The New Zealand Farmer, A Century In Retrospect. Paty 5
It was the pigs that caused World War One.
It may not be known generally that pigs have been a primal factor in bringing about the Great War.
The chief product of Servia is the pig. Servia has practically no outlet to the sea, and the inhabitants of the countries to the south being Mahometans, who have a religious prejudice against pig flesh, she has only Austria - Hungary to look to for a market.
Servia stands in the way of Austria - Hungary’s ambition to reach the Aegean Sea.
When Austria attacked Bosnia and Herzegovina some seven years [1907] ago Servia protested.
The Austrian reply was to close her frontiers to Servian pigs, and the Servians, with their main source of national wealth taken away, were rapidly brought to their knees.
With the powerful buyer continually threatening the weak producer, it is easy to realize the ill-feeling which has always existed between the two countries and to understand how the position was brought to the breaking point.
This commercial friction has contributed largely to promote the war, and the economic factor on the Servia’s side has been the pig.
[Editorial Sept 1915.]
Before the days of vaccines and inoculations, the influenza epidemic of 1918 has brought the horrors of death home to NZ in common and the country districts where the suffering has been greatest and the loss more poignant.
In the city, organized assistance was feasible, and it was generally possible to obtain assistance and advise.
But in the majority of country districts, the settler was left to his own devices, often with tragic consequences.
A case in point was in a main trunk town where a settler, his wife, and two children were down and he could not get any medicine or a doctor, for none were available. He did his best for his wife and children.
One of the children died, he tried to get an undertaker, but could not do so.
He buried the child himself on his own property.
Then the other child died, quickly followed by the wife. He buried them in the same place, and now he himself is expected to succumb.
What a difference inoculations and vaccinations have made to our daily lives today.
Today there is a lot of advertising about the introduction of electric vehicles as if they had found something new.
The photo shows two electric trucks leaving the Rongotea Dairy Factory on their twice daily milk collection run.
The article in 1919 said that at least 6 companies were using electric trucks for this task very successfully.
With the return of the soldiers from the Great War the government had made land available to them and to help they wanted to introduce some farm advisers.
The magazine was all for the idea but considered that the offered salary of 245 pounds [$490] per annum would not attract the ‘right type man’ for the job.
A comparison was made with a plowman, whose outlay at the drapery store and the laundry is reduced to the minimum, but was on the same pay.
Village schoolmasters drew better wages and the existing instructors, hired through the Educational Department were receiving between 350 [$700] to 400 [$800] pound per annum, and it was considered that these were not overpaid.
Unionism raised it’s head again in 1921 when the shearers union demanded free traveling and pay while doing so, more money, less work, a station library of their selection, among other things.
The price received for meat and wool had dropped by 65 percent or more, most settlers have discussed the problem with their men and, rather than swell the ranks of the unemployed, they have agreed to a 25 percent reduction until prices rise again.
Most settlers had increased wages as their profits had gone up before and when approached in the right manner the employees had agreed.
There was some mention of car prices, brand names not mentioned, Touring 203 pounds [$406], Runabout [2 seat, rag top] 191 pounds [$382], Sedan 325 pounds [$650], Coupe 305 pounds [ $610] , one ton[2240 lb] truck [bare chassis] 230 pounds [$ 460], Fordson Tractor 225 pounds [$450], prices F O B Wellington.
School farms were reported on in 1931, in particular, Rangiora and Feilding.
At Rangiora the farm was of 114 acres and was able to give the boys in the agricultural course a scientific and practical training in all departments of farming.
The farm also largely supplies the hostels and the well-equipped home science department where girls taking home science get their practical training.
Boys with a mechanical bent take the industrial or building construction course.
They have their workshops and get plenty of practical work in building, surveying and leveling, repair of machinery etc, on and for the farm.
Business operations relating to the farm, workshops, hostels etc provided the students in the commercial course with opportunities for real and useful work in book-keeping, commercial correspondence, and business methods.
Feilding was doing the same thing in the North Island.
An attempt to use unemployed boys was made by the YMCA and Wellington Rotary Club.
They sent 98 boys with the average age of sixteen and a half to the Wairarapa Training Farm at Penrose, near Masterton in 1932.
The camp was run on military lines and the boys split into sections. At the end of the course, it was reported that the 98 boys, although generally of fine type, included some of unpromising material.
41 were graded as A certificates, 17 B grade, 6 were C grade, and 14 were lazy or indifferent, and the remaining few [20] were returned to the city to wend their own way.
