A harvest of farmers

I watched Heston Blumental’s “Feasts” series recently and was surprised to learn that the lamprey fish is still being caught and eaten in fair sized quantities by Latvians. The lamprey was an ‘olde English’ delicacy though given it is an ugly sucker mouthed eel like fish it is hard to see why. Latvians seem to eat it washed down with fruit brandy in large quantities. Henry I of England died in 1135 from blood poisoning after eating too many lampreys. Henry I also had 20 acknowledged illegitimate children and was buried at Reading Abbey so perhaps he had it coming to him.

Pre Heston all I knew about lampreys that the collective noun for a group of lampreys was a ‘surfeit’ (because of poor Henry I) and the title of a detective novel by Kiwi Ngaio Marsh. Marsh wrote 32 detective novels between 1934 and 1982 and ‘A Surfeit of Lampreys’ was published in 1941. Sadly I have read none of them although I have the SofL somewhere at home in its original Penguin detective ‘green’.

Still it started me thinking about collective nouns and not the usual flock (sheep), herd (cows) or school (fish) nor even a pride (lions), murder (crows) or mob (kangaroos) but the really obscure, funny or made up collective nouns.

Here’s a small sample:

A pitying of doves

A band of jays

A plump of moorhen

A parliament of owls

A company of parrots

An unkindness of ravens

A host of sparrows

A cloud of bats

A coalition of cheetahs

A skulk of foxes

A leash of greyhounds

A bloat of hippopotami

A fall of lambs

A richesse of pine martens

A prickle of porcupines or echidnas

A sneak of weasels

A stuck of jellyfish

A glide of flying fish

An army of frogs

A shrivel of critics

A body of pathologists

A palette of artists

A box of cricketers

A break of winds

A jam of tarts

A shower of meteorologists

A harvest of farmers

The Big Things in Life

You would think that the “Big Thing” phenomenon would be American through and through but curiously it seems very Australian. Originally built as tourist attractions or as advertising for a regional product they have become anachronistic and, frankly, a little tawdry. Amazingly there are over 145 big items in Australia, that is, 7 big things for every 1 million Australians. Quite bizarre isn’t it?

Stranger still, I have seen quite a few and after researching the topic a little further discovered I had seen a few more that I had never realised were “big”!

So, here is a list of my sightings; Cheese (Bodalla), Apple (Yerrinbool), Pavlova (Marulan), Banana (Coffs Harbour), Merino (Goulburn, of course, and in its present and old locations), Trout (Adaminiby), Pineapple (Gympie), Barramundi (Cairns), Bottles (Mangrove Mountain), Boot (really?) (Rozelle), Dinosaur (Diplodocus?) (Somersby), Prawn (Ballina), Shell (Tewantin), Mushroom (Belconnen) and, my favourite, the big potato at Robertson in the Southern Highlands.

For years I had driven past this monument to local agricultural business and thought it was a bus shelter or scout hut that the local town planner had allowed to be built because he or she had been having a very bad day , had been drinking or had a very special and peculiar sense of humour.

I had thought maybe it was a ‘big’ something but I was leaning toward the ‘big turd’ rather than potato. I wonder whether there is a ‘big turd’ somewhere in Australia? Perhaps on Pooh Corner at Dunedoo? The town exists. I made Pooh Corner up though it would be nice if the council did rename a street corner after Winnie, whose middle name is “the”….

The problem with the big ‘potato’ is that brown, stippled and moulded concrete creates a visual ambiguity and I am sure that I was not alone in my view. One thing I will say though is that I have never seen one speck of graffiti on this monument to carbohydrate goodness. At least Robertsonians have civic pride if dubious taste in public sculpture.

November 14th Sale coming soon!

Well the sale date is looming large. We have drafted out the top 45 rams and they are now enjoying the oats and alfalfa at Logancrest for a few weeks to get them in top condition and weight. While the feed is better the longer grass and recent rain (very welcome though it is) have caused some foot scour. Easily treated but not what you want a few weeks out from the sale. Next job is to get them weighed and drafted one to forty so they can be tagged and the catalogue completed ready for the big day.

