Crops Away, and the new Walco Allspread 6.75 spreader

Direct drilled last Monday, the pasja's struck really well, only been six days!

First run with the new Walco 6.75 spreader.

Pleased to report it spread as accurately as the handbook settings said...., I was doing 40kg/ac DAP, 12 metre swath at 15 kmph.

A walk around the paddocks after showed distribution was happily satisfactory.

Got the same good result putting some urea on the paddock closed for Jan hay.

The bin will hold 1/2 ton no problem, but I had to work out a suitable driving technique, its not really wise to be doing turns at 15 kph with a load on the back, specially when I get up on the hills later on. Using the foot throttle solved the problem, slow down for the turns.

The handbook said work round and round for best spread, but with the GPS set on A to B, I prefer working in lands with a single run 12 metre headland across each end of the paddock.

Wasn't all sweetness and light however.

Real mission to mount on the tractor. I had to use outside extension pins to match the TYM's CatII linkage arms, and even then the width dosent match all my other CatII gear, so I'm going to have to frig round adjusting the shackles swapping between machinery, all this made worse by bugger all space between spreader bin and tractor, a frustrating squeeze for a bloke my size.

Bit of a bounce on my OD to fit the capital purchase in, but I got this idea, instead of one humungous annual fert bill, I'd do smaller one to three monthly bites of the cherry, as finances allow.

The 1/2 ton capacity allows for getting fert in Ravensdown's 1/2 ton bags, or, I can get bigger amounts in bulk, and load it with the old Same and bucket.

First Post-Flood Sheep Muster

Its now been 3 weeks since the flood, finally the silt has dried out enough to contemplate bringing some ewes in, bit of pressure involved, the Vet Club say they can fit in a half days scanning tomorrow.

I want to identify the empty ewe hgts, so they can go off the place as part of the de-stock program. The older 5 and 6 yr ewes came in with them, and the lower conditioned of that class can go as well.

We took a punt the mob wouldn't get bogged, particularly where Rob had bull-dozed the wet silt off the main track, into a windrow.

With all the gates opened for the mob to string its way in, they all very sensibly followed the well known path, we didn't push them and it couldn't have gone better.

FLOOD!!!

Here we go again......
This is the view at daybreak, Jun 21st, from the upstairs window.
The valley road follows the line of trees running left to right, and the river's supposed to be in the trees at the back.
This is 2-3' below flood peak we reckon, down in front of us the water's 6' deep, and over at the road, about a foot. It'll need to go down another couple feet before we can get out, that'll be in the 6 ton 4wd truck.
All the vehicles are up here, except for the tractor and bulldozer, which should be high enough not to get covered.
I left 4 horses in the paddock behind the poplars, left background, they would have spent the night up to their bellies. About mid-day I saw them paddling out, relieved to see they were still there. Plus my two herd bulls which must have swum in from two paddocks away.
Subsequent to this, we've confirmed the flood height's about a foot lower than 2004.
Every flood's different, this one roared all night. The whole district including the up-country hills had 150mm in 48 hours, on top of 150mm already recorded since the beginning of the month.
This is the 4th in 10 years, shifting stock and equipment followed the plan, we had a days warning from Horizons very good river level forecast system.
When the water recedes there's going to be another foot of wet silt over probably 3/4's of the flats, pretty disheartening after all the pasture restoration since the 2013 go.
My sister and her family's been chased out of their house again, they'll be up here with me a turn till their house dries out.
Several homes in the valley, same situation.
I guess if you live in a flood plain you have to expect some trauma, I know my father only had one like this around 1938, and its incredible I farmed 40 years flood free, to get to this.

Sign of the Times

Metrosideros excelsa

One of the great things about farm life is getting an array of seasonal signals, the pohutukawa tree annual blossoming is one of them, putting on a deep red display right on Christmas.

This year's arrival was actually a week late, maybe the rain we got through the three months right up to end Dec put the brakes on its clock, but certainly a great show of colour.

Its known in some quarters as the NZ Christmas Tree for this flowering characteristic, and its said to be found from the top of the North Island down to a line level with Mt Taranaki through to East Cape.

