Canterbury A&P Show 2012

Ok I admit I spent the whole day at the Canterbury A&P Show calling it

a Royal Show and it wasn't.

That's awkward when you've used that hashtag on instagram.

I forget about the transferability of the Royal Show title.

Anyway it was the 150th Canterbury A&P Show this year,

so I decided to bestow my presence on it.

Mine and Jolly Hockeysticks Jo's.

JHJ came down from Wellington for the occasion

after I whined that I have never been to the Show

because everyone I know is busy doing things there,

like showing their animals and

I don't have anyone to hang out with.

Oh the tragedy of me missing out on the A&P Show.

(I missed out on the Ellesmere A&P Show cause I was in Tonga

but it got rained out big time so I would have stayed in bed anyway).

JHJ and I charmed our way into the members tent for

a wee sit down and a bevy at the end of the day,

hence the lovely red sash on the table.

Not all tables at the Show are equal.

In fact I'm not sure there were any tables other than in the member's tent.

To be fair security was a Lions volunteer.

Plus I used my 'connections' to get in and  the challenge was minimal.

My 'connnections' seemed to think this was some sort feat.

Little do they know I can charm my way into anything.

So this year there were more stock entries than usual.

This allowed me to indulge my self indulgent affection of Romney sheep.

Ignore that grumpy sheep man in the background.

He was probably worried I was rustling his bebes.

That's a big issue in our rural sector.

Seriously, every year there are cars found stuffed to the gills with sheep

cause some hungry bogan decided to grab a few on his way past.

These are the same two sheep.

Let's face it sheep pretty much look the same.

Be honest, you wouldn't have known the difference if I hadn't told you.

Only those of us who spend great amounts of time with them

can tell the difference.

Very cute though, don't cha think?

Yes?

Good we can move on to my second favourite breed.

Merino.

This boy is the Champion Poll Merino Ram (medium).

I did start looking up who owned him but the list was epic

and I only made it through  to the Saddle Hunters (not sheep) before I gave up.

He was just hanging out at the Show,

kind like I was but he was being judged and I wasn't.

At least as far as I know.

Just resting his head,

getting lots of lovely nose rubs on his velvety muzzle.

His grumpy, head butting neighbour was in a foul mood and

just tried to smash any hand that came his way.

Bet that gave the farmers a bunch to laugh about.

Poll means no horns by the way.

Sheep are my favourite animal.

What other animal can get so cute and so useful?

All I can say is yum!

Hawai'ian sheep

The Beatons, who generously hosted half of our ten students

also had us help with a little bit of farmwork.

The Beaton's had recently imported a slew of ewes from California.

Bloodlines on the island can get a little concentrated

and bringing new bloodlines from the mainland

can help but there is a serious quarantine process to follow.

These ewes had been having alone time

for 30 days before we arrived.

Now it was time take some bloods off them

and see which ones were pregnant.

Jill Beaton is the sheep person on the farm.

These are her babies.

Our kids are pretty used to farm work

being off farms and all.

They are also well used to be given jobs,

handling animals and getting hands dirty.

Johanna was the queen of the sheep pen.

Let's note something very interesting here.

In New Zealand farmers wear short shorts,

often all year round.

If they get cold they wear thermal leggings under their short shorts.

The reason for this is simply that long pants - jeans, moleskins, whatever

get wet easily not mention really dirty.

Skin however does not.

Skin you can dry off and magically you are all set to go again.

There is no need to wear long pants cause

there is nothing worse than trugging around in wet clothes

so in NZ less is more helpful.

Just saying.

You can spot the difference between the Kiwis and

the Hawaiians easily by leg wear.

The kids are used to working like this in all weathers.

Nicola out all of us is probably the most used to inclement weather

coming from Wallacetown, Southland.

The Beaton's place is high above Paauilo.

Up in the clouds mostly.

At the moment they are in extreme drought

so any moisture from the air is fab.

But just to repeat Hawaii is a temperate climate

and in the places we spent much of our time it was cool.

And damp.

Not really wet, just incisively damp

in the most pleasant of ways of course.

Hawai'i is very pleasant.

Tissa in charge of the chalk and something else.

Steph and Nic recording which sheep had what done.

Tissa having a whale of a time handling the ewes.

Kids everywhere doing a good job

of wrangling ewes and worming them

then letting the adults take the blood

which was handed to me to collect and record.

Until it got too wet and my illegible writing became truly unreadable.

Thomas catching a ewe ready have her jugular vein relieved of some blood.

Then we all jumped on an ATV

and raced back to the ranch house for a towel down

(remember theres a drought and limited water so no showers)

before relaxing on the couch.

These are their normal faces.

Seriously.



On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.

up a flipping mountain

I am constantly being told off

when I say I'm going

up to Central Otago.

Central is south of here,

south of most places really

but Central Otago is up in the mountains.

So I say UP.

Saturday was busy at Nessie and Ben's house.

Good busy though.

My idea of a good holiday is to be hummingly busy

with jobs that are all care and no responsibility

and that's what Nessie organised for me all day.

First there was lambies to move across the road to greener pastures.

So we wandered over to the paddocks with the 900 lambies

I wandered, Ben and Ness walked purposefully

with working dogs in tow.

Then Ben gave me instructions

which included puzzled looks from him when I asked

why I needed to stand in a meadow.

Once he explained there was a bridge (on the left)

and the 900 lambs would come down the little hill (on the right)

and my job was to make sure they don't stray/stampede on to the meadow.

900 lambs don't look like that many really.

But this is what happened to the few that didn't follow instructions

from the dogs,

who didn't follow the instructions from Ness.

They all got out

mostly with Nessie's help,

some exhausted.

Bugger lifting lambs out of the stream though.

That's super human.

My job was to bring over the ute

to drive the tired lambs over the way.

We took them across the road.

My job was to slow the 100 kms per hour vehicles down

so they could not plough into the sheep

and put every one's hard work to naught

(I include myself in the everyone there).

Across the road,

over the shaky bridge,

up the dirt road,

hang a left,

along the farm track,

that's Ben in the distance leading the way,

with Nessie whistling directing the dogs,

and me rolling along in the ute supa slow

with the tired lambies on the back

now standing up and looking much more perky

after their wool has dried out a little

and their snozzhes have emptied of the water they inhaled.

Then into the fresh, green grass

to get good and fat for the winter.

Ben's mum was telling me she reckons they'll have

six foot deep snow soon enough.

It's a big sky in Manuherikia Valley

lots of land to cover with six feet deep of snow.

This is all Ben and Nessie's land

and that's just the other side of the river.

This is their backyard with the shearing shed

aka emergency party palace.

It's surrounded with stone walls just like in Scotland

where the Hore's came from a hundred and fifty or so years ago.

The canny bastards were miners who got themselves a couple of grazing leases

and have turned that into thriving farms

across the South Island.

There's lots of Hores down here and up there.
Ben and Ness own up to the top of the range
and along even more.
The Hore's have worked hard for generations to build Blackstone Hill Station.

 After sheep shifting Ness and I spent the rest of the day
in the kitchen.
Only I was barefoot and neither of us, pregnant.

We celebrated Ness's 30th birthday
alongside Ben's brother Steve's 30th too.
The party was in an old stone cookhouse,
with a huge fireplace,
a merino lamb on a spit and
lots of family and friends.

I had a good time talking with Bevan,
catching up with his romance (going well)
and his business (winding up-ish).
Ben and I discussed the isolating damage facebook
does to our young rural people.
And why I'm not married,
That was a long discussion.

I had a great weekend.
Enough rest, enough work, enough friends.
Perfect.

Because it's important

At the World Young Shepherd Challenge

We

(and you know by we I don't mean me)

had a variety of modules to test the young shepherds on.

There was cut ID, wool ID, equipment ID, market ID

and our favourite.....

organ ID!

Let's see if you can tell what sheep organs these might be

*hint - we have them too

 Well I don't have any of these.

Aaron Cudden only has one

and Errol Flynn, that great shepherd of the Outback

removed them in the traditional way,

with his teeth.

And I met Kate from Oz while overseeing this module,

who has actually done that.

I could imagine her doing that.

This is just gross and

I'm glad I wasn't the one who had to put that clip on it.

This handy organ helps digest fat.

I suspect mine isn't working to it's full potential.

This blob looked like it was going to escape of the plate

and was the stinkiest of them all.

I kept expecting it to move somehow.

Also helps with digestion,

I'm beginning to suspect most organs do.

And is commonly digested by grandparents

along with other delectable body parts such as tripe.

This one looks pretty healthy.

I just wikied this organ and let's just say

I'm not anymore enlightened than I was before.

This one is full of love and can make your pulse race.

My favourite organ photo.

I do have to say I like eating these with bacon

or in a pie with steak.

Usually you have two and recently Jonah Lomu

ended up back in hospital cause his replacement one isn't working to well.

Which leads me to my pitch

organ donation is really important....

It's a moral choice for each of us

and can be emotive

but make your choice now and let it be known.

