francis Baily observed “Baily’s beads” during an annular eclipse.

1849 Troops of the Two Sicilies took Palermo and crushed the republican government of Sicily.

1850  The Bloody Island Massacre:  a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County were slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.

1851  Rama IV was crowned King of Thailand.

1857 – Williamina Fleming, Scottish-American astronomer, was born (d. 1911).

1858 Opening of the  Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

1859 Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, was born  (d. 1906).

1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture.

1863 – Frank Hornby, English businessman and politician, who inventedMeccano, was born, (d. 1936)

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Resaca, Georgia ended.

1864  American Civil War: Battle of New Market, – students from theVirginia Military Institute fought alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1869 Woman’s suffrage:, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stantonformed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association.

1891  Rerum Novarum, the first document of the Catholic Social Teaching tradition, was published by Pope Leo XIII.

1897  The Greek army retreated with heavy losses in the Greco-Turkish War.

1901 – First conviction in New Zealand for a motoring offence: Nicholas Oates appeared in the Christchurch Magistrates Court charged with driving ‘a motor car within the city at a speed greater than four miles an hour’ (6.5 km/hr) on Lincoln Road.

1905  The Russian minelayer Amur laid a minefield about 15 miles off Port Arthur and sank Japan’s battleship Hatsuse, 15,000 tons, with 496 crew.

1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded when 110 acres (0.4 km²), in what later would become downtown, were auctioned.

1910 The last time a major earthquake happened on the Elsinore Fault Zone.

1911  The United States Supreme Court declared Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered the company to be broken up.

1918 The Finnish Civil War ended.

1919 – The Winnipeg General Strike begins. By 11:00 a.m., almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job.

1919  Greek invasion of Izmir. During the invasion, the Greek army killed or wounded 350 Turks.

1920 Wanganui mayor  Charles Mackay shot poet and returned soldier Walter D’Arcy Cresswell who alleged that Mackay had made homosexual overtures to him.

1920 Council of Lithuania adjourned as the newly elected Constituent Assembly of Lithuania met for the first time in Kaunas.

1928 Mickey Mouse premiered in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.

1929  A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio killed 123.

1932  The May 15 Incident: in an attempted Coup d’état, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi was killed.

1934 Kārlis Ulmanis established an authoritarian government in Latvia.

1935 The Moscow Metro was opened to public.

1936  Amy Johnson arrived back in England after a record-breaking return flight to Cape Town.

1937 Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, was born.

1940  World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrendered to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.

1940 – McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

1942 World War II: in the United States, a bill creating the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was signed into law.

1943 Joseph Stalin dissolved the Comintern (or Third International).

1945 World War II: The final skirmish in Europe was fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.

1948   Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invaded the territory partitioned for the Arab state by the British Mandate of Palestine  starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1948 Brian Eno, British musician and record producer, was born.

1951 The Polish cultural attache in Paris, Czesław Miłosz, asked the French government for political asylum.

1953 Mike Oldfield, British composer, was born.

1955  The Austrian Independence Treaty was signed.

1955 – The first ascent of Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain.

1957  At Malden Island  Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple. The device failed to detonate properly.

1958  The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 3.

1960  The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 4.

1962 – Lisa Curry-Kenny, Australian Ironwoman, was born.

1963 Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He beccame the first American to spend more than a day in space.

1964 – Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, was born.

1966 Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam’s ruling junta launched a military attack on the forces of General Ton That Dinh, forcing him to abandon his command.

1969 People’s Park: California Governor Ronald Reagan had an impromptu student park owned by University of California at Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.

1970  President Richard Nixon appointed Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.

1970  Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green were killed at Jackson State Universit by police during student protests.

1972  The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.

1972 Arthur Bremer shot and paralysed Alabama Governor George Wallacewhile he was campaigning to be become President.

1974  Ma’alot massacre: In an Arabterrorist attack and hostage taking at an Israeli school, 31 people were killed, including 22 schoolchildren.

1987  The Soviet Union launched the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit.

1988  Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Red Army began its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

1990 Portrait of Doctor Gachetby Vincent van Gogh was sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time.

1991 Édith Cresson became France’s first female premier.

1997 The United States government acknowledged the existence of the“Secret War” in Laos and dedicated the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other “Secret War” veterans.

2008 –  California became the second U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage after the state’s own Supreme Court ruled a previous ban unconstitutional.

2010 – Jessica Watson became the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.

2013 – An upsurge in violence in Iraq left more than 389 people dead over three days.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia