ENCROACHING SHEEP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 770, 23 April 1954, Page 18

ENCROACHING SHEEP

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 2

HE most noticeable change in Southland since I looked at it a few years ago, is the reduction in the number of cows. In a drive of about 50 miles through an area that once supported ten factories I found no factories and only two farmers who milked six cows or more. The others had all changed to sheep, and one of them told

me that Wi Nnaq come to see. cows I should

Nave Drought a camera with me to show me in’ another ten years what dairy cows were like. In some areas-Edendale, Mataura, Wyndham, for example-dairying is still flourishing, and will, I think, continue to flourish. But even here the picture has changed a little dramatically. The typical situation, when I spent three months in that area in 1938, was a farm run- | ning 50, 60 or 80 cows, with a few old ewes to keep down the ragwort. Now 70 would be an unusual herd; 40 would be near the average; and instead of 50 or 60 decrepit ewes there will be four to six hundred vigorous Romneys in the autumn and winter with five to seven hundred Romney Southdown lambs in the spring and early summer. I was told, too, that one of the reasons why more farmers had not given up cows was the fact that their farms were not big enough to support an economic flock of sheep. Though the best land supports five or six ewes to the acre, with their six or seven lambs later, that is not enough for the man who holds less than, say, 150 acres. It will be interesting to see what effect the change to sheep has on the social life of Southland and on the character of its farmers. Will softness creep in, or are they protected against that by the necessity to grow winter feed and turn out in rain and snow to make sure that the sheep are never without it? a ae ,

APRIL 3

- T was necessary as I drove through Southland to wear an overcoat, and the difference this made to my bulk was the difference between cheerful and lugubrious thoughts as the miles slipped by. What the ribald call my bay-window came so often into conflict with the

steering wheel that I was seldom able to forget J.

R. Wailkinsons almost last words to me before he died at | 93: Corpora sicca durant, | Latin is economical in words, toler/ant in arrangement, devastating in hit- | ting power. It makes very little differ'ence whether we say Corpora sicca | durant or sicca corpora durant; whether we say durant sicca cOrpora or durent corpora sicca. We could, I think, ring the changes still further without making the Latin impossible. But however we arrange those seven syllables they always mean the same. The lean live, the fat diet Add to your weight and you add to your mortality. Fill your skin with blubber and you fill your pockets with dynamite. Eat when you like and you will die when you don’t like. Shorten your waist-band and you lengthen your life-line. Be a sloppy blob and you will soon be nothing. It was pathological to have ruminations like those when the sheep were so

big and white, the grass so green and long, the swedes, choumollier, and rape as good as any I have ever seen in my life. But even the lambs shouted at me. The faster they fattened the sooner they went, until one day only the lean and dry would be left. I pulled my belt as tight as it would go, but I will have to buy a thinner overcoat.

APRIL 5

DON’T want to lose my way to Heaven in the belly and bowels of a hare; or stumble on the way over a heap of moist pellets. If refecting rodents are holding me back from grace I must learn where and how to bv-pass

them. But prejudice and ignorance die hard. Be-

fore men of science who have no theological axes to grind I am meeker than any mouse, but Dr. Milne’s authorities (Listener, March 26) prove a little too much. Everybody knows that there are more ways than one of killing a cat; but one certain way would be to keep it in a cage so narrow that it could not turn round, This, it seems, Messrs. Eden, Southern and Dewar did with rabbits. I hope they lay in a narrow drain pipe while they were making their observations, with their arms held tight by their sides, and a hedgehog tickling their toes. he ~% ~~

APRIL 7

so A N uncle, whose sense of the ludicrous embarrassed him all his life, inducing giggling fits at the most inOpportune moments, called at a farm-

house one day to discuss some matter of

business. The door was opened by the farmer’s wife. "Could I see your husband for a minute?" "He passed away last week." I am ashamed of uncle. Instead of apologising or expressing sorrow or turning away, he laughed in the poor woman’s face. The harder he tried to speak the louder he laughed, and finally ran out the gate and drove away. Uncle was not a strong, silent man. Neither am I. But ~I require all my strength and all my silence when I am told of these "passings away." Passed away where, I am more and more tempted to ask, and some day the temptation will be too great. I will out-uncle uncle, be vulgar, or silly, or inopportunely jocular, and never be able to explain. But I would be safe if oo just died. I wish I knew why they don’t. Six times on my journey south I was told of relatives or friends or acquaintances who had passed away or passed on or merely passed. Not one had died. Verbally they will never die, but linger on indefinitely like the dried grandfathers of New Guinea in Colin Simpson’s Adam with Arrows. It was a relief to meet a gallant old friend in Invercargill, reading the morning paper at 91 without glasses, and determined, he said, to stay where he is until he can stay no longer. Some day, like the rest of us, he will die: but I don’t think he will (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) oa dis furtively, or try, with averted eyes, to sneak across the Jordan when God is not looking. a , 4

APRIL 8

"THERE was a smile on Jack’s face ‘" when I told him the other day, that the ewes he sent us a year ago were good hurdlers. He had hoped, he said, that they would forget how to jump on the long train journey from the south;

, but you never knew with Romneys. In the. old

qgays three piain Wwites above three rows of sods kept Merinos and half-breds in their own little worlds year in and year out. Now six wires and a barb will not always stop Romneys. Unless the wires are tight and the droppers «close, the feed betters where the sheep* are supposed to stay than where they want to go, the inveterate fencers culled or killed, and the . staples replaced as often as they fall or are pulled out, Romneys will start wandering and keep on wandering until it pleases them to come home or your neighbour to drive them home. I was lucky, Jack told me, to lose only one ewe; but I did not tell him how many musters I made with Jim, how often we drafted and counted, how many heads we raddled, and for. how long a period my home tally was 17 instead of 70, All is well, I suppose, that ends (and sells) well; but if I. had not been compelled to clear them all out for lack of feed, I might have ended with 50 sheep running free and 20 carrying wooden triangles on their necks with little tinkling bells, (To be continued)