Here at 40th parallel Whangaehu we're actually below this line but this tree's doing fine in our 900mm annual rainfall flood silt plain, and has withstood three major floods in the last 10 years. 

I'm trying to plant one a year to make an avenue along my driveway, you can just make out junior in front.
Pohutukawa is a Maori word derived from hutukawa, a red feather headress.
The Latin name, metrosideros, refers to the iron-like properties of the hard timber, used in early times for  weapons, paddles, digging sticks and spades.
A tea made from the bark or leaves was used as a cure for dysentery and diarrhoea, and the nectar from the flowers for food and treatment for sore throat.

Flood Update

Well, some good soul did come and re-join the boundary fence where it was cut to allow up-valley traffic around a flood-blocked section of road, nice professional job too, so thanks whoever.

Another 50 acres increased 6" asl

Now the water's gone, I see there's about 50 acres out of action, covered in muddy silt. I figure it'll take till end November to dry out, half of it will crack and let the grass through, and depending if it gets dry enough, will probably drill a summer brassica into whatever the grass dosent get its way through.
Once again, the village 2 km down the road suffered. Main part of the problem there is the on ramp to the new highway bridge across the river built in the 60's, now dams the free passage of water in a way it never did. That's engineers again for you, every time something substantial gets built, there's always a consequence down the line.

SH3 traffic waiting to negotiate the one-way dam-bank

What the Whangaehu/SH3 intersection really needs is a 2 lane underpass under SH3, which will allow the water to keep going on its way.
Also, the intersection will be safer for cross and inter-valley traffic with appropriate on and off-ramps.
But what's the opinion of a humble resident farmer worth in the face of a qualified engineer?
In the words of our famous beer, Yeah right.......

Flood

Wont be mustering to the yards from that direction for a while

Here we go again......
I'd put this flood at about a 1 in 10 year level in terms of effect, and its timing in that frame is consistent.
Checking Horizon's river level forecasting yesterday, after only 22mm rain overnight, the gauge about 10-15km upriver from here was showing a peak of 11.5 metres to occur at 8pm last night.
The really devastating 2004 flood was 13 metres, and the 2006 one, 10 metres, but we were still a bit unsure how much we could tempt fate so far as leaving stock out.
Even though the local rainfall wasn't great, you cant tell what the effect of the huge catchment upstream from here will have, and I have to say, Horizons monitoring system, rainfall, soil saturation, expected run-off etc, works pretty good.
At 6 metres and rising at the upstream gauge, we know we have 6-7 hours before the river breaks banks down here.

Scot doing a bit of aqua-mustering

The stud lambs are only a month old, but all the mobs got boxed and taken up onto the hill faces I spoke so glowingly of assisting the cow wintering.
The beef herd's right in the middle of calving, and one of those mobs we shifted, as it turned out, un-necessarily, and the dogs spent the night well above ground-level in the woolshed.
A visiting mare I was foaling for a friend, we arranged to go to Letham Stud up on the hill from here, and the yearling I was boxing turned out with a paddock mate.
After the 2004 flood, I dunno who it was, Min of Works I think, decided that there wasnt enough of a water-table along the road outside the farm, so they rebuilt the road 18" higher. I tried to talk them out of it, explaining if they they just cleaned up the road verge I'd be happy for the flood water to run free across the road into paddocks following its old natural course downstream.
But no...... it has to be one of the stupidest bits of engineering I've ever seen, the water stays dammed on the river side of the road, and runs through the family homestead that's been dry in every flood since it was built around 1920, and also through the horse stable.
The horses spent the night paddling ankle deep, but I'm confident they're safe around the stable paddocks, its just this infernal 4-6" that the road works is damming up that's really consigning the home I grew up in to be an elaborate hayshed.
Citizens of Wanganui ought to be careful about Horizons spending millions on city stop-bank works, in my opinion, engineers dont always get it right.
The best way to handle flood water is to watch what it wants to do, and let it do it un-impeded.
Keeping out of its way is the best strategy.
Now I wait for the flood water to recede so I can sort these mobs of sheep and cattle back out where they belong.
I'm grateful for the help of neighbours Malcolm and Cameron, shifting stock.
Not so for the young gawkers who farted up and down the road in their tractors this morning for no apparent reason other than the thrill of seeing if it could be done, and who helped themselves to a drive around my paddocks seeking an alternative to the impassible bits of valley road.
In the end I let them cut the boundary fence so they could get round, but I bet no bastard offers to rejoin the fence for me.

