A harvest of farmers

I watched Heston Blumental’s “Feasts” series recently and was surprised to learn that the lamprey fish is still being caught and eaten in fair sized quantities by Latvians. The lamprey was an ‘olde English’ delicacy though given it is an ugly sucker mouthed eel like fish it is hard to see why. Latvians seem to eat it washed down with fruit brandy in large quantities. Henry I of England died in 1135 from blood poisoning after eating too many lampreys. Henry I also had 20 acknowledged illegitimate children and was buried at Reading Abbey so perhaps he had it coming to him.

Pre Heston all I knew about lampreys that the collective noun for a group of lampreys was a ‘surfeit’ (because of poor Henry I) and the title of a detective novel by Kiwi Ngaio Marsh. Marsh wrote 32 detective novels between 1934 and 1982 and ‘A Surfeit of Lampreys’ was published in 1941. Sadly I have read none of them although I have the SofL somewhere at home in its original Penguin detective ‘green’.

Still it started me thinking about collective nouns and not the usual flock (sheep), herd (cows) or school (fish) nor even a pride (lions), murder (crows) or mob (kangaroos) but the really obscure, funny or made up collective nouns.

Here’s a small sample:

A pitying of doves

A band of jays

A plump of moorhen

A parliament of owls

A company of parrots

An unkindness of ravens

A host of sparrows

A cloud of bats

A coalition of cheetahs

A skulk of foxes

A leash of greyhounds

A bloat of hippopotami

A fall of lambs

A richesse of pine martens

A prickle of porcupines or echidnas

A sneak of weasels

A stuck of jellyfish

A glide of flying fish

An army of frogs

A shrivel of critics

A body of pathologists

A palette of artists

A box of cricketers

A break of winds

A jam of tarts

A shower of meteorologists

A harvest of farmers

The Big Things in Life

You would think that the “Big Thing” phenomenon would be American through and through but curiously it seems very Australian. Originally built as tourist attractions or as advertising for a regional product they have become anachronistic and, frankly, a little tawdry. Amazingly there are over 145 big items in Australia, that is, 7 big things for every 1 million Australians. Quite bizarre isn’t it?

Stranger still, I have seen quite a few and after researching the topic a little further discovered I had seen a few more that I had never realised were “big”!

So, here is a list of my sightings; Cheese (Bodalla), Apple (Yerrinbool), Pavlova (Marulan), Banana (Coffs Harbour), Merino (Goulburn, of course, and in its present and old locations), Trout (Adaminiby), Pineapple (Gympie), Barramundi (Cairns), Bottles (Mangrove Mountain), Boot (really?) (Rozelle), Dinosaur (Diplodocus?) (Somersby), Prawn (Ballina), Shell (Tewantin), Mushroom (Belconnen) and, my favourite, the big potato at Robertson in the Southern Highlands.

For years I had driven past this monument to local agricultural business and thought it was a bus shelter or scout hut that the local town planner had allowed to be built because he or she had been having a very bad day , had been drinking or had a very special and peculiar sense of humour.

I had thought maybe it was a ‘big’ something but I was leaning toward the ‘big turd’ rather than potato. I wonder whether there is a ‘big turd’ somewhere in Australia? Perhaps on Pooh Corner at Dunedoo? The town exists. I made Pooh Corner up though it would be nice if the council did rename a street corner after Winnie, whose middle name is “the”….

The problem with the big ‘potato’ is that brown, stippled and moulded concrete creates a visual ambiguity and I am sure that I was not alone in my view. One thing I will say though is that I have never seen one speck of graffiti on this monument to carbohydrate goodness. At least Robertsonians have civic pride if dubious taste in public sculpture.

November 14th Sale coming soon!

Well the sale date is looming large. We have drafted out the top 45 rams and they are now enjoying the oats and alfalfa at Logancrest for a few weeks to get them in top condition and weight. While the feed is better the longer grass and recent rain (very welcome though it is) have caused some foot scour. Easily treated but not what you want a few weeks out from the sale. Next job is to get them weighed and drafted one to forty so they can be tagged and the catalogue completed ready for the big day.

All the advertising is booked so there will be advertisements and editorials in the Crookwell Gazette, Town & Country and The Land. Maybe there is a touch too much but we'd rather people knew the sale was on than forget about it. Anecdotally quite a bit of interest again so we can't wait to see what Osiris and Hermes first progeny fetch at auction.

See you there!

Cucina povere!!

Under the shearing shed there was a large clump of stinging nettles. We don't have much of it at the farm so strangely enough it was an exciting find. Picking the leaves with gloves on and using BBQ tongs was easy enough and no stings which is a first.

