Summer Shows Again
T is pleasant to be reminded by the opening of the Show season that summer is again here (or near). But the situation is even better than that. Royal. Shows are here again after the long interruption of the war, and to farmers at least it hardly matters any more whether peace has been officially proclaimed or not. Agricutural peace was proclaimed this week at Hastings, where Tomoana Park, if it did not show tanks turning into tractors, showed men and beasts assembled. in thousands for purely peaceful purposes. It is of course true that Shows breed rivalry and may bring strife. We could say things about Show points in this article that would bring us heated letters; and the truer they were the hotter the letters would be. We could say, for example, that the thickness of a cow’s tail has nothing to do with the productiveness of its udder; that the light in a rooster’s eye will not tell you muck about his genes; that breeding horses with hairy legs is as meaningless as breeding dogs with elongated ears; and that the sooner farmers Jearn which end of a pig is "the most profitable the sooner pigbreeding in New Zealand will take: the right turning. There is almost no limit to the things we could say to provoke farmers if provocation were our purpose and to pick a quarrel with the breed societies if we thought it useful to trail our coats. But even if we told Canterbury that Corriedales are mongrels, unstable brutes‘ who don’t know after 50 years whether to grow mutton or wool, no blood would be shed. There can be as many arguments round a Show ring as in a meeting of modern mothers} but they all end in hot | collars and’ a threat to produce something bigger or better. The /wats of farmers are the wars of ture herself-the two blades of _ fighting for the:food of the blade they have displaced, milk and meat competing for,a sealed tin, and the watchful dog making off with the bone. Not one of them will ever reach an assembly’ of the United Nations.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 5
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360Summer Shows Again New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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