Out of the Drought

Well here, we are..... but still not so fortunate in other parts of the country.
Not so far north of here, 50km as the crow flies, things look absolutely dire. From SH1, Taihape and Hunterville hills looked grey and grim under an overcast sky, in a late afternoon drive-through last Sunday. Quite rightly they're worried about the onset of frosts stopping autumn growth in its tracks, whatever of that they could expect from 9mm rain through April reported by one source.

Compare this kitchen-window shot with the March one

Down here, a stone's throw from the coast, we've had 141mm through April, and with heaps of latent heat in the soil, daily PGR's have been cranking along at 50 kg/ha since middle of the month. That's on the hills, the flats do 5kg better than that.
Actually, its hard to call it a bad summer and autumn for here. The extraordinary lower rainfall Sep through Dec, about half historical average, certainly set things up bad with no surplus feed carry-over, but rainfall Jan through Mar was actually above average each month.
The summer feed crops have been a boon, and I can now use the buffer hill-sidling feed reserve to build the cows up, while the back hills recover.
Its great to see the replacement ewe lambs putting some meat on. Although they've been on crop all through, I have pushed them to clean up the stubble, and lets face it, there hasn't been much feed off it.
Till now....

Hire cherry picker fixing woolshed spouting

To be honest, I've enjoyed the long summer days, it hasnt been too hot but working in loose clothing has been order of the day from sunup to sundown, not being rained off all those satisfying repair jobs, and stock work, no holdups getting the shearing done.
The last few summers have been pretty crappy short affairs, its almost like a cycle of return to the long summers we enjoyed years ago, when drought was an annual distant plaintive from somewhere over Hawkes Bay way.
The bees must have enjoyed it too going by reports from apiarists about this seasons honey crop being a bumper. Makes you wonder if the poor summer weather has been the cause of bee population decline rather than the anthropogenic wailing.
When seasons are wet, flowering's poor, and bees cant fly, its OUR FAULT.
And when we get a drought, its still OUR FAULT.
FFS, some people need to get real jobs.

Getting Dry......

The view out my kitchen window

With drought declarations springing up all round the country, we're keeping a close eye on feed supply, and on the weather maps too.
I dusted off my old feed budget program and arrived at a deficit of 8kg DM/day, which, all said and done, is what I expect this time of year.
The important thing, I think, if you're a seat of your pants stockman like me, is not to divert from the annual flight plan formulated from a lifetime experience on your farm, keep picking the plums as they ripen, sell them on whatever's the best market available, take the loss on the chin, and dont play for time in hope of things improving.
Recently I took a price on the place for some finished lambs, with an indeterminate delivery date. Theyre still here, chewing through my ever increasingly valuable crop, denying the rest of my lambs the luxury of a finishing feed, and free grazing for the works buyer as he tends to demands and pleas more vociferous than mine.
I'm reminded why I vowed never again to be a committed supplier to a processor, when my lambs at the time of my 4th week of delayed delivery triggered my walk-out. By then the lambs had got to 8 weeks from their last drench, contracted an internal parasite attack, leaving me powerless to drench them to stop the loss of health in case I did get a call, but jiggered by the drench withholding period.
Best of luck to all and sundry getting this closer association industry PGP whatever plan off the ground, I wont be a participant.
With the average age of sheep-farmers here still hovering around mid-50's, I think the ground-swell enthusiasm for it will be similarly conservative. What we'd all like is a set season base-price per kg, maybe with bonuses around seasonal demand, bit like the dairy farmers operate, but I doubt it'll ever happen.
Meanwhile, we watch the weather maps closely. After a copy-book summer, I reckon it always rains on 20th March, and right now a tropical cyclone is ripping down the higher Tasman, and the current anti-cyclone sitting over the country is weakening off to the east.
Ken Ring, the moon man, reckons its going to rain on the 20th too, according to some drinking buddies last Fri night, and with some vigour too.
I hope we dont get a crash of weather systems if the crap far to the south gets up here at the same time, like we got for the 2004 floods.
And further meanwhile, I've got the contractor's digger out deepening a couple of stock-water dams that have finally got low enough to get into. Apart from that, the water supply is actually in quite good shape over the rest of the place.
Pretty near all my "hill" paddocks are 30ac in size, and I want to get to a situation of 2 good dams in each.
Feed crops, pasja and Hunter, are standard component of my dry summer strategy. They can be oddly inconsistent performers, but have come into their own this season, sown late for here, mid Dec, but have kept growing right through, and holding in the face of quite a heavy stocking load.
I think its the sheltered aspect of this valley keeping them safe from the wind, and making the low-lying most of the dews we've been getting.

