WAIKAKA NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 17652, 9 February 1916, Page 2

WAIKAKA NOTES

(From Our Own Correspondent). The season is progressing apace, and nature is doing her great work in her own wise way. The farmer is merely a creature of to-day who sows where he expects to reap, but nature just goes on her way, year after year, growing plants and ripening seeds. In a measure man is assisting nature while helping himself. The man of to-day is not as the man of old —the one tickled the belly of nature to live, while the other does so for pure gain. Production is nowadays a matter of £ s d. New Zealand farmers arc like their confreres in other lands, and till the soil, and tend the stock, for personal gain, and for no other reason whatever. There may be humbugs and bug-bums who talk of patriotism and national welfare as the controlling influence that is pushing them along but it is all bosli —pure bosh. The bountiful kindness of nature in this wonderful land of ours is above all our blandishments, and flatteries, and thanks, and bemoanings. Our prayers for help and our thanks for plenty are also much a part of our heathenish past that we are slow to get out of the grooves and ruts trodden by our ancestors. Nature assists man where and when man seeks to help himself. In seasons like the present one, nature has taken hold of the plough and man needs very little helping from outside to reap where he has sown. The crops are flourishing to the right and to the left. Oats, and whJfeat, and grass, and turnips, give promise of wonderful returns. The farmers of New Zealand are hanking huge fortunes and adding motor cars to buggies, and new houses, and rich fists, and furniture, and all that satisfies the eye and is good to the taste. The farmers arc reaping a harvest, rich and unstinted, washed white and purified by the blood of their kindred in tlie old Homeland. But they are not satisfied and ask for more. The farmers as a class are hungry for gain, and have no desire to share tlie spoils of war. If the farmers of New Zealand were made to bear the whole expenses of the New Zealand war game, it would not be too much to expect of them. Property owners, not only should finance the game, but should boar the whole burden. When a class are benefiting and reaping all the profits they should pay the piper who plays the tune. We shquld have conscription of wealth then. While the working man is running the show, the least that the wealth and capital-mong-ers can do is to pay. A fine healthy series of thunder storms have visited our district during tlie last week. The fine warm weather and then storms have simply poured wealth and profits into the hands and pockets of the farmers. It is hard to give any conception of the rapid growth that has taken place in grass and turnip fields. Stock are doing particularly well, and fats for freezing should be plentiful all over the Mataura Valley.

Our dairying farmers are enjoying a capital season; plenty of grass and water for the herds, and a big yield of milk is the result.

Grass-seeding is being attended to, and will be succeeded in a little while with early oats. There is some threshing of grass seed out of the stock going on, but it is not general as yet. Babbits and small birds are having a good time. Farmers have neglected these pests since “the great game’’ was begun, and hence the increase. Both will take a toll of the rich man’s profits—the more the better, as that is tlie only way to get hack to normal. The counterbalance in nature works out its own remedy and cure.

The dredging industry ’is slowly on the wane. Another dredge or two has closed down since I wrote you last, it is not that the gold is not in tlie ground, but the expense of getting it is on the increase and leaves very little for shareholders. The men displaced by tlie gradual decay of the industry are finding openings in tlie district, and are not leaving our part as was at one time expected. The cutting up of some of the lands in small areas are affording openings for many to go into the dairying industry.

Since writing the above a storm of exception violence lias passed over our district. There is no doubt hut that this particular storm was an exceptional one, and was more like a tropical cloud burst than an ordinary thunderstorm. About the township the storm was the*heaviest. Some little damage was done to property. Mr Rankin's chimney was blown over, and one or two windows blown in, and a few ruts washed out of tlie roads. The turnip crop suffered most, but as the storm was only of a local character not a great deal of damage will have been done. Crops in the line of tlie storm arc a good hit flattened, but most likely will rise up again before harvest. While the storm lasted some very large hailstones fell in the vicinity of Mr D. McGill’s farm in tlie WenUon Valley, and it is the hail or lumps of ice that did the damage. Had the storm come a week or two later the district must have suffered very heavily.