MY COUNTRY NOTEBOOK

Otago Witness, Issue 3774, 13 July 1926, Page 50

MY COUNTRY NOTEBOOK

By MURLHIKU. (Specially Written* for the Witness.) The Winter Show o f the Otago A. and P. Association tends to become a very stereotyped affair. The same old exhibits are along the same old lines every year. What the Otago Winter Show suffers from is uunedin’s distance Iron* the people who are keen enough to exhibit. And Dunedin’s niggest problem is: How can we attract th« school children to exhibit at our show? # * * Well, Greenfield shews the way. Get the children's classes increased. The youngsters will do the rest. If you want a winter show’—or any other sort of show —to prosper, and not to stagnate, you must be breeding a set of exhibitors who will take the place of their fathers and mothers. The little Cluthu Valley Show, held at Greenfield this year, was an eyeopener as to what can be done in a country district. Vhile other societies are languishing, places like Greenfield and Warepa are achieving signal successes. * * * This year I had had the good fortune to attend the Palmerston North and the Hawera Shows. The Manawatu Show, as I said in my last notes, has little to crow about over Dunedin ; but of Hawera there is a different story to tell. * * # Haw'era is the prosperous centre of a farming district that is said to have a production value of over £2,000,000 of butter and cheese within a radius of about 15 miles! No wonder the borough is prosperous. There is a cheese factory every mile, and one of them is the biggest cheese factory under one roof in the world —and its name is Riverdale. Kaupokonui, of course, has a larger output as a company, b”t Kaupokonui has many outstations. * # * The hedges one sees everywhere are of the South African box-thorn. This stands cut Ting hard, and if cut on one side one year and the other side the next, it will grow twenty feet high; and become so thickly intertwined as to be absolutely impenetrable. The local saying is: “A bird can’t fly through it,” and that is a tolerable description. The wind can blow off the sea along those fertile, rolling downs, and the box-thorn is almost worth its weight in the proverbial gold. * * * There is always plenty of water for the stock, for in the centre of the plain Egmont towers majestically into the clouds, not only condensing the moistureladen breezes from the sea, but being of such an altitude that its volcanic i/eak is everlastingly mantled with the eternal snows. So, from this sentinel-like guardian of fertile Taranaki there flows in everv season of the year the clear, cold water so much enjoyed by dairy cattle. * * * The farmers are progressive people, a» is evidenced by the establishment of their Dairy Research Laboratory at Haw’era. The co-operative factories put together, and provided most of the funds themselves, but were helped to the extent of £IOOO a year from the Government. They got a building for a peppercorn rental; then sought round for a dairv scientist to carry out the investigations they desired. Luckily they obtained the services of a chemist called Veale. who with an equipment costing only £IOOO, and with only one assistant, has solved a lot of vexatious problems which have baffled eheesemnkcra and dairy farmers for years. On all hands I heard of the value of this laboratory. J # # # And it is something like this that Otago and Southland need. We know of the difficulties experienced in all our local cheese factories this year—mostly in connection with “starters.” To solve those problems we must have an expert of our own stationed in the dairying districts who can go out—that day—to study the problem in the factory or on the farm. # # « So. when we hear of the proposal to establish a Central Research Institute

somewhere in the centre of the North Island, we are forced to say that first we want scattered right through both islands a set of research laboratories right on the spot where the troubles occur. When these outlying stations are properly functioning and doing the necessary local work, then it will be time to establish a central clearing station. But first things must come first! * * • In the meantime we must admit that Hawera has given a very useful lead to these southern parts, and if we don’t wake up very shortly, we will be left with no research stations in the south at all. It is up to all local dairy factories to get busy right away. * # * But to get back to the Hawera Show! There is a brightness and an artistic turn given to the whole turn-out. Surely there must be somewhere a very enterprising secretary and a most original and enthusiastic committee. I have seen many shows in my time—mostly in the south, I admit —but never have I seen a winter show to please me as Hawera did. * * * There was much that reminded one of the Dunedin Exhibition, of course, the painted slogans to use New Zealand goods; the roll-downs and the side shows -—but over and above these were exhibits that might well be introduced into the south. * # * Take the staging of the butter, for instance. It is a hard job to make fiftysixes of butter look interesting. But here it was well displayed—in two tiers. One lot was on a bench about three feet high and slightly elevated at the back; the top tier was on an angle like a looking glass. Between the two tiers of boxes were tacked long thfn sprays of aromatic "reen manuka. The different-coloured prize tickets, the yellow of the butter broken by the fine green foliage made a good colour scheme, and relieved the otherwise stodginess of most shows of factory butter. * * * there was the Acclimatisation Society's display. Here manuka, neatly tied and tacked encircled everything. There was every sort of trout in glass tanks, very tastefully arranged; all sorts of pheasants, quail, and opossums alive in cases much like the cages used in poultry shows; there were collections of birds’ eggs, and in beautifully designed circular pens made of tied manuka wpre shown a pair of stately white swans and a truly regal peacock. On the walls was the usually mixed bag of deer heads, boars* tusks, stuffed fish and birds—everything carefully labelled. The whole was a most instructive exhibit and a credit to whoever designed it. And didn’t the voungsters flock arotfnd and linger—with tbpir fathers and mothers, too—around the cages! * * * Hawera specialises in boys and girls* agricultural clubs, and what a wonderful collection of vegetables these clubs brought together! The schools vie with each other, and the winter show is the testing place. * * * The school forestry exhibit-s were a tribute to their teachers. Here were exhibited 11 sorts of seedling trees grown in cut kerosene tins—healthy little blocks of pines and gums. And I was told that everv '-ear each boy or girl took home a hundred little trees if dad would promise to fence off a corner for them! This is really practical afforestation work, and a practice that might easily be copied with advantage in some of the wind-swept portions of South and Central Otago. * * # i'liotographs of the calf clubs, dozens cf boys and girls at the head m their well-bred and well-fed dairy calces, testified to thp really practical work done by these calf cluks. Then there were pictures of mangel crops planted and tended bv pairs of girls and bovs. Some phenomenal returns were obtained. AH of the things, the trees, the calves. a<‘d the big mangels, tend to raise the standard of farm life in fertile Taranaki. * * * Perhaps I mav be a little enthusiastic over the development of agricultural and pastoral work, but I have reached the time of life when one expects to see nothing new at a winter show, and Hawera proved to me that it was full of life and vitality, and that the children of to-dav will be the much more efficient farmers of to-morrow.