RURAL RIDES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25306, 4 October 1947, Page 6

RURAL RIDES

Fine Dairying Performance DEVELOPING PAKIHI LAND Not all Golden Bay hill land is as poor as the average Nelson hill land, which consists mainly of hard country from which the bush has been removed, and on which there is frequently nothing but fern. One side of the Takaka Valley carries good numbers of sheep. It is thin grazing, but the farmers who graze it have mastered the art of treating it properly. It is largely limestone on this face, which lies wetland is not too broken. The largest flock about here is about 2509 ewes. Some of the flocks are Romneys and • sojne halfbreds. and many seem to be of ‘ art- -excellent type. Both breeds do moderateiy~w«ll, but require careful handling if any sort of standard is to be kept up.

One farm on the valley flats near Kotinga has done a remarkable job in bringing in pakihi country. The place is of 360 acres, of which 25 acres are heavy river flats, and 90 acres pakihi. The rest is a medium clay. It carries 700 ewes and milks 60 cows. The ewes are bought as three-year-olds, which is the age at which the hill men find it profitable to get rid of them. They are lambed twice. The 90 acres of pakihi was brought in in 1933 and 1934. It is not the worst pakihi, as it was able hi its natural state to grow manuka about 6ft high, but it was certainly a hungry piece of ground, as an undeveloped area through the fence shows. Part of it was brought in with harrows and part with discs. It was given an initial dressing of a full two tons of lime,, and has had nearly a ton every year since. It was sown to paspalum, ryegrass, and clover. The ryegrass has about gone out, but there is a good pasture of paspalum, with crested dogstail and some sweet vernal and browntop gradually encroaching. There is a little clover left. It is very good in summer and brings in the ewes and fattens a lot of lambs, but it is a sad and lifeless area in winter. The main work was done during the slump, when men were glad to get 4s a day scrub-cutting.

‘ Another interesting piece of development is being done at Rototai, close to Takaka, where a storekeeper turned farmer is improving his holding with great energy. He tackled a steep face containing about seven acres in the autumn of last year. The land lies well, but was' covered in a dense growth of promising young gorse about five feet high. The owner got a caterpillar tractor and heavy disc harrows on to it in the early autumn, worked it down, and then broadcast barley on it. He fed the barley off, and then ploughed and worked the ground thoroughly. He seeded it and now has an excellent paddock of ryegrass, white clover, subterranean clover, and cocksfoot, which will give him a most useful addition to his resources of feed. £3O an Acre The catch, of course, was the cost. He 1 kept careful records and reckons the seven acres to have cost him approximately £3O an acre. It was a question of letting a good piece of land lie waste or spending the money to bring it in. He considers it to have been well worth while, and viewed as an addition to the national production, it certainly was well worth while.

The best indication of the kindness of - nature to the Golden Bay district is contained in the record of the Golden Bay Dairy Factory Co., at Takaka. in the old days, when factories competed at the winter shows, Golden Bay butter was a frequent holder of the New Zea'and championship, in spite of changes in the management. The company has been able to attract excellent managers from its earliest times, but the consistently good record says much for the assistance of nature. The figures speak well. The Golden Bay average is about eight cows to the ton of butter. Ten cows are considered reasonably good going in most Nonth Island districts. The grading last year averaged 94.02 points for butter and the cream graded finest totalled 95.5 per cent., though about 25 per cent, of the factory supply is "billycan supply.” Nearly everyone near Takaka keeps a cow or two, or a small herd, and sends cream to the factory, from which total production is' about 700 tons a year. Another 300 tons or so is produced from the highly efficient Collingwood factory. Figures for the whole of the supplying herds give an average of 2041 b of fat a cow. For the 60 or so tested herds, the average was 2531 b a head last year. Individual performances were in some cases excellent, and here are a few, picked at random from the company’s records: 55 cows averaging 3331 b, 12 Cows returning 50001 b last year, 30 cows giving 3701 b for the Season, 80 cows giving 3201 b for the season, and so on. Collingwood is surely among the dreariest of New Zealand towns, reached after a drive through miles of pakihi flats, and hills covered with hakea as well as fern, but the river valleys again produce remarkable quantities of butter-fat. A typical farm is one near Aorere, of 68 acres, carrying 40 pedigree Jerseys and producing about 12,0001 b of fat. The tally was down last season, with the dry weather, but normally this part of Nelson is far from dry. The hills to the west squeeze out the moisture from the nor’-westers, and 60 to 80 inches a year is the normal thing.

Argument with Bull This farmer, incidentally, has the misfortune to be with one of his bulls. He is the only one of the four people about the place so favoured, and is unable to account for it. Whatever the cause, he was unlucky enough to have the bull catch him unawares one day last winter, and toss him twice. The second throw landed him in a ditch, along which he was able to crawl out of the paddock. He was in hospital for a time with a bad gash in his leg, and was pretty badly shaken up. The bull still does net think he has had enough, and the. bull and the boss now watch each other like hawks. In this district is a farm which is a monument to official ineptitude. The owner took the place over from his father and was farming in a most progressive way. His corner of the valr ley, right under the hills, has a rainfall even heavier that of most of the area, and the land needs a lot of top-dressing. His development was done mainly with basic slag. He used very little super and was getting really good results from the slag on old stands of grass. When rationing came in 'during

the war he found himself cut off from all supplies of fertiliser. The official answer was that he had used slag, and as slag was not within the regulations he could not get superphosphate as a substitute. After taking the case to the local Department of Agriculture and finally right up to the Minister, he was at last offered three bags of superphosphate. Quite understandably. he refused what he thought was a somewhat cynical joke, and for five

years has carried on without super. The farm is running down for want of manure. The owner tried reseeding worn-out pastures with costly pedigree grasses, but, even with tfae good strains, only made bad worse. The place now has the distinction of having by far the largest phosphate deficiency of any land ever tested for phosphates at the Lincoln College laboratories. It is difficult to find words to describe adequately such a situation at a time when every pound of butter-fat is so badly wanted. Already thousands of pounds of fat have been lost, and it will be years before production can be fully recovered. Golden Bay can stand a great deal of development yet, but it must have the labour to do it. Young men are leaving the district,, and a number of older men have done well enough to be able

to Jeave further development alone. That is not to say that development is neglected. A great deal of good farming may be seen along with less good, and farmers are all in good heart, there as in most other districts. Takaka Hill is blamed by some of the old hands for their lack of enterprise. Everything has to go over the hill to Nelson, they say, and Nelson takes a cut before it gets out into the world. The other side of the picture is that Golden Bay has an ideal climate for dairying. There is none better tn New Zealand, and the figures for production from Golden Bay farms are not surpassed anywhere in New Zealand. A good sign is that young men are coming in over the hill to replace those that leave. There are great opportunities for a young man with the will to break a place in for himself. One young man from Southland who obtained rehabilitation money to buy 68 acres two years ago in East Takaka is enthusiastic about hus prospects. He is milking 45 cows and turning off a useful number of pigs from his fine river flats We stood at the edge of a magnificent seven-acre patch of virgin bush alongside his homestead and waited for a warm shower of-fine rain to ease off. “Look at it.” he said. “Butter-fat falling from the sky. All you have to do is give the cows an opportunity to lick it off the grass.” (Concluded.)