Those that were graded were being placed on farms at a rate of two per day, at a pay rate of ten shillings [$1] a week.
To show nothing is new, in 1932 this electric tractor was being used in Canterbury.
The original engine in this Hart-Parr tractor had been replaced with a 20 hp electric motor, a winch which pivots on a turntable was built into the frame.
The turret with 1,000 ft of feeder cable was controlled by a 1 hp motor to keep the cable clear of the driver and implements.
Power is taken from the mains through a transformer mounted on the back of the truck, that reduces the current to 230 volts.
International artificial insemination was experimented with in 1936. Sperm from a Suffolk ram was collected and packed, surrounded by ice, into a vacuum flask.
This was sent airmail to the Zoo Technical Institute at Borowina, Poland. The distance, approx 1,500 miles, and the time taken was two days and three hours
The semen was then introduced into some Polish ewes, at the time of publication, one ram lamb had been born as a result.
During 1937 alarm was expressed at the national debt. This had risen to a staggering 347,245,069 pounds or 224 [ $448] per head of population.
Today this has continued to climb and is now $259,292,571,983 or $ 10,814 per head of population.
During 1937 the magazine changed to a weekly publication to try and counter the newer Journal of Agriculture, produced by the Government.
After 25 years of competition, the Farmer changed to weekly production, introduced more sections including horse racing and wrestling and slowly changed into a more country magazine rather than a pure farming journal.
In December 1938 a photo of the first pit cow shed was published. It was on ‘Loch Moigh’ farm, Linton, it was considered an unique shed because of its design.
A sunken pit about three feet deep with bails to hold six cows aside.
It was claimed that two men could milk 100 cows in less time than three men took to milk the same number in a walk through shed.
While one side is being milked the other is stripped, and let go, the next six brought in, leg roped and washed.
Any cow that was holding her milk could be cut out and brought back with the final batch.
Unlike the later herringbone sheds of the future, the cows stood head to tail in a straight line, in individual bails.
They described the job of ‘Musterers Packman’, who must be well used to handling horses and must be a good cook.
He must also be able to adapt himself to any weather conditions and be able to get along with eight or ten musterers, and this, for the man who cooks their food is not always the easy.
Some stations have very little firewood to add to the pack man’s difficulty, as it must all be packed in before the mustering season commences.
During the season the packman must use the fuel sparingly as there is not much allowance made for bad weather.
If the men are kept in camp for some days and the firewood gives out, the handiest chap to blame is the packman.
The meals were plain, mutton probably roasted in a camp oven, usually without gravy, as it is extra work.
Potatoes are boiled as is the pudding, usually a gluey mess of rice or sago, or rarely a good ‘duff’.
If he makes a duff, slices are kept for lunch the next day.
Bread was generally made at the Station, but the packman often makes scones or scone loaves.
These can be converted into a cake with a hand full of currants, and ‘you don’t have butter with cakes’.
The drink is always ‘billy tea’. The trouble is with so many vessels, getting the room for them on the fire, for a billy big enough to hold the potatoes for eight hungry men is not a small one.
Meals have little or no variation, breakfast - two chops each and bread, butter and tea. Lunch is cut by the individual musterer and eaten on the hill.
Bread, butter, and jam, with the usual cup of tea when they return to camp in the evening.
Evening meal mutton, potatoes and sometimes a vegetable, and always a pudding of sorts and more tea of course.
Every morning the musterers would roll their own swags and put them in a sack.
They would then go off and continue the muster of the sheep.
If the cook/packman had done a good tea the night before, the man with the bottom beat on the hills would help pull down the tents and roll them up.
Each horse was expected to carry a load of approx 160 lb, four swags of 40 lb each, but these varied in weight a lot as well, and a small load on top to make up the load.
Then there are the tents and food boxes and billies, things like sides of mutton and billies are awkward, but the capable packman will have them fixed so they will not rattle or bump against the saddle.
They reported a conversation with a new packman who was gazing ruefully at a mass of grayish dough oozing out of a cloth. It was supposed to be a duff.
“Look at this”. he said, “What can I do with it?”.
“Tip it into a billy and stir in a tin of condensed milk” he was advised.
He did that, and the mess looked worse.
“Stir a half a pound of cocoa into it”.
Add a couple of currants as well”.
He called it “chocolate shape with currants”, surprising what hungry men will eat.
maybe I should have put that one up as a separate post in the cooking section.
with thanks to son-of-satire for the banner
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