All the advertising is booked so there will be advertisements and editorials in the Crookwell Gazette, Town & Country and The Land. Maybe there is a touch too much but we'd rather people knew the sale was on than forget about it. Anecdotally quite a bit of interest again so we can't wait to see what Osiris and Hermes first progeny fetch at auction.

See you there!

Cucina povere!!

Under the shearing shed there was a large clump of stinging nettles. We don't have much of it at the farm so strangely enough it was an exciting find. Picking the leaves with gloves on and using BBQ tongs was easy enough and no stings which is a first.

Nettles can be eaten when they're young, as is done in many parts of Europe. Nettles are high in nutrients such iron, magnesium and nitrogen. Cooking or drying neutralises the toxic components, and nettles can be used as a tea or in soup, blanched for a salad or even added to pizza. We cooked the leaves with some young spinach and beetroot leaves and tomato sugo and served with pasta. Delicious and free!! 

"Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica and the closely related Urtica urens) has a long medicinal history. In medieval Europe, it was used as a diuretic (to rid the body of excess water) and to treat joint pain.

Stinging nettle has fine hairs on the leaves and stems that contain irritating chemicals, which are released when the plant comes in contact with the skin. The hairs, or spines, of the stinging nettle are normally very painful to the touch. When they come into contact with a painful area of the body, however, they can actually decrease the original pain. Scientists think nettle does this by reducing levels of inflammatory chemicals in the body, and by interfering with the way the body transmits pain signals.

General Uses

Stinging nettle has been used for hundreds of years to treat painful muscles and joints, eczema, arthritis, gout, and anemia. Today, many people use it to treat urinary problems during the early stages of an enlarged prostate (called benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH), for urinary tract infections, for hay fever (allergic rhinitis), or in compresses or creams for treating joint pain, sprains and strains, tendonitis, and insect bites." from the University of Maryland Medical Centre website

Moving Imagery

Riverline pause 2011 by Kaye Mahoney

Kaye Mahoney: Moving Imagery

6 - 29 October 2011 at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery

"Kaye Mahoney’s Moving Imagery presents her vision of the timeless, infinite and energetic possibilities of worlds we inhabit, discover or create.  Drawing from both musical and visual compositional strategies to create images that allude to a sight/sound synesthesia, Moving Imagery is in tune with much that is embedded at a fundamental level in nature, physics and biology, centering on consciousness and reflection and evoking the elemental phenomena of life: air, water, sound, light and energy.  The show includes major works on canvas, seminal and current works on Perspex and video, and an installation titled “Library of Human/Nature.

Opening Saturday 8 October @ 2pm by Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA Floor Talk Thursday 13 October @ 12.30pm  by Kaye Mahoney"

Strongly urge everyone to get along to the GRAG to see Kaye's new show - beautiful and moving images. I'll be there for the floor talk and will add some more notes after that.

  
 

Marking Lambs....all day thankfully!

Since posting about our lambing strategy it has been a very busy September up to two days ago when we marked all our new lamb arrivals. From 114 Border Leicester ewes we marked 160 lambs, 80 ewes and 80 rams. There are still a couple of ewes yet to lamb.

It is an outstanding result - lambing percentage of 140% as predicted and our best season yet.

The 49 Merino ewes produced 33 lambs, 17 rams and 16 first cross ewes. About half a dozen yet to lamb so we will get about 80% which is not too bad. Others in our area have fared less well this year. We probably ensured the Border Leicesters had the better paddocks, greater protection and more hands-on attention. Certainly the alpacas Zing and Zeno and the Foxlights helped.

The Borders are out on the crop to get as good a start as possible. The flock rams to be sold November 14th (is it really that soon?) are on the other crop and will get a spell on the lucerne prior to moving to Logancrest for a month of pre sale acclimatisation. They will get ELMS vitamin licks and as much oats and clover as they can eat. 

We averaged 74kg per ram last year and we should better that this year as they are growing fast as you can see below.