Annual 'Copter Ride

Dean and the Squirrel doing GPS runs

Finally got a still morning, and AeroWork's Dean Lithgow was on the ball, turning up to do the annual gorse run in the Squirrel, a nice smooth machine.
Its a long shot from early days of Alexander Helicopter's Bell, (aka the ones you see in Mash *** re-runs), piloted by Rex Sherlock. It was quite a novelty in those days, I got the show-around-the-place rides as a school kid, one time hooking the skid under a cast ewe to flip her on her feet, and another being heroically delivered to school.
The old man used to do it but he got put off the time they were puttering up a gully when the power board high tension lines suddenly appeared in front of the perspex bubble, this was in the days when the industry didnt think about those things. Rex dropped the chopper 12' in a fraction of a second, and went through underneath, but the impression was significant enough, the old man delegated me to do the spotting from then on.

Re-loading

Rex further expounded about the time he was doing a job in a remote part of the Waitotara Valley, when he got a skid entangled in the telephone wires beside the road, and try as he might backing up and dropping and lifting, the wires wouldnt let go of him.
As extreme good fortune had it, the P&T, on a rare occasion, happened to be doing line maintenance less than a mile away, and on hearing the chopper working so close the men decided to go and spectate. Lucky they still had their ladders on the truck.
Back to the gorse, last years spray-up was done in Jan, a bit late in my book to catch the best of the growing fronds, at 7 litres Eliminate (Ravensdown's Grazon equivalent) per ha. While the kill wasnt 100% I was happy enough with the foot or so knock-back in bush height. I was also amenable to Dean's suggestion to do 8 litres on some of the heaviest this time, but I think being on the button with the November timing will see it brown off pretty good.

First Aid

Our industry workplace, the farm, is an environment where accidents, if they happen, can be severe.
Taking a basic first aid course is something I've always wanted to do, and I finally got to last weekend joining with one organised by my local branch of Ulysses Motorcycle Club in conjunction with St John's.
I thought we were in for a fair bit about doing stuff to wounds and bone breaks, but things have moved on over the years, and now its focussed more on securing the accidentee and immediate environment, and preparing for arrival and/or evacuation with the first aid response professionals.
St John have devised an acronym based response guide, DRS,ABC+D

D - danger - scene assess for self, others, patient
R - response - check patient status, call name, squeeze shoulder
S - send for help
A - airway - check for clear, recovery position
B - breathing - check look, listen, feel, if none go to...
C - CPR - compressions/breaths '30:2 no matter who' till pro's arrive
D - defrib - increasingly at hand these days, auto-commands inbuilt

We also covered dealing with choking, bleeding, and bone breaks in the immediate response context.

The St John website has a good summary of the above.
The St John course instructor was excellent, as was the St John training rooms, in fact, edifying to get to appreciate the whole local St John facility.

This week I've increased my regular donations to St John, and to the local Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter.
Compliments to Safety Officer Lance and Ulysses for taking this initiative, its comforting to know that on organised rides, most of the others will have a good idea what to do.
Might save a life.

