BALL ROAD NOTES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 11 August 1914, Page 4

BALL ROAD NOTES.

(By Cosmo.)

The dairy season just closed has proved on the whole one of the best on record. But it has also proved how foolish it is to turn down big offers at the beginning of a season. For instance, 6^d was freely offered, and although that meant a pay-out of Is 3d for butter fat, men directing factory affairs deliberately turned the ofFers clown. There would be some sort of excuse if more than one season was involved, but to turn down an offer of Is 3d^ or, with whey butter, nearly Is 4d for one season's butterfat output, is one of those things hard to be understood by an ordinary layman. The Ball road factories in' some measure held the "bird in the hand" and their pay out of Is 2-$-d Alton, Is 2^d Hurleyville, is highly satisfactory; Manutahi follows with Is l^d, with Kakaramea- bringing up the rear at a somewhat lower figure. However, all the gentlemen interested will have a new experience for the incoming season, consignment being compulsory, and, owing to the war, very problematical as to results.

A lot of adverse comment is heard anent the action of the County Council in removing the drinking trough at the bottom of the Altnn gorge. The metal contractor offered tha Council the whole concern properly installed at a- | discount of L 3 per cent., and seeing ! that the whole plant was absolutely new and in splendid order, and that Mr Muller had only two or three months' use of it, it is a thousand pities the Council was so ill advised as to reject the offer, or heckle for a further reduction from an industrious, hard-working man. The Council propose to tap a small spring further up on the road-sidej expecting it to provide the necessary supply, but it needs no prophet to telf them that for a great part of the year a fo\u or fiye horse team would swallow the whole ''accumulated secretion" at a gulp, and it VVOiild take several hours to refill the trough. The Council has by all accounts a first-class engineer but his advice is often discarded by a section of the Council who imagine that they know better than a professional expert. If some of them travelled up Ball road at the present moment they would hear some language, which, I know you would prevent me from publishing in your columns. If prosperity can be gauged by motor car owners, Ball road farmers are flourishing. Four farmers already own ears (all five .seaters), and I hear two others re negotiating puchases; that is, if the bursting of the war cloud does not m..ke them cars carry. The war outburst !.;ts caused tremendous excitement here as every- j where, the Star b. ii -g rushed and scanned with avidity. I hear that quite a lot r,i gaiiant yoking fellows have offered thems?lv*-.« U-. the Government for uncomiitionr'l service. It does one's heart good to so« the enthusiastic and helpful off or s of the over-seas Dominions all over the world to the. dear old Motherland in her hour of trial. By the way, sir, it was quite amusing to vend " "Aristides" pro-German appeal in Thursday's Star, but the joke is intonsiiied a thousandfold when many of your Ball road readers think they*recognise in "Aristides'"' an old "homogeneous friend" in a new garb.