Lots to organise before the sale and we hope to equal or better last year's success.

The Shearer's Life

I would recommend reading "The Shearer's Motel" by Roger MacDonald for an account of how tough the shearer's job really is. Also Ray Sherman's "The Shearing Life in Australia" for some great stories and photographs. I have written about shearing before but there was an interesting front page article in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year.

The SMH article by Debra Jopson highlighted the toughness of the job and the nationwide shortage of good shearers. In 2006 the census counted only 4,173 shearers and they have to shear about 70 million sheep in a year - that's almost 17,000 each and at $2.50 a sheep makes $42,500 income per annum. Not much for some of the fittest athletes in the world. Of course the best shearers will earn $80 - 100,000 pa and good on them!

The Dubbo TAFE trainer observed that shearers now do warm up and down exercises and have training regimes to protect against injuries and prolong their careers. I can see the day when our local shearers are regular visitors to our planned yoga studio to learn some techniques to improve their core strength and flexibility and some ways to destress that don't involve a hundred beers. Not such a stretch when you consider most of the football players they watch every weekend are probably already using yoga in their training regimes.

Perhaps we will open the first yoga retreat in the Goulburn area and have a shearer's night once a month with prana, kirtan, asana, mudra and meditation followed by light beers and karma yoga in the shearing shed?

Comic Alphabets

Always wanted to fill in the gaps and Miles Kingston already had in The Independent, January 1999.

A. Not much variation here. Everyone liked " 'Ay for 'Orses" except for a brave few who preferred "Ava Gardner".

B. "Beef or mutton" was the clear favourite here. Nobody liked my "beef or lamb", thinking it was far too modern. Other ideas which cropped up were "Beaverbrook", "bee for honey", "beef or mince", "before my time" and "B for Hugo". Before you go, I guess. I did, however, invent one myself here, which I was very proud of. "B for castle". Get it? "Belvoir Castle". Well, never mind.

C. Nobody liked my "Cephos Salt" either. The clear leader was "Seaforth Highlanders", though "C for yourself" was quite popular.

D. I couldn't detect a clear swing here. I was offered Differential, Deferential, D for Kate, Deaf or dumb, D for glory, Defer Payments, and Dee for Salmon. Several people insisted that Deaf or dumb was all right, because "deaf" was pronounced "deef" in the North-east, and I bet it is.

E. Eve or Adam, Eva Bartok, 'Eave a brick, Ether gas, Evolution, Eva Peron, Eva Braun, Eave oh, my hearties. I am not sure I like any of them terrifically, but there they are.

F. "Effervescence" seemed the clear favourite, though "efflorescence" cropped up quite a lot. "F for lasting" was suggested. So was "F for green", which I didn't understand until I spoke it out loud and got "evergreen".

G. Apparently, quite a lot of your parents got round the letter G by using it as a mild expletive. "Gee, for Gosh sake!", "Gee, forget it!", "Gee for crying out loud!" were all popular. Clapham and Dwyer's version, it seems, was "G for y Toye" which is incomprehensible till you learn that Geoffrey Toye was an impresario of the time. Still pretty feeble, though. The best one by far, as most of you agreed was "G for police" (Chief of Police). One or two tried "Jeefer Screepers". I wish you hadn't.

H. A lot of versions of the letter H turned on the fact that "aitch" sounds like "age". So I was offered "H for consent", "H for retirement", and so on. The best of these, possibly, was "H for beauty". Other versions heard H more like "ache" or "itch". Mr Stabb wrote from Cornwall to say that in a Cornish accent "Aitch for Scraitching" was quite all right. But I think the best was "H for Himself" (occasionally followed by "and run like mad!").

I. Ivor Emmanuel. Ivor Cutler. Ivor Novello. I for looting (high-falutin). I for an eye. I for a pretty girl.

J. J is just about the only letter on which everyone agrees, apart from X: Jaffa oranges.

K. From the days when "kaffir" was a common word, plenty of people remember being told that it was K for kraal, K for farmer, and so on. There was also the oddly English pronunciation of "cafe" as "kafe", hence K for restaurant. The most popular by far was K for answers (Kay Francis, a once famous film actress of whom I had never heard).