Nettles can be eaten when they're young, as is done in many parts of Europe. Nettles are high in nutrients such iron, magnesium and nitrogen. Cooking or drying neutralises the toxic components, and nettles can be used as a tea or in soup, blanched for a salad or even added to pizza. We cooked the leaves with some young spinach and beetroot leaves and tomato sugo and served with pasta. Delicious and free!! 

"Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica and the closely related Urtica urens) has a long medicinal history. In medieval Europe, it was used as a diuretic (to rid the body of excess water) and to treat joint pain.

Stinging nettle has fine hairs on the leaves and stems that contain irritating chemicals, which are released when the plant comes in contact with the skin. The hairs, or spines, of the stinging nettle are normally very painful to the touch. When they come into contact with a painful area of the body, however, they can actually decrease the original pain. Scientists think nettle does this by reducing levels of inflammatory chemicals in the body, and by interfering with the way the body transmits pain signals.

General Uses

Stinging nettle has been used for hundreds of years to treat painful muscles and joints, eczema, arthritis, gout, and anemia. Today, many people use it to treat urinary problems during the early stages of an enlarged prostate (called benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH), for urinary tract infections, for hay fever (allergic rhinitis), or in compresses or creams for treating joint pain, sprains and strains, tendonitis, and insect bites." from the University of Maryland Medical Centre website

Moving Imagery

Riverline pause 2011 by Kaye Mahoney

Kaye Mahoney: Moving Imagery

6 - 29 October 2011 at the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery

"Kaye Mahoney’s Moving Imagery presents her vision of the timeless, infinite and energetic possibilities of worlds we inhabit, discover or create.  Drawing from both musical and visual compositional strategies to create images that allude to a sight/sound synesthesia, Moving Imagery is in tune with much that is embedded at a fundamental level in nature, physics and biology, centering on consciousness and reflection and evoking the elemental phenomena of life: air, water, sound, light and energy.  The show includes major works on canvas, seminal and current works on Perspex and video, and an installation titled “Library of Human/Nature.

Opening Saturday 8 October @ 2pm by Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA Floor Talk Thursday 13 October @ 12.30pm  by Kaye Mahoney"

Strongly urge everyone to get along to the GRAG to see Kaye's new show - beautiful and moving images. I'll be there for the floor talk and will add some more notes after that.

  
 

Marking Lambs....all day thankfully!

Since posting about our lambing strategy it has been a very busy September up to two days ago when we marked all our new lamb arrivals. From 114 Border Leicester ewes we marked 160 lambs, 80 ewes and 80 rams. There are still a couple of ewes yet to lamb.

It is an outstanding result - lambing percentage of 140% as predicted and our best season yet.

The 49 Merino ewes produced 33 lambs, 17 rams and 16 first cross ewes. About half a dozen yet to lamb so we will get about 80% which is not too bad. Others in our area have fared less well this year. We probably ensured the Border Leicesters had the better paddocks, greater protection and more hands-on attention. Certainly the alpacas Zing and Zeno and the Foxlights helped.

The Borders are out on the crop to get as good a start as possible. The flock rams to be sold November 14th (is it really that soon?) are on the other crop and will get a spell on the lucerne prior to moving to Logancrest for a month of pre sale acclimatisation. They will get ELMS vitamin licks and as much oats and clover as they can eat. 

We averaged 74kg per ram last year and we should better that this year as they are growing fast as you can see below.

Lots to organise before the sale and we hope to equal or better last year's success.

The Shearer's Life

I would recommend reading "The Shearer's Motel" by Roger MacDonald for an account of how tough the shearer's job really is. Also Ray Sherman's "The Shearing Life in Australia" for some great stories and photographs. I have written about shearing before but there was an interesting front page article in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year.

The SMH article by Debra Jopson highlighted the toughness of the job and the nationwide shortage of good shearers. In 2006 the census counted only 4,173 shearers and they have to shear about 70 million sheep in a year - that's almost 17,000 each and at $2.50 a sheep makes $42,500 income per annum. Not much for some of the fittest athletes in the world. Of course the best shearers will earn $80 - 100,000 pa and good on them!

The Dubbo TAFE trainer observed that shearers now do warm up and down exercises and have training regimes to protect against injuries and prolong their careers. I can see the day when our local shearers are regular visitors to our planned yoga studio to learn some techniques to improve their core strength and flexibility and some ways to destress that don't involve a hundred beers. Not such a stretch when you consider most of the football players they watch every weekend are probably already using yoga in their training regimes.

Perhaps we will open the first yoga retreat in the Goulburn area and have a shearer's night once a month with prana, kirtan, asana, mudra and meditation followed by light beers and karma yoga in the shearing shed?