FREE DAY!!! Today we had the entire day to do whatever we wanted to do in the Christchurch area. Since the forecast was 77 and sunny basically everyone decided to go to the beach; Sumner Beach on the Pacific Ocean. A bunch of us caught the 9:17 metro bus into the City Centre and then transfered to go to Sumner. As we got into town it had begun to rain a littl but we could tell that it was just going to rain for about 30 minutes and then blow over so our day was not ruined.
Got to Sumner at about 10:30 and it was still drizzling a little bit so we went to Joe's Garage and got some coffee and something to nibble on. After that we headed to the beach, laid our towels out and soak up the sun for awhile before attempting to learn how to surf at 1:00 pm. It was literally the perfect day to be at the beach. Sun shinning, a light breeze blowing, perfect temperatures, and good company.
At 1:00 pm Katie, Kinsey, LaNae, Kathleen, Sidney, Dustin, and I walked down the beach a little ways to learn how to surf; or attempt to at least. It was quite fun getting into the salty ocean and crashing through the waves. My eyes were burning soooo bad from all of the salt and I could feel my face frying even though I had put on quite a bit of sunscreen. We were given full body wetsuits thankfully because the water was chilly and it saved us from a nasty sunburn. As I mentioned, I "attempted" to learn to surf. It is not an easy task jumping to a standing position and keeping your balance on an ever changing surface. I was able to get up a few times even though I wouldn't say I actually rode a wave in but it sure was fun at least laying on the board and being brought in that way!
I did that for about 3 hours and let Reece and Nate use my board to attempt to surf. They both got up of course! But they have done a lot more water sports than I have so understand the water balance. After that the three of us headed to find the rest of the group so the boys could get some more cash for food. As we walked down the beach, we could not find the group. Poor Reece, walked onto the boardwalk and smoked his foot on a nail sticking about a half inch up and gave himself a nasty wound on the bottom of his foot that was bleeding everywhere! Some nurses came to the rescue and Reece and Nate headed to the hospital in just their swim trunks since we had not found their bags yet! About 4 hours later they finally arrived back at LU and he was all bandaged up and was walking on it!
That evening I joined a bunch of people just hanging in the hallway of our dorm joking around and later visited Grant and we were going through all of his iTunes listening to music, including some old country and 80's music since we had been missing music because it isn't really played while we are out and about.
DAY 9
8:00 am, 30 of us were on the bus heading to Silver Fern Farms sheep processing plant. I have been to several beef slaughter and processing facilities but have never seen a sheep butchered except for in my ASCI 210 Animal Products class online where I watched it done in a 1970's video. It was a really interesting tour! They basically do every aspect; slaughter, processing, wool, pelts for leather, everything! It is a rather large plant and pretty sure we walked about every foot of the place but I love how they allow us to get right up there and see how it is done. Only about 5% of the meat produced in the plant stays in the domestic market, the rest is sent to Europe and Asia.
That afternoon, Grant Pearson, the Technical Innovation Manager of Silver Fern Farms, joined us back at LU to expand on what he and the Innovation Team have been doing. Silver Fern Farms focuses more on the food industry (retail/restaurant and importers) giving the mottp "Inspirational food created by passionate people." They help working with consumers on cooking techniques for their sheep, deer, and beef products. The company has 23 farms in NZ and is made up of 16,000 partners.
As for the Innovation Team, their main areas of work have been in:
(1) Traceability
(2) Meat Yield Measurement - an x-ray system that is the only operation utilizing such a system
(3) Meat Yield Improvement
(4) Meat Quality Measurement
(5) Automation and Control - showed videos of robots doing the process, crazy to think of that being the future!
(6) Value Chain from pasture to plate
(7) Farm IQ - farm management system
Their strategy is surrounded in value chain development, focus on quality, and application of technology.
Next, we heard from Chris Hutchison about beekeeping. It is a rather large industry in NZ both for leisure and commerically. Honey bees play a crucial role in the production of more than a 1/3 of the world's food. He pulled up a quote by Albert Einstein that "If bees disappear, mankind will only have 4 more years to live." The honey bee has been faced with many threats including disease, mites (especially the Varroa), pesticides, Colony Collapse Disorder, and another he added is the "dirty" bee keeper. Bee keepers can act quite unethically, switching out bee frames and spreading a disease or mite, stealing boxes of bees, etc. The behavior and attitude of the keeper has interested him and is where he has started doing some research on. He wants to know how the bee keeper may be contributing to the threat and how the attitude can be changed. The Queen of the Sun is a movie about honey bees and the issues that they are facing. It'd be interesting to watch this and learn more about it.
The biology of bees is interesting. There is the worker bee. Unmated, infertile female that hatches in 16 days and maintains the essential functions of the hive (cleaning, comb building, feeding, foraging, storing, producing wax and honey, etc). There can be 60,000+ in one hive!
The queen bee is a highly developed, mated, fertile female. There is only 1 per colony and their lifespan is determined by their fertility. Once their time is up, the workers kill her off or exile her out.
Drones are the males that are produced from unfertile eggs so they do not have a father. They are the bums of the hive because they can't do anything themselves. They have to be fed, cleaned, warmed, etc. by the workers and only mate with the queen. In the end, bees are really fascinating creatures! The honey they produce tastes different depending on the pollen they eat. In NZ, the most popular are white clover and manuka.
To end the afternoon, Warwick Scott visited with us about arable farming. 2/3 of NZ cash crops (wheat, barely, maize, and oats) is grown in the central plains of Canterbury. They also produce herbage seeds (ryegrass, white clover, cocksfoot, tall fescue, and lucerne) which after combined provide grazing for livestock. Ryegrass is probably one of the best feedstuffs for dairy. The processed crops, so vegetables are combined and then processed for frozen, freeze dried, or canned food. These crops are always irrigated.
Forage crops are used to supplement their pastures, especially during the winter months. Green feeds (oats, ryecorn, barley, short rotation ryegrass) are high-quality source fed during late pregnancy to early lactation. Then, winter feeds called brassicas (suedes, turnips, and kale) are the field the dairy spend their winter months on. They are never harvested by the farmers just the cows. The farmer moves the fence a few feet further every day for the cattle to graze. Very different type of crop farming over here.
After supper, the group played a friendly game of touch Rugby. A complicated game for us football loving Americans. I came down with my lovely annual beginning of the year cold yesterday so decided I'd just take pictures instead.
I got to do a little Skyping with family and friends before we head out for our 9 day tiki tour across New Zealand. The map below shows the route in white and the major stops circled in red. We will be seeing some ancient ruins, hiking Fox Glacier, going for a cruise in the Milford Sound, bungy jumping and skydiving (not me) in Queenstown, visitng deer, sheep and dairy farms in the Southland near Te Anau, stopping at Lake Tekapo and back to Christchurch! I will have very limited access to internet on this adventure so you may just have to wait till I get back to LU to hear all about it!!!
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