L. Most of us prefer L for Leather but there is also L for goblin (elf or goblin), L for Romeo and L for happiness. (How about L for Beta Gamma Delta?)

M. Emphasis or Emphasise is the clear favourite. I was also offered M forever blowing bubbles, which is novel; Emphysema, which is clever; and M for cream sherry, which is puzzling till you remember Emva was a make of sherry. Or was it Enva? In which case it should be in...

N. Lots here. Information. Envelope. N for eggs. N for cement (enforcement). Enfilading. N for a penny. N for no (inferno). I think the leader was the old N for a dig (infra dig). I did manage to think of a new one myself here, which was Enver Hoxha, but somebody else thought of that as well. And in his Comic Alphabets book, Eric Partridge reveals that the idea was thought of long ago, in Enver Pasha or Enver Bey, the once-famous leader of the Young Turks.

O. O for the wings of a dove. O for a muse of fire. O for a pint. O for a pee. O for the rainbow. O for the garden wall. O for my shoulder. O for seas. O for board. O for my dead body. O for the sea to Skye. O for coat.

P. P for relief was the clear winner, ahead of P for the doctor, P for comfort, P for whistle, P for Daddy and P for a penny. The cleverest came from Rosemary Thornton who said that her father taught her P for church because Peover Church near Knutsford in Cheshire is actually pronounced that way.

Q. Amazing what people have queued for in the past. I was given Q for rations, Q for fish and chips, Q for tickets, Q for the 1/9s, Q for bananas, Q for a bus, and - more modern - Q for clubbing. But the commonest was Q for everything. Those who heard it as "cue" gave me Q for billiards and Q for a song.

R. R for mo, R for Askey, R for English, R for bitter. That was it. No upmarket ones at all. No R for Miller, R for Bryant, R for Quiller Couch or even R for sea clerk.

S. S for you, S for example were the most common, but people remembered all the ones commemorating Esthers: S for Williams, S for Ralston, S for Rantzen, S for McCracken (who she?), S for Waters (who she too?) and S for Ofarim.

T. Everyone said T for two, except the few who said T for mouf and T for dentures.

U. U for me, U for nerve, U for got, U for mism, U for Pendragon. I liked Richard Stamp's U for today (youth of today!) and I was glad to learn that U for films refers to a defunct German film company called UFA Films.

V. V for la France, l'amour, Zapata, Espana and la difference.

W. Nobody was very happy with W, but most settled for Double You for a Shilling, or W for a Quid.

X. X for breakfast was universally liked.

Y. Y for goodness sake was popular. Less so was Y for runts (Y-fronts). But most people went for the "Wife or..." pattern. Y for husband, Y for mistress, and even Y for secretary and Y for partner. A couple of lone cockney voices suggested Y for thin and Y for communion biscuits.

Z. A difficult letter to end on. Z for breeze (zephyr breeze) was the commonest, even if we all felt it was feeble. Occasional references to old Zephyr cars, such as Z for Six, and Z for Zodiac, and two brave suggestions of Zeffirelli. Z for effect, Z someone. Two people said they had been told Z the raven and didn't know why. Sounds like the old Edgar Allan Poe line "Quoth the raven" to me...

Lambing Strategy

With the lambing season almost upon us it is critical that we make the right choices now to maximise our lambing percentages. We have 128 Border Leicester ewes in lamb; 67 twins, 47 single and up to 14 dry giving us a starting percentage of 141. We also have 49 of 61 maiden Merino ewes in lamb so we are going to busy next month.

Having had 5 centimetres of snow here in late June we are hoping that the weather is milder and kinder. Our first choice is which ewes to put in which paddock. We review food availability, shelter, aspect and accessibility. We try to avoid having too many ewes expecting twins in a paddock that is too small or too exposed. A neighbour lost 40% of his lambs born in the late June cold snap partly due to the sub-zero temperatures but also because the ewes rejected the second twin.