New Cellphone Comparison

Am inclined to start this out with.... yeah right.
My Nokia 5800 Express phone has given great service last 3-4 years, 1000's of pics on 2 trips round America and another to Europe, small size, robust enough to survive everyday work and a couple of drops, good reception out here in the sticks, relative. Ahead of its time somewhat given new smart-phones now on the scene, but lately the screen has lost some of its touch response, and now and again erratic behaviour.
Last year I picked up a Huawei Ideos X5, Android o/s, and more recently, a Nokia Lumia 800 touted at the business market.
Have to say I'm disappointed in both.
The X5, despite being 5 mp camera'd takes lousy pics, theyre blurry. The on-screen shutter only contributes to camera shake, and the on-screen zoom is rat-shit when youre in a hurry to capture a scene. As well as the pics, it also stores thumbnails of the same, but FFS, what for? When you copy to your desktop pic file you get 2 of each, and then the confusion starts which ones to delete.
The button on the side controlling ring volume annoyingly lends itself nicely to accidental adjustment.
A fault common to both phones is the frustratingly small size of text font. In Android you can get an app to get round this, but FFS, for the price, why cant the phones just do it.
The X5 dosent have carriage return either, well it does in calendar, just not in texting, but like the 5800, the Lumia does. I got round the font size thing with the old 5800 permitting setting text to bold. The Lumia has a slightly better keyboard for my fat blokes fingers, both it and the X5 utilise heat recognition, the old 5800, bless it, had a very positive stylus, or you could tap the keyboard with the edge of your thumbnail.
I think the Android calendar is better than the Windows one.
Neither of these phones connect automatic with my desktop wifi, and vice versa. Neither can they do a simple world clock like the 5800 can. Theyre both unco-operative when trying to access the internet, the 5800 never had this problem.
However, the Who-are-we Idiot X5 is the lesser of my problems, its my main phone for the time being.
Now for the Lumia.
It runs on Windows, which should have been enough to put anyone off, but I thought it would be neat if I could copy my Excel files across and skip off to work with a useful interchange of data in prospect.
No such luck, its not as simple as plugging in your USB cable and seeing drive:F or whatever, you have to email files as an attachment, in which case your carrier gets to clip the ticket, so theyre not going to help, and in my case, my cell reception here is marginal.
There is a wifi work-around available, but as I said, wifi connection's another problem to overcome.
You can also swap stuff via an i-drive like Skydrive, and I can see some potential in being able to access stuff from anywhere, but jees, again with my marginal reception I have to go down the end of my driveway to be sure of making the down/upload, that is, if I can ever get connected to the internet.
However, the real dark person in the woodpile on this one is, what happens if there's a complete power/comms failure like we had in the 2004 flood, or some hostile power decides to blow the satellites out of the ether, or why would you even put private information into the cloud where every tom, dick, and hacker can have a go at it.
There is an accompanying file transfer capability in the form of Zune, but it only does pics, music, and vids. Why not data files FFS? Nowhere near the facility of Docs to Go with Android.
And of top of that, when I set the Zune system up on my desktop, it started to do some uninvited read-in (or out) of my existing several thousand pics, so I quickly emasculated that, plus I swear there's some definition loss between phone and desktop.
I followed Nokia because I thought I could simply copy my custom ringtones across, but no such luck again, the 5800 used .arm files for ringtones, so I have to convert the files to mp3, then go through a bit of techno-acrobatics to genre them into the Lumia.
I also thought I'd get the superior Nokia reception of my 5800, but another fail. Retailers look at you bald-face and say there's no difference between any of them, which again is laugh-100 territory. Right now I've got 3 bars on the X5, and ranging from half to nothing on the Lumia. Vodafone offer a signal amplifier adding a $340 insult to injury, but its wifi dependent, so help me.
The Lumia is a nicely crafted machine, comes with a rubber sort of protective surround, +/- buttons on the top, plus a shutter button that takes you direct from phone to camera, and ziess lens which is another plus. Unfortunately, the lens is near mid.mounted on the back, and it gets condensation off your hand pretty easily.
The simm card is a micro simm which means you cant swap it out to the old phone, or others youre using or trialling.
These two phones cost the guts of $1400, I've got a couple of fancy bits of machinery, but I'm no better off function-wise. With Microsoft and Vodafone I expect I'll have to spend even more for solutions.
As for Nokia, c'mon guys, surely you can do better than this ...

