Chapter 11 - Stumping

It had been a hard day. The big logs had been removed from the corner of the horse paddock, and now the smaller ones had to be shifted also. Fred had made a triangle harrow – a heavy steel triangle with sharp prongs going into the ground and as the points scratched the soil they caught any log in the way. If it wasn’t too deeply embