Blazing a trail

Farms are the perfect place to learn about science - that’s the message at the heart of a brand new range of recently launched teaching packs created by the NFU.

This new education initiative, linked to the national science curriculum, has been designed in a fun and engaging way to help show youngsters what happens to their favourite ingredients from farm to fork.

To support classroom lessons, teachers will be able to download videos, starring school pupils, under a new Science Farm series.

The videos explain how carrots are produced, the food chain of a school dinner and a sensory trail - exploring the farm with your five senses. Also available to download will be lesson plans and ideas and activity sheets.

NFU deputy president, Minette Batters, says there appears to be a huge lack of knowledge among children of all ages about how and where their food is produced.

“We’re really excited with these new educational digital tools that will allow teachers to provide truly memorable lessons where children will get the opportunity to explore where their food comes from and how it’s grown.

“We believe passionately about educating young people and we feel strongly that food production should be a core part of the national school curriculum. As farmers, it’s not just our job to grow the food that we eat but to engage and reconnect with the public including children. Learning about British food and farming from a young age will ultimately help our future generations make informed choices.

Joshua Payne, the Union’s education manager, tells me: “We’re all really excited about the new Science Farm resources. Farming is such a natural context for so many areas of the Key Stage One science curriculum - children will get to learn about life processes and their own bodies all while discovering about the countryside environment.

“We’ve worked really hard to ensure the activities are hands-on and practical which will hopefully lead to really cementing learners’ scientific understanding.”

Lessons from life

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and listen even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself to others you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your career however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself, especially do not feign affection. Neither by cynical about love; for in the face of all disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture the strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars: you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be; and whatever your labours and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its shame, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Off the deep end!

The Irish Minister for Transport, Shane Ross, has been called upon to immediately suspend proposals to increase the severity of penalties for unaccompanied ‘L’ plate learner drivers.

Deputy Mattie McGrath was speaking after the cabinet agreed to amend the Road Traffic Act to allow for increased fines and confiscation of vehicles, including farm yard and commercial vehicles.

Slamming the proposals, she said: “These proposals are utterly disproportionate and will generate massive amounts of resentment in rural Ireland in particular. If Minister Ross is seriously suggesting a new regime whereby critical farm yard vehicles can be confiscated and the farmer can be jailed, then he has truly gone off the deep end in terms of a detachment from rural life.”

Questioning how Minister Ross intends implementing what Ms McGrath described as a ‘bizarre proposal’ for learner drivers, she labelled the drafts as ‘completely unworkable’ and indicated that it ‘has the potential to ruin farm and working families that are barely surviving as it is.’

The deputy said that many TDs were concerned that such a plan ‘smacks of yet another hair-brained Cabinet initiative,’ adding that it reflects the ‘absolute and increasing rural/urban divide’ at the heart of Government.

Telling farmers that that they can potentially be jailed or that they will have their machinery seized for allowing a son or daughter to drive a tractor across the yard is incredible nonsense.

“What I am proposing is that we find a more proportionate and effective response to the critical and important issue of road safety that does not involve the excessive penalisation of one distinct element of the community, such as farmers and self-employed people,” McGrath concluded.

Holstein UK rings the changes

Holstein UK has announced that Welsh breeder Bryan Thomas will replace Co. Antrim dairy breeder David Perry as the organisation’s next president.

It comes as the organisation - which is the largest independent breed society in Europe - also appoints its new chief executive officer, Sue Cope.

David, Northern Ireland’s third breed society president, began his term at the organisation’s 2017 AGM and is set to stand down in June.

First elected to NI Holstein Friesian Breeders’ committee in 1994, he became vice-president in 1998, and a year later was elected as the first chairman of the then newly-formed Holstein NI Club.

He and his brother Austin milked Dairy Shorthorns before establishing a Holstein Friesian Herd in 1984. Today the pair are best known for their herd - Killane Holsteins - and received Master Breeder status in 2008.

Killane went on to win best small herd, premier section, in Holstein NI’s herd inspection competition in 2011, 2013 and 2014.

However, the milking portion of the herd and selected youngstock were sold in 2015 in a dispersal sale to allow for retirement.

The board of trustees have selected Welsh dairy breeder Bryan Thomas to stand as president elect at the forthcoming AGM.

Bryan, and his wife, Eirlys farm Gelliddu Holsteins in partnership with their son, Gareth, at Cwmffrwdd, near Carmarthen.

Their 250-strong milking herd and 240 followers include 85 ‘Excellent’ classified cows; 126 VG (Very Good) and 24 GP (Good Plus). Over the past 24 months, more than 100 two-year-olds have been classified VG.

The herd has achieved international status with animals sold for export, and bulls sold to AI companies; it has also won milk production awards and gained numerous shows successes - in 2009, the Thomas’s were awarded the ‘Master Breeder Shield’ from Holstein UK.

No short cuts

It is love that makes death so awful. It is the fact that you truly love someone that means you grieve when they have left life behind and left you behind. But it is love that makes death bearable, because genuine love is not diminished by any circumstances and continues after death. Christians believe that it is the love of Jesus that holds these two opposites together.

If you are reading this because you are recently bereaved, these words are written in the sincere hope that you will find them sensitive and sympathetic. Jesus was himself a mourner following the death of his close friend - a man called Lazarus. Like any one of us, he wept. But it is also through Jesus that Christians hold the hope that death is not the end.

Grieving people often go through phases of shock and denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and hope.Everyone goes through this process at a different pace, sometimes seeming to make not progress at all.

Christians suggest that this is a God-given cycle which enables people to be fully human in the way they respond to death. There are no short cuts, even for people with a profound belief in heaven.

The Christian hope is that faith in God can help people to free themselves from being permanently in slavery to the loss they have suffered. It allows people to readjust to the world without the person who has died in it, and to create a context in which new friendships can form.

Grieving people very often seek conversations with Christian leaders or friends. Meeting someone with faith can unlock permission to talk about spiritual concerns.

However, bereaved people are extremely vulnerable. This is no time to manipulate someone into a religious response - they might include doubt, anger with God, or a search for assurance about what lies beyond death. All these are good things to talk about.