Another goodbye old friend

The roller drill's sat around hardly used several years now. An Aitchison 9 footer, beautiful piece of machinery, couldnt be bettered sowing new grass into a cultivated seed-bed, but with the Grassfarmer direct drill also on the place, its sat languishing in the face of the latter's stitch-in ability.
Bit of a sad goodbye, and with a bit of trepidation that now its gone, I'll want it for some job or other.
However, devil take the hindmost, dont look back, I've traded it on a new Fieldmaster 2.3 mulcher topper.

Loaded ready to go

The wider cut will be a blessing for faster times topping, and the mulch function I look forward to assisting the direct drill get over the patches of weeds that sometimes present in the pasja stubble prior to re-grassing.
Transport was a bit of a problem, too wide or long for a permissable deck width, but we got the tilt drawbar up enough, Grange Transport obliged.
One thing I wont miss is the close manouvre to get its 10' overall through my mainly 11' gateways.

Storm Casualty



Broke-back weather station

 Remember my enthusiasm for the weather station installed some time back?
Well, its a nonnie now.
The storm early Feb broke the stem holding the wind sensor clean off its mount, the wind was so furious, (although on second look, I think I can run a kiwi repair job on it).
On top of that, the batteries on the rain gauge ran out a couple of months prior, and of course you lose all the cumulative rain data, so I've reverted to the old plastic gauge.
On top of on top of that, if the power goes off inside the house you can lose data on the console as well.

As the world rushes to technology dependence, I just shake my head.
I got into handheld data-loggers years ago, the solid-state memory on them collapses when they're full, and if back-up and main batteries fail together, you get into trouble as well.
The unit I've got is supposed to be drop proof from 1 metre onto a hard surface, and sure, it does that just fine, but now a few years down the track, the plastic casing is cracking of its own accord, as all plastic eventually does on its road to inevitable decomposition.
So I've gone back to a pocket notebook.
Even the Palm handheld I tried wore me down, I need to look at a whole farm context, not be limited to a 3"-4" screen.
Smart phones are being held up as the new Nirvana, but having gone through the total isolation, power and comms, post 2004 Flood, plus having to keep the thing fully charged, and rely on power supply for that...

Good luck everyone.

Farewell Old Friend

Khan with apprentice Woody

One of the things you look forward to starting out shepherding is building a team of dogs, little knowing the life cycle of a dog is no more than the family cat.
The time from when a dog "arrives" at a place he's working well, does everything you want, and knows it, is then something very precious, the appreciation is mutual and the relationship gets special.
The day they're no longer with you always arrives with a bit of sadness.
I got Khan as a fully broken 4yo from Duncan up the river a bit, and well trained he was too, never more than a cigarette paper from your heels, but always busting to get out and run.
His forte however, was backing..., through a gate, in the crush, up the woolshed ramp, and well into the shed.
He earned his place of rest in the lawn, the "Arlington" in view of the kitchen window, with his own rock headstone beside the other all-time bests, Blak, Judge, and Booze.
I'm reminded of an earlier passing, Joe, my first heading dog, had gotten so non-compus at 15 he had to be put down. I turned up at the house for morning smoko I suppose looking for some comfort, and my now ex missus asked what I was blubbing for, after all he was only a dog.
All I could respond was every morning for the last 15 years he was excited to see me, and that's more than I can say for the 5 you've been here.
Bit like that joke about who's man's best friend, your missus or your dog.
Shut them in the boot of the car for an hour, then see who's most pleased to see you.
Anyway Khan, farewell from all of us, and I hope there's a good spring, plenty of sheep to dream about chasing, cool vehicles to ride in, and a boss like me for you..., wherever dogs go.

Boots

Got my latest pair of workboots from America, been getting my motorbike boots direct over the internet, so thought I'd give it a try with my workboots too.
I deal with Sheplers.com, in Witchita, Kansas. They're both a stockist and a sort of broker, if its not in stock, they get it.
Their website lists literally hundreds of boots, you get

