Dutch Auction

With a plane delay out of Edinburgh, I was pleased I had decided to stop near Amsterdam my first night in order to go to FloraHolland, the famous flower auction, early the next morning. But first to get my wheels!

A Citroen SoChic D3 - automatic, to facilitate smoother driving on the wrong side of the road. Via messenger our family has had much debate about a suitable name - winning so far is Romain, said with a hearty French accent! My suitcase does fit in the boot, it is comfortable to drive, but not so good at 130kmph, the maximum on motorways here. I've leased it from new - with only 6km on the clock, so it will be interesting to see how high I can get it in a bit under a month!

The Flower Auction is quite something - with an emphasis on speed there is constant movement of buckets of flowers on 2-tiered trolleys from the moment of sale to the correct trucking firm for the buyer - some via tracks in the floor, some via long trains and some in wee batches. Covering 22 football fields this is no smll feat!

Those of you that know me well will be able to imagine my delight when I spotted a line of roses from Kisima, the diverse farm business on the slopes of Mt Kenya that I visited in March, on the auction screen... it had me smiling for days! Believe me, the auction happens so fast and I was only in the room displaying the 12 concurrent auctions for a few minutes, so I took it gladly as a divine gift.

I've visited a good range of Dutch dairy operations in my time here, including helping at both a 4 stall robot milking barn and a 6-aside double up herringbone.

It is interesting how different the rhythm is at these year round calving systems - in a day you may pick up a freshly calved cow, treat any sick, inseminate those on heat, all within the confines of the multipurpose barn. In New Zealand all the cows are largely doing the same things at the same time, so the rhythm has more intense (and longer lasting!) peaks. Robotic milking has had a large uptake here, accounting at one time for about 40% of new installations. However there is a bit of a dulling of enthusiam by some in the face of the maintenance required (the farm I was on had a repair person out that day!) and the implications of down time on milk production, some going so far as to replace the robots with a herringbone or rotary. Those still keen not to have do the physical act of milking choose to work with these drawbacks regardless - and of course the robots take up much less space in the barn.
With the huge population and the ever near presence of consumers, some are choosing to add value to their dairy production in a variety of ways - organics, cheese making and on-farm sales, farm tours, a maize maze, milk and yogurt sales, combining grants for nature areas with grazing incentives - and probably more I didn't come across!

My time in the province of Groningen was a highlight - I stayed with Annechien ten Have and her family, who run a pork breeding and finishing operation. They have responded to both price and animal welfare pressures by working with consumers, supermarkets and knowledge institutes to experiment with and establish 'friendlier' settings for both the farrowing sows and the weaners. We saw their free farrowing stalls and toys and hard floor space for the finishers.

Next is a drive to substitute imported soy (needed for protein in the feed) with lupins grown on a separate sandier block of land. Getting buy in from retailers and processors to market this well is an important part of the process. I was fortunate to experience delectably cooked lupine pig (I'd refer you to the Facebook page, but it is Dutch... check it out if you like!) with the ten Have's and a group of Aussies that I intersected with there! In fact this may be a theme - I ran into a fellow travelling Aussie Nuffielder at another host a few days later!

Also while in the northern province of Groningen Annechien took us to two outlet for the water system - one purely a sluice gate (but that only operates when the tide is low enough for the water to flow in the right direction!) and one a giant pumphouse. We also got to try the traditional raw herrings - I confess to only eating a piece, not the whole thing as the locals enjoy!

Nowadays you don't see too many of the traditional windmills that used to do this job, but when you do, in this extremely flat landscape, often with water in canals sitting much higher than the surrounding land, you know exactly where you are!

Speaking of hills, I don't believe I really saw any - apart from the overbridges within the excellent road system!

Having seen the water system in practice we were also given an hour with a gentleman from the water board, explaining how it all works and the significant measures they have put in place to avoid (or manage) major flooding events.

This was excellent as the water boards are among the oldest institutions in this country and their function is what allows this place to thrive. I didn't realise how recently or how extensively land has been reclaimed from the sea here, but this country is now much bigger than is once was - it won't grow any more however as the EU has put a stop to any further reclamation. The ultimate accountability of the governments of Europe to the EU drives a lot of discussion about structures, rules and activities here.
I just have to tell you about my 'spare day' - I spent it at the Open Air Museum at Arnhem - a huge park where buildings have been relocated and settings recreated. Despite a huge attendance (it was a lottery ticket bonus day I discovered!) I felt unharried roaming around the old farm houses, a church, a dairy factory etc etc. Wonderful insight to how people, especially farmers (or maybe that's just what I noticed most!), lived and worked in the past. A new view of working from home ensues when you see how seamlessly the animal stalls, weaving looms, mills etc merge with dining, cooking and sleeping spaces. I'm not too sure how the claustrophobic coped with the wee sleeping cupboards many had.