The NSW DPI recommends about 18 ewes/hectare and a paddock that can provide 1 MT Dry Matter/ha for single and 1.2 MT DM/ha for twin bearing ewes. With the season we are having and with crops of alfalfa and oats/turnips we can certainly provide that.

Newborn lambs have very limited fat reserves and a high surface area to mass ratio making them highly susceptible to chill stress. We have windrowed fallen timber to provide shelter and the twin bearing ewes will go into the paddock with north and easterly aspects. In spring we will start planting more trees for shelter and carbon sequestration.

We will also trial the Foxlight product that won the ABC New Inventors show a while back this year. The battery operated lights flash randomly from dusk to dawn to mimic a person shining a torch around the paddock. The fox believes there are people about and is diverted away from the lambs. Usually we bait for foxes but this year a combination of the lights, alpaca and human hair and urine bags (!!) will do the trick without burying highly toxic chemical laden chicken heads. 

Let's hope that it is a good season and we can maintain a 125+ percentage.

MLA Forecasts

Released in February the Meat and Livestock Association's forecasts make pleasant reading for sheep producers. With global lamb supplies tight the price outlook, at least for the first half of 2011, remains good. Prices in 2010 were 14% up on 2009 and the first cross ewe price in 2011 almost reached $360! With wool and skin prices also improving it bodes well for this year and is an opportunity to put some cash away in reserve.

Chart from "Weekly Times" Dec 23 2010

The Australian flock size will increase from the 67.7 million head in June 2010, probably to a touch over 69 million. The breeding ewe flock in June 2010 was 41.3 million so it has been the wool producing wethers that have declined most. This will be the first time since the 1990s where the flock size has been rebuilding.

For us the decision was whether to buy FX ewe lambs and hold for a year or to buy some Merino ewes and produce our own lambs. A difficult choice given the prices but we were lucky enough to source some good Merinos locally at the right price. It means that our sale in November will only be Border Leicester flock rams but it was the right choice.

The problem with high prices is that they will fall. Butchers and lamb processors are almost break even on a $230 lamb so if they are paying more it is because they are (super) heavyweight stock. We don't buy lamb from the supermarkets but the prices are extraordinary. It all feels to me like the prices are maxing out.
As an aside the market dominance of Coles and Woolworths is a major concern as they drive down for eggs, milk and other foods. As they are profit driven they don't care if they put producers to the wall as they will simply import the foodstuffs from overseas producers like Chile.

Time for some diversity (garlic, studio art glass and so on) and to stick with the best option for our local conditions - Border Leicesters and Merinos.

Still here!!

Despite the almost six month absence in entries we are still here and everything is going well.
Part of the delay was a 4 week holiday in Europe where we stayed in Paris, Pau, Barcelona, Florence, Rome, Venice and Cambridge. We had a great time and more on the trip at a later date. We are still going through the thousands of photographs that digital cameras now permit. We missed the Australian summer and consequently the flash floods. While not needing full replacement there is a ton of work to do in the paddocks that have river frontage. It wasn't the rising waters that caused the damage as the Tarlo River broke its banks but the flow of water back with all the debris.

At least now we have a tractor - the mighty Ford CY, a 75 horse power beast that we bought second hand. It is in great condition for a thirty five year old machine and will give us many years of use once we fix the alternator, lights, hydraulics and minor oil leaks!

Since coming back from Europe we have added 80 Merino ewes to the Border leicester Stud flock with the intention of producing Daramalan First Cross Ewes, drenched and injected all stock against Barber's Pole Worm and sown a mixture of Cocksfoot and Turnips on 30 acres. The alfalfa is doing really well despite the waterlogging and should give us feed for the next five years if we manage it correctly.

Next jobs are fence repairs, laying barbed wire strands to keep the Border Leicesters in their paddocks, ploughing up the house paddock, laying irrigation pipes in the same paddock and then planting it out. We will have an orchard, grape vines, olives and vegetables so that we move to self sufficiency. 

Better get onto it so back soon!!