a set of close-up views of each style, and a full description of the product.
Click a box in the top corner, and the price is quoted in the currency of your choice, including NZD.
Pictured are my Durango Georgia Heritage boots, delivered to my rural mailbox in about 2 weeks, for all-up cost of US $147, around $200 NZ including exchange fees on my Visa card.
Theyre quoted as having a 6" shaft, thats the height up the back, in this case a little higher than the average kiwi boot. The shaft height's a critical dimension, for instance, motorbike or cowboy boots come ranging from 10" to 12" mainly, and even up to 19" for jackboot looking types, which at this height are heart-attack territory to get on and off.
12's are best for cowboy and motorbike boots, your trouser cuffs tend to ride over the top of a 10, and there's less protection for your shin, if a bike boot.
6" is pretty good for a workboot.
Other features I like about these boots are the Goodyear welt, thats where the sole is stitched to the upper, rather than that deficient system on most hiking legacy kiwi boots these days where the glue holding the sole wrapping up the side of the boot succumbs to moisture and lets go.
The tread is a decent chunky design much like on the old commando soles you dont see much of any more. Its flat and pretty stiff, so takes a bit of re-learning to walk on. The upside of that is a more stable platform on uneven ground, makes your ankles a lot safer from twisting, or from feeling the humps underfoot.
With padded insole and side-walls, I just wear a thin cotton sock in these....., great, cooler too.
American design is also superior in non-slip sole technology, even the flat soled bike boots I've got are stable on wet rocks or tar seal.
The Georgia has a high tongue, keeps the water out, and the speed lace clips extend low enough you dont have to unlace any lower to get the boot on and off, step in, step out.
The loop at the back is big enough to get a European finger right in for the assisted pull on, Asian designers must think theyre just there for looks.
And the coup de grace are the steel toe-caps, no more sharp hoof trauma in the stockyards.
The final thing I'm grateful about is the consistency of size description, totally predictable across all makes, and wide sizes, listed as either E or W, are available.
Being such a vast country USA has a heritage of reliability when it comes to mail-order business, for instance Montana has a population of 600,000 in an area twice the size of NZ, shopping malls arent exactly proliferate.
So there it is, I'm one of those people local retailers complain about taking business away from the local market, and not paying GST either.
The reality is theyre not competing on technology, quality, product range, availablity, or price.
I have tried to get cowboy and motorbike boots, the same brands through local agents, the wait is excruciating, and the price quoted double, ie, knocking $400 NZ.
No brainer really.
American boots are superior.

PS.
Boot care...
I've taken to using WD40 in a squirter, so can be applied in seconds. Its made from fish oil, penetrates readily, keeps leather pliant, and is cheap.
Traditional stuff like Neatsfoot oil are tough on stitching, and/or like dubbin, are a nark to apply.
Have also tried the aerosol silicone products, but like the above, over the life of a boot, you can spend just as much as the initial boot outlay.

Toys

Rusty Firth was one of my favorites, left this earth a few years ago now, but his writings are well worth catching up on if you can run down either of his two books.
In 5th Dimension he mentions the importance of buying yourself a toy, at least once a year (Rusty had a trailer-sailer).
The great thing about farming is you can incorporate your toying into your business, and so it is with my latest machinery acquisition.

For the last almost 3 years I've been running a Chinese made ATV. Its been a real lemon, seldom able to make it to the next service interval without a serious repair, I'm on the 3rd rear diff, 3rd rear driveshaft, 2nd front diff, a couple of electrical fixes, and now the fan motor has seized, and the gearbox has dropped its oil. So, the search was on for a replacement, and from TradeMe, this is what I came up with, and settled on. Its a 1986 Suzuki J413 body on a 1992 Samurai chassis, 1600cc Escudo motor, auto gbox, crawler transfer case, fat wheels, in short all the 4wd rally gear.

And its a heap of fun!

The auto's almost intelligent, changes down by itself as you slow down. The 1600's engine braking downhill is superb, slip it down to 1st and it'll hang down a hillside something incredible. Going to be interesting when things get wet come winter, but I'd give it odds the big feet will hang in there.

The fuel tank fills with about 25 litres gas, and I dont see it any worse than the old under-powered Chinese ATV or the Eiger quad for fuel consumption.

The big ups is the capital cost of the thing, less than half a quad, and quarter of a sidebyside. There's a heap of parts available on TradeMe, and experienced mech's tell me they're a joy to work on. 