And now I'm unexpectedly heading home, typing this in Melbourne Airport... joining my family as they reflect on the life and passing of Ross's mum on Monday. A last minute booking with Etihad will have me home on Thursday, with the current plan to return for my car and proceed to Brittany early next week.

Scottish Roots

Firstly let me just say: I have already written most of this while sitting waiting in Edinburgh Airport for a fight delayed about 2 hours... but my technology has let me down this time. Ah well. Let's see how the words flow second time round!
I've discovered a few things here in the UK... One is that the pasture-based farmers are a pretty tight knit bunch - where ever they are in the UK they all seem to know one another, and may have even been to each other's farms. This network meshes with the Nuffield one very nicely too I've found - or maybe it is just the people that Tom Phillips suggested I connect with (thanks Tom).

I've discovered that many of the soils here are comparable to some of the wettest ones we have in NZ - rushes growing thickly on sloped ground and the earth kind of spongy underfoot, though the farmers are saying it is relatively dry at the moment!
Working the various subsidies and grants available is seen by some as one of the farm's 'enterprises' (while they remain available), and by some as a means to be an 'existence farmer' (not my words!).
And I've discovered that a phone call from the right person does what google and third party emails couldn't achieve (not really a 'discovery', more something I've been grateful for)!
Finally I discovered a landscape that was home to some of my forebears, albeit only for a couple of generations.
Let me expand on a couple of these discoveries.

Piltanton Burn, Galloway Coast

I was very keen to speak with people involved with a voluntary farmer initiative to improve water quality in a catchment in Galloway, southwest Scotland. As I said, my emails and those of some handy third parties, even by the day I had planned to drive to that region, had yielded no response. I thought of not going - it is quite a loop if there was to be noone there to talk to! A farmer I had visited the day before had given a contact of his near the area, but I hadn't got hold of him yet. I calmly set off from my last England stop, hoping for phone reception (not that great in the UK after all) and replies.

Bonus hospitaity - with a view

I called the unknown contact and was richly rewarded by both the offer of a place to stay and an assurance he could talk to the farmer I was after from the catchment programme! I had also just got from another third party (a contact of an earlier host) the phone number of the the consultant. I was away! I drove north happily knowing I would at least get to do some of what I had wanted!
I experienced the full 'dead stopped' on the M6 - after about 20 min we slowly started moving - only to be directed to the off-ramp and sent off onto the wondrous country roads of England. Following my nose (and quite a ot of other traffic, I admit!) I made it safely back to the next on-ramp and carried on my way! Tick that experience off!
Dumfies and Galloway was drizzling with a typical scotch mist hugging the slopes and rolling into the bay. I was reminded of the nick name I had at high school. The ones that thought they knew such things labelled me either scotch mist or haggis on the strength of the surname McCabe. Little did they know that McCabe is really an Irish name - I never told, in case the joking would be worse!
This reminded me further of the family research I had done a couple years earlier on the Ancestry website - Peter and Mary McCabe had left Ireland for Scotland during the potato famine... hadn't they lived somewhere in Ayrshire, the next county, and where I was to stay after Galway?
I was to stay in New Cumnock... the family tree said the McCabes were in Strathave, not too far away. But lo and behold, my great great grandmother, who married Peter and Mary's son had been born in, you guessed it, New Cumnock!

The River Nith, that 'the Irish dug'

Robert Burns lived and wrote at New Cumnock

It was quite surreal driving into the area. a place of big, but not sharp hills, forestry, farming, wind energy and mining. I know my forebears here would have been very poor - what would their lives have been like?
My hosts in New Cumnock described it (before hearing my great great gramndma was born there) as 'not very salubrious'. They also talked of the Irish labourers that had helped dig the river channel below the farm out of what was a swamp - and built the railway, on wool bales they say to help keep it from sinking.
I indulged in a detour through Strathaven on my way to Edinburgh on Saturday. A pretty wee town, compete with castle ruins - again a place of industrial revolution action - mining and milling. Though no McCabes would have had cash for a headstone, or perhaps even a proper grave site, it was interesting to roam through the graveyard.

The oldest headstones went back into the 1700's and the site includes 'martyr's graves' - the 'Covenanters' who had resisted the government's interference with their reformed religion. This would be an interesting place to know more of the history! Maybe another time...
To complete my stay in Edinburgh I had a double treat - staying with my lovely cousin and her equally lovely family for two nights near the city's heart, and having Mo, lately of DairyNZ, come all the way up from Worcester for breakfast and a roam around Edinburgh Castle.

Actually the other treat, Fiona assured me, was the glorious day in which to enjoy it all (it isn't always like that they say!).
Onto the land of tulips and windmills next...

South West England - Phase 3 Nuffield underway

Day 5 in the UK!
Already I've done a few miles ( and they are miles here of course!).
I've had some adventures already too... Sadly some of them are the result of having left something behind.
One noteworthy adventure comprised driving a rental car from near Victoria Station in London, with just a small scale map, willingness to have ago and hope...

The GPS I should have had, as I had carefully already purchased a local sim card, with data, was back at the Farmer's Club, where I'd stayed my first night.
I found myself driving through the park surrounding Buckingham Palace ... where something as vulgar as road signs seemed to have been deemed unnecessary! Just as I was coming to the conclusion I'd have to stop & reexamine the map, or even ask directions, a chain store name caught my eye . I'd seen this before - though I may have done so anywhere. Looking around further I spotted a road sign I recognised. I knew how to get where I wanted to from there!
I got my phone back - but I'm sorry to say that already I have left something else behind... I'll say no more about that right now...

South West England is beautiful. Devon with steeper, more frequent hills and Cornwall softly rolling . Both prettily patchworked at present - golden harvest and green pastures - fields all defined by the characteristic hedges, little seen in N. Z.
The tight high-walled lanes pose a challenge to the uninitiated.

 I'm glad one of my hosts pointed out that despite the soft leafy appearance they are very unforgiving, generally with a rockwall base hiding behind the bushes. Never choose to swipe the hedge in the face of a tight squeeze... Politeness carries the day, with someone always willing to wait or pull into a wee hint of a layby. Its actually far higher adrenaline than my previous sentence conveys... but again, enough said!
Stock disease features high in farmers' conversations. TB is very topical, as many of you on Twitter may know. But the legacy of both BSE and Foot & Mouth still drive choices today.
I'm grateful N.Z. farmers haven't experienced such a scale of stock disease to date.

Interesting, in discussing my topic of farmers' responses to limits, I've noticed that the same "limit" can be described differently, depending on the person's perception of the impact of meeting that limit.

Gorse is a menace here too, if not controlled by burning and stock pressure

Good winter grazing coming up under skeletal gorse remains.

Heathered stage of the moorland cycle.

Tomorrow I head north ... and into Bonnie Scotland on Wednesday

South Africa to Conclude

Hi folks
Well although I am already home in NZ I am adding my final GFP blog to cover my time in South Africa - for completeness - and because there is plenty to say about our time there too :)
Unfortunately being there over the Easter and the following week meant it was more difficult to arrange visits than normal, being a traditional holiday period. Arriving late on the Saturday of Easter, a hardy few nonetheless got up early on Sunday for a trek up Table Mountain. The plan was to walk up and then get the cable car back down. The clouds did lift, but the wind did not let up - so much so that the cable cars weren't running and we had to turn around and trek down again. Talk a bout a step workout! As with my last blog, I encourage you to check my facebook posts from this country, which I have made public.

 This is one ruggedly beautiful place, but not for the faint hearted! In fact at times I felt the wind might blow me off the step I had just taken - and on the top walking to the cable car 'station' I was literally blown into a run in one direction - and had to hunch down and march to make progress on the way back. It was exhilarating to not just see, but feel the nature of the place. Wild proteas and geraniums were among the low but colourful plants that grow there - trees cannot withstand the wind! Ross reminded me that the Super 15 rugby team for this place is aptly called The Stormers.

 A visit to a renowned coastal fish and chip shop on the Cape Peninsular for lunch (Kalkies) and a hike between The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point rounded off our 'welcome' day of R&R in South Africa. http://www.sanparks.org/parks/table_mountain/tourism/attractions.php#goodhope

That meant two nights in the same hotel - more handwashing with the hope of getting my stuff dry before wearing it! Apart from the conference, with 7 nights near Reims, France, I averaged 1.5 nights per hotel over 42 days. Interestingly I was away for 51 calendar nights, but only stayed in a hotel, or with Auntie Desrae :), for 48 nights... we must have lost a few days en route to here and there!
Hmmm, I now feel inclined to do a stats table (which did take a while to figure out!):

Item	Count	Notes
Countries stayed in	10	counting a stopover in Sydney on the way home!
Countries visited as part of GFP	6
Hotels stayed in	29
Nights accommodation	48
Calendar nights away	51
Av nights per hotel	1.7	One at 7 nights, one at 5, 17 at 1 night only!
Accommodation provider with a washing machine	2
Flights	12
Hours in planes	70
Hours in airports (approx)	37
Hours in rented vans/cars	Who knows!!
Distance driven	>6,500km
Host farms, organisations, guides	62	on Global Tour only, not at conference
	THANK YOU!

Back to South Africa...
Several of the businesses we visited in the Western Cape region were making genuine efforts to upskill and support their employees. 

For example, a large berry operation has a 5 level education programme, culminating, once the trainees reach 'Platinum', in them becoming business partners, each with their own block of berries and set up as a separate 'share' cooperative. Their berry management too was particularly innovative allowing them to export normally seasonal raspberries all year round to Europe.
Other places we went still had evidence of the traditional racial divide - for example an international award winning supermarket in a wealthy area with solely white customers, and solely black or coloured staff.
I have to mention again the ruggedly magnificent landscape of the cape area - a coastal road we drove along even had the Aussies comparing it favourably to their own Great Ocean Road... it made me think of Panekiri Bluffs at Lake Waikaremoana meeting the Marlborough Sounds. With the easter break and fewer farm visits, on the Easter Monday we did a quad bike ride at a nature reserve - at the highest point we got to look back down over the coast we had driven across and the ranges and valley we had also come over and through... There is always a positive spin on a disappointment!

After 4 nights around Cape Town, we went north again to Gauteng province - staying between Pretoria and Johannesburg for 5 luxurious nights in the same hotel. This one had an attached game farm. My room was in an 'outpost' building, closest to the animals, so I got to hear the lions roaring at anything from 20m away throughout the night! It was quite pleasant having a bit of space and a measure of informality with no dinner guests or hosts on this leg - a couple of nights we just ate casually in the hotel bar for a change.

In this province we didn't get the same sense of mutual support for the ethos of the Rainbow Nation as we had in the cape region. The most positive person we talked to was our tour guide on our last day, taking us around Johannesburg and Soweto, the latter being his (and his parent's) home. I can now say I have visited the only street in the world to be home to two Nobel Prize winners - Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu both having lived on Vilakaze St. I have also eaten cows heads meat from a dodgy stall near the enormous taxi centre - only to be shown later the shopping trolley around the back with the actual cows heads ready for processing... I was fine (see Facebook pictures for this one!).

As tourists here, we saw Soweto as a mixture of vibrant life and the kind of creativity born of desperation - the tiny homes often have additional tin shacks on the not much larger section that are rented out. This makes for a high sprawling population density. On our agenda were two museums - one in Soweto honouring the school protests of 1976 that became known as the Soweto Uprising (Hector Pieterson Museum http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hector-pieterson ) and the other nearer Johannesburg called the Apartheid Museum. The latter included a lot of history and tribute to Nelson Mandela. Did you know that in 1952 he declared he would be the first black president of South Africa... which did not happen until 1994.

This was a pretty emotional day - I think some of the images will remain with me forever, and I didn't live through it. 

The following day we also visited the Voortrekker Monument - a tribute to the tens of thousands of hardy Afrikaners that relocated inland from the cape region through the 1800's and early 1900's.

Agriculture wise, in Gauteng we visited the Department of Agriculture and understood the significance to the country of arriving at a reliable estimate of the annual maize harvest, for the sake of the country's food security. This year has been a drought and they will need to import a significant tonnage. The department is supporting resettlement of land by blacks - in this instance with funding of infrastructure and with training. We visited a horticulture operation that is effectively both agriculture and social service. We met an engaging and extremely humorous woman who is passionate about teaching skills and supporting the large number of HIV  positive staff members they employ. 

It was interesting visiting a crop breeding company working with international support on a project called WEMA - Water Efficient Maize for Africa. This is a public-private partnership extending across 5 countries. http://wema.aatf-africa.org/ 

The local lead for this project gave us his time and insights - the key one for me being about the 'science and art' of plant breeding, which is something we often talk about more widely in agriculture. He talked about the statistics that get calculated during a breeding trial - but that these can be overridden, especially for the sake of quick progress - it is often down to field observations and gut instinct on the part of a talented breeder. 
Our final farm visit was to an efficient cropping under irrigation system. This was capped of with Afrikaner hospitality with a wonderful lunch in our hosts home... and concluding with pigeon shooting near one of the maize fields that is approaching harvest.

We had discovered the evening before that a Super 15 game was being held locally that night in Loftus Versfeld Stadium, Pretoria. Five of us, although a bit late for the start, ventured there to watch the local Bulls defeat the Queensland Reds. It is a great stadium, very close to the action, which was fun. Needless to say there was no audible support for the Reds...

And then it was over. In the airport at Johannesburg we split into two groups bound for two different terminals - 2 for Europe and 6 for Australia. Having shared not only the numbers I've described above, but the challenges of being at close quarters with people that were previously strangers, the wonderful hospitality of many, the delights of new experiences and the insights of each other along the way it was sad to say goodbye. One of those bittersweet things, with everyone still ready to be homeward bound.

For me it is back to my family, back to DairyNZ, and setting things up in readiness for the travel I have yet to do to further my study topic of 'producer communities coping with limits'. Plenty on the agenda!

Thanks for keeping up with me thus far :) I plan to pick up on this blog once I head overseas again - watch this space!