Kapiti Island at Dusk

Photo of Kapiti Island that I took as I was driving to Palmerston North.

For sale now at PhotoSalesNZ choose from a range of ways that this photo is printed.

By searching through the New Zealand Birth, Death and Marriage Historical Records, I managed to track down the marriage certificate of my step-grandfather’s (Pop) mother and father.

I have a photo of Pop and her mother together, and I knew that they owned a farm in the Wairarapa, but that’s about it. While away in England, Mum said that Pop’s family came from an area not far from Barrow-in-Furness where Mum’s family came from. So I ordered a copy of the certificate.

I was very excited when it came. It confirmed that both my step-great-grandfather and step-great-grandmother where born in Northern England, but also, a surprising discovery that my step-great-grandfather was a widower when he married.  There may be more family out there to discover!

What I do dislike about NZ genealogy though, is the inability (that I have discovered so far) to search relased census records online, like you can in the UK.  Makes it all a little bit more tricky to track down those allusive family members.  I need to work out how to do this… I do like online reserach better than traipsing down to the archives.

Current Mood: chipper

I know I haven’t been updateing lately.  This is mostly due to the fact that I have not had much time to do anything.

So here’s a general update…

It’s my last day of work!!!!

Today will be several going away times at each of my work settings, and I have made flax baskets for them.  I have to admit, the last three that I made are much better than the first two. I got the hang of it now.

Tonight I will be accompanied by the other Early Years Teachers and say farewell at a place called Giraffe.  I have no idea where it is. I’m sure it won’t be too hard to find though.

Tomorrow we have our farewell party at our place, where about 10 guests are coming (thanks guys).

Sunday I will have afternoon tea with one of my work colleagues, followed by her daughter (out landlady) coming to show tennants through the apartment. Great, so that means it has to be clean *sigh*

Our boxes for packing have arrived, and we are slowly starting to pack. Our apartment is starting to look bare already, and we’ve only packed 1 box full, and 2 half full so far.  We haven’t tackled the bedroom yet though.

I leave on Thursday at 10:15pm (or something like that) from Heathrow, and I fly Bankok, Sydney, Wellington. I think.  No stopping – we don’t have enough money for that. I get in at 2pm on Saturday.  Amber and Kylie are going to be meeting me at the airport, then I will go to Ants’s Mum’s for a little while, then I suspect I will crash and sleep.  Dinner will be Hell’s pizza followed by a few drinks in town. Anyone in Welly that night, I expect you’ll be out to say hello.  Have no idea where yet, suggestions are always welcome   I intend to make use of my backwards bodyclock.

After Sunday I will go to Palmy North for the night, and on Monday my parents will pick me up on their way home from Napier.  The following weekend, I will be in New Plymouth for a few drinks and catch up, so all those in the Naki, I expect you to come out and say hello.

Then I will be back in Wellington to meet Anthony, and it will be his 31st birthday that weekend.

Ants will leave London the Wednesday after I leave, and treck through to Gencon Indy – his thing that he wants to do at least once in his life, then He gets flys into Welly on the 19th August at 10am. I suspect it will be home to his mothers after that, and sleeps for him.

I am going to be applying for a job in Rotorua as a maternity cover manager.  I’m really excited about this post, as my friend works with the manager and told me about it. It couldn’t have come at a better time either.  I do have to sit down and do my CV however – that takes time.  The plan is that I will live with said friend for the 4-6 months left (the jobs been advertised for at least 2 months or so now, and they have not had good applicants) and I suspect Ants will live at his mothers.  Living at home and saving will hopefully be awesome enough we can save that money we wanted for house and wedding! Living in Rotorua for a little while will be great too, because I will be able to go up and see my brothers in some of the weekends, and visit my little niece that I haven’t met.

So, that’s our plans in a box.

Current Mood: chipper

Things I’m sad about that I’m leaving in England

• My friends that I’ve made
• Not being able to travel to all those European places
• My lovely flat by the canal, and watching the houseboats go up and down it
• Not finishing or getting as far as I wanted with my genealogy
• The public transport which is so easy and convenient
• The good shopping
• The good internet, phone, and cellphone services

Things I’m happy about leaving in England

• Rude people – and so many of them
• Smelly
• Weather
• The tube
• The terrible education system
• Having to walk with our groceries on our backs
• The terrible customer service, and consumer rights
• Poor pay for EC teachers

Things I’m happy I will see in NZ

• Seeing all my old (but loved) friends and family
• Sleeping in my old bed at Mum and Dads
• My wonderful pillow that I left in a box
• Seeing my mountain
• Seeing Wellington harbour
• Having my cat back (if I can steal him from my sister)
• House hunting
• Car hunting
• Starting a business in the near future
• Wedding

Things I’m not happy I will see in NZ

• The price of food
• Definitely the price of internet, phone and cellphone services (we’ve looked them up already)
• The inconvenient public transport
• ummm
• arrrrrr
• can’t think of anything else

Current Mood: amused

Ants and I are dog-sitting for our South African friends Nelia and Danie. They’ve got a nice wee garden, and their apartment is small, but big enough. Their dogs are Miniature Schnauzers and are super cute, super cuddly, and super energetic. They’re both such good dogs (sisters from the same litter) and loving as well.  Think I’s in love

In other news, Ants and I have our tickets booked. I fly into Wellington 2pm, 8th Aug. I will stay at Ambers overnight, (well over day as I sleep) and probably go out on that night. On Sunday I have to find someway up to Taranaki to my parents place. Not quite sure how to go about that just yet. Need to speak to them.  Then I’ll be in the Naki until Ants gets home.  Then it will be hunting for flats/houses/ whatever comes our way!

So, party on that Saturday the 8th in Welly yeah?

Current Mood: bouncy

Anthony and I went through our budget last night and neither of us realised just how bad it was.  Despite applying for everything possible, Ants has been out of work for 16 weeks. Then I didn’t get the job which means I can’t expect to get paid for 16 weeks of the year for holidays (and schools don’t open, which means no chance of work).

So, the decision is, if Ants doesn’t get a decent paying job by the end of June, we’ll be leaving when our 6-month break clause comes up for this flat.

I’m mixed with emotions about coming home.  I miss New Zealand.  I miss the work environment (even with all the politics) and I miss the job security.  Working in the schools here really just isn’t my thing, day care is where I’m comfortable.  The thing I will be sad about is not having done all the travelling we wanted to do.  I would love to see Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland and Scotland (and my friend Rowan who lives up there) before we leave, but it’s just not going to happen, because doing a trip out and about will kill what we have left of our bank account (and we do aim to come home with some money, which is why we’re thinking of bailing now).

The good thing is we could look at moving up our wedding date, and look at buying a house when the market is relatively good.

I guess more news will come when we’ve made a proper decision. At least at home I’d be able to get paid what I’m worth, with no question of whether my qualifications match (which they do, and they’re better than what is taught here, just people don’t seem to believe me that they match).

Current Mood: anxious

I recieved a package from my Mummy last night. In it were amazing things like pineapple lumps, pinkies, a warm marino vest for Ants (which he Thanks you mum btw – we’ll ring this weekend) AND the best two things of all…

Potato peelers

and Bic pens!!!!

HURRAH FOR DECENT PENS!!!!

Current Mood: cheerful

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz

By DON NICHOLSON

“It wasn’t much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit hole and yet and yet it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!”

Alice In Wonderland is perhaps the best way to present farming in the 21st century. Lewis Carroll, the pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a product of enlightened Victorian society. Carroll, aside from being an author, was a mathematician, logician and even an accomplished photographer. Alice is so multi-faceted and well-constructed that its appeal transcends age and intellectual ability. It is magic, but so too, is farming.

While the late David Lange was a great prime minister, he made one verbal clanger that haunts agriculture to this day the notion that agriculture was somehow a sunset industry. That to build a rich and prosperous economy, agriculture had to be consigned to the history books in favour of, well you see, that’s the point.

This was not a rogue view. We see it echoed in the writings of Rod Oram and his ilk today. Now, deep in the bowels of Treasury and with some commentators, there is a belief that a modern economy cannot be based on the primary production of food.

While loathe to ram the obvious down the throats of an educated readership, 65% of everything we sell to the world comes from the agricultural sector. This contribution comes from just 14% of New Zealand’s population. That’s right, just 14% of New Zealanders generate almost two-thirds of our entire export wealth. This export income helps pay for health, education, social services, police and everything else.

Farmers look at their economic contribution, that for 25 of the last 27 years has outperformed every other part of the economy, and rightly ask “so where the bloody hell are you?” of the other sectors.

That conveniently brings us back to “poor Alice” and why farmers see New Zealand’s economic experimentation over the last three decades as being ordered around by mice and rabbits.

In the 1970s, New Zealand was to become an industrial power under Think Big. Then the country lurched into Rogernomics and a belief we were to become a Switzerland of the South Pacific, until the 1987 crash that is. Under the last government New Zealand discovered IT, the Knowledge Wave and the Growth and Innovation Strategy.

I wonder what happened to them? We’ve tried venture capital with more failures than successes. Tourism has emerged as the new black, but are we really going to transform our economy by employing people at the adult minimum wage?

This brings us back to agriculture. It is the once and future driver of the New Zealand economy. Its potential is limited only by landmass, water storage and policy. While New Zealand can never be a major food producer because of limited land mass, it will always be a major food exporter. We export 95% of what we produce. Federated Farmers also knows of one simple way to boost productivity upwards of 25% storing rainwater when plentiful, to use when it’s in short supply.

This is so obvious and so simple that it escapes the Wonderland logic at play within parts of government. Keeping grass, arable and horticultural crops growing over summer means more export wealth. That’s the problem really. It makes so much common sense that, perversely, it almost becomes a reason not to do it. No, much easier to promote some bright new shiny economic hope than to back agriculture.

As a major agricultural exporter we need to ask ourselves why we are not leading the world in agricultural information technology?

Why we have not incubated a rural financial institution like Holland’s Rabobank? Why we have not emerged as a major exporter of veterinary medicines? There are some notable successes where companies have sprung out of what we do best, but also a catalogue of missed opportunities. The Glaxo in GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company, was founded here in New Zealand with milk processing. In 2000, Fernz, for 80 years a New Zealand company, relocated its head office to Australia and became Nufarm.

To create world-class exporters does not mean copying Finland or the United States, but focusing on what we know and do best. We need an agricultural wave. Farming and farmers give New Zealand a strong future, but this can be much more than it is today, if farmers can retain value on-farm.

All farmers ask for are the policy tools and freedom to get on and farm. All we ask for is for the best brains to look anew at farming and farm-related businesses as a career choice.

All we ask is for a realisation that our future is not in copying another country, but to be uniquely Kiwi and build on what we do best.

This is also about understanding. To that end please visit a farm on Sunday, March 1, as part of Federated Farmers Farm Day. New Zealanders should be proud that farmers produce the best quality food in the world by the most efficient means.

As Alice said, “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” Farming does.

* Don Nicolson is the president of Federated Farmers.

source: http://www.stuff.co.nz

I’m sad the DFenders didn’t get anything.  I was one of their friends that voted lol Read more…

Current Mood: cheerful

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Current Mood: devious & content