Bing, Khan, Woody & Scott try out the new ride

The dogs have been a bit of a laugh working out how to mount up, in and out the windows, leaping on the bonnet, but they're getting the hang of it now.

Rain...

The last 9 days of 140mm rain has saved our bacon, and the Feilding store stock prices are on the move back up.
With only 22mm in Nov, flanked by 70mm odd the months either side, things were starting to look pretty grim. The hills had burnt right off with the wind, (still at it too), although the river flats were still pushing a bit of grass up.

The pasja summer feed crops, direct-drilled early Dec, germinated very patchy. What was obvious, was germination was better in the heavier soil areas, or where I'd inadvertently had the drill coulters digging deeper, eg on turns or headlands.
The T-shoes are mounted on spring tines, so sharp turns are out of the question, all sorts of funny cultivation happens if you do.
I therefore use electric fence pegs to mark straight travel lands to drill to, and I did notice they were hard to force into the ground the first 1-2", then went easily, damper soil deeper down.
I've only had the drill about 8 or so years, and this is the first dry spring sow I've had to contend with, so the lesson I've learnt to try next dry one, is to sow deeper to get the boot under the dry surface, and maybe not use the covering harrow to avoid getting the seed buried too deep.

Speaking of rain and weather, I recently installed one of those remote weather stations that transmit all the data to the console inside the house, range up to 100m, Thermor brand, made in China, got it from Farmlands. Saves getting your feet wet. Apart from rain, it does humidity, temp indoor and out, wind speed and direction, and a 24hr barometric trend graph. The old conventional rain gauge is nearer ground level about 20m away, and I've found the fancy one measures up to 1-2mm less each rain episode. Not really sure why this happens, possibly there is a site variation maybe due to proximity to ground level, or as someone commented, there may be more spiders in the bottom of the old gauge. Also had a problem when the electronics failed and a couple days drizzle never showed on the console, which necessitated a reboot.

Like all things electronic, you need an operator sixth sense.

One thing it does the conventional isnt very good at, is record heavy dew-fall

Quad-bike Safety

The wowsers are at it again.
In today's Dominion a Wellington Coroner blasts authorities for a lack of action mandating helmets, lap belts, and roll bars on all quad bikes.
The article then goes on to say the latest fatality of the 122 over the last 10 years, had never ridden a quad bike before.....,
So help me...
Some time ago I saw a statistic that went something like 46% of all such fatalities were attributable to inexperience, as in, mostly townies either visiting their country cousins, or sampling the work-style for the first time.
Such is the bain of my life, all these young smart-arses who think working on a farm comprises 100% blatting around at speed, eager to unleash their prowess on the machine, getting to and between jobs quick az, more important than actually knuckling down and doing something.
Furthermore, a bloke needs the BNZ behind him to keep the machinery up to it.

I agree with Benny Bennetts, and Bill Grice, CEO SuzukiNZ, correspondents in the latest Farmer Weekly, who say all that suggested extra gear won't make quads safer.
Where on earth that next letter comment came from about the father and son coming off their Suzuki quad within the same week, I dunno. Seems more like a congenital mental deficiency to me, wasn't there a lesson could've been learnt from the first accident?
I've had Suzuki quads for over 10 years, my current Eiger, (one of the initial run), has done nearly 30k of sterling and reliable work, in all conditions, on all surfaces and slopes and angles, no problem.

If this stuff ever gets enacted, any visiting OSH inspector will need to be sure of catching me on a good hair day.
And if they do make an example of me over it, I might just go back to a horse.
Try putting a lap-belt and roll-bar on that.
Or maybe for a change of vocation I might try being a Coroner.
Over in America, coroners are the subject of local elections, like the sherriff. Over there you can ride a motorcycle on the open road, in a T-shirt, without a helmet, just like we've done for years on farms here.
Just one important qualification to add.....
I rarely exceed 20kph on my quad, around the pace of a trotting dog.

ps. an interesting observation...
The maori part-timers I employ, to a man, (and woman), aren't smitten with the same machinery/boss abuse syndrome their pakeha counterparts display when given a quad to manage.
Its like they're chuffed at being given the responsibility, plus some intrigue at what the machine can do.
Or maybe they're just copying the Boss.