Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.
My favourite holiday is Daylight Savings Time when we get an extra hour of sleep.
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Homepaddock 
This week we celebrated the Balance Farm Environment Awards Wellington Regional final in the Carterton events centre. Full marks to Palliser Ridge sheep and beef farm operation for taking out the regional winners winning spot.
What I want to comment about was the opportunity for two of our emerging local leaders who recounted their start in agriculture. Both came from urban backgrounds and both had the opportunity to attend the Taratahi Ag training Centre near Masterton. Sam Vivian-Greer and Kate Robinson gave wonderful accounts of their forays into agriculture and the opportunities that Taratahi had afforded them.
We had one Poli in the audience, Alastair Scott, the other two were absent (Kieran McAnullty and Ron Mark).
Over the period of the closure of TATC the district saw very little fight by any of these 3 to retain what we had. If these two had the chance to present in the way that they did then there may have been considerably more spine to fight for what has now been taken away from the region and in fact NZ.
Dedicated personnel previously employed at TATC have now largely found other employment and business options and will therefore be lost to the system, if in fact it is “reborn” in one form or another.
What a travesty.
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