WAIRARAPA NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 55, 28 November 1907, Page 2

WAIRARAPA NOTES.

(FROM OUR SPECIAL COREESrONDINT.) The spell of fine weather has given n great impetus to shearing, A'nd sheds hare out out and are cutting out in all directions.. All over-the valley roads are mountains of the golden ileeco oil. waggons drawn. by horses' or by traction power, and all making their sevoral ways to the railway stations, whero the unloading and loading goes on from before sunrise to the dusk of the evening. Trains of long, serried, tarpaulined waggons aro-leaving the railway stations at all hours for Wellington—l 800 bales a week is about the present average .jn the Wairarapa—and the hustle of honest'industry is everywhere. So far. as the shearing- results themselves are concerned, farmers oil' the larger stations liavo. a very good run: In the past five i'.'ceks'they ■ have had practically, only. one' spell of wet weather, The clip is said'to l~e well up to the average of previous years. Mftny (if the . small farmers this,.- season have had to take,to the shears : theinsclves, owing to; the .difficulty of: getting.-men. The mail with " tho bladesis passing away before the mechanical, gonius who can' earn from'2ss. to 355. a day, and' whoso greatest exertion is . carrying tho sheep ' from tho catching pens. With fine weather, "Te Parae," practically the largest; shed in tho Wairarapa, should cut out on Saturday next. In Ekotahuna thore is displayed for sale a bundlo of pressed chaff from Melbourne. There is not a demand for the article, some residents stating that tho horses do Slot like tho, food, while the storekeeper says that the price, is prohibitive, or almost so. Some patches of Wairarapa cropping—it's' mostly patches now in the Wairarapa"— are fairly well • forward, others are verv bad. There has been one good downpour o'f rain, and some heavy dews are being experienced iti tho South \\ a.irfirapn and Masterton distncts. Tho heavy summer showers prevailing at Ekotahuna on Monday and Tuesday fell only lightly at l'ahiatua and not at :.il at .Masterton. It is liardlv possible that crops in this district will thrive without further heavy falls of rain, owing to tho act that the sun-baked lands will strangle tho new growths. '