Not just on your drivers licence but

also tell your family if you want to donate.

Organs are only viable for a short period of time.

For more info go here to Organ Donation NZ

And don't forget to donate blood too.

It saved my dad's life but not how you think......



Shepherd's Sprint

Ok Hamish and Peter won.

Yay New Zealand!

The Shepherd's Sprint is an obstacle course race

that the shepherds did in their national pairs

Here's Northern Ireland

with Thomas in front.
I sat with Thomas at the Awards Dinner a few days after this
and he was a little ill from hanging out with our North Otago Young Farmers.
It must have playing touch rugby then having a drink.
Apparently running and beer don't always mix too well.

The first activity in the Shepherd's Sprint
was to race the other 10 teams

in setting up a break and then

 to put together a child size wheelbarrow.

Once the wheelbarrow was made

they need to load a little, tiny toy sheep in it.

This had to stay with the team the whole time.

Below these guys are running put a litre of water in their bucket

to make a litre of milk from New Zealand's

premier export product....

milk powder!

Then they needed to up the milk

and do the killer activity.....

eat three wheatbix.

One and a half each of dry, dry wheatbix.

Here's Kelsey from Montana

doing it the wrong way.

Here's the tip,

chuck the wheatbix in the milk, mix it up, let it soak a bit

and then eat the mooshy mash of wheatbix.

Gross!

The team then ran like the clappers

with their wee red wheelbarrow and pet lambie lamb

to a pen where they needed to grab a sheep

(mean to be a ram for reasons to be revealed shortly)

and put a ram harness on one sheep.

(see)

Goo Scootlan!

Then, taking their little barrow the teams

 one team member needed to beat cream with a whisk,

hold it over their head to check whippyness

(they all did alright)

decorate a mini-pav with cream and kiwifruit and eat it

quick as they can.

Then collect up the potatoes,

jam them in a bag,

sew it up,

the bag not the race

though the kiwis did have it sewn up.

More running,

collecting up the standards they set up at the beginning of the race 

USA having lots of fun.

Uruguay running like a slow breeze.

Here's my team France.

I was dragged into being a judge for the Sprint.

I'd already judged poor old Ireland through two modules

because I am the expert in ATV safety and sheep organs y'know.

Ireland got to run through the modules that morning

because bad, bad Qantas made them a day late.

Beniot, closest, and the other guy whose names slips my mind

spoke no English which is a slight issue cause we don't speak French.

Luckily I had a paddle with a red side and a green side

so they knew when they could move on from each activity in the Sprint.

Ok I lie, they just moved on anyway.

I had their translator, their industry rep and some other woman,

who may have been a reporter

on the paddock 'helping' the team.

I even paddled the bottom of the industry rep and

booted him off the field for 'helping' too much.

Not that he listened to me.

He spoke English so he knew, little monkey.

Anyway France came fifth

which was an excellent placing.

A good day with the shepherds at the

World Young Shepherd's Challenge.

Next post will be all about the afternoon

at Totata Estate.

Ah the suspense will kill you....

World Young Shepherd's Challenge

In Oamaru this past week,

it's been all on for the

young shepherd's of the world

who have been competing in the

World Young Shepherd's Challenge.

First came Digger's sheep

Bevan and Rosie welcomed them.

Look how happy they were to be out of that stinky truck.

And even more sheep.

These ones are from Totara Estate.

In the middle of these sheep

is a lazy, dopey merino

who wouldn't stand for me to take his photo.

Below is Rozzy, Rosie and Duncy Monkey,



Rozzy is responsible for pulling the Challenge together for

Beef+LambNZ

Rosie is the crazy brains behind most of the modules,

Duncy is the brawn

(those bales of straw had to get there somehow).

Then the shepherd's themselves arrived.

Australia, Wales, Scotland, Uruguay, Argentina,

USA, England, Northern Ireland, France and New Zealand

Ireland got caught up in the Qantas strike

so didn't arrive until the end of the first day.

22 competitors from countries that play rugby.

All there to win the inaugural

World Young Shepherd's Challenge

thanks to French sheep breeders and

New Zealand trade ambassadors who sat around

have a few red wines coming up with a cunning plan

for the French to come to New Zealand....

to see our sheep.

Lucky and Aunty Shirley ready to work hard.

We wore white shirts,

the competitors wore black.

Helper boys wearing what they arrived in...

And did the haka in their gumboots.

It was perfect.

Waitaki Boys' High Young Farmers

welcomed us with their school haka.

A sterling job they did
all day helping us and

watching the big boys compete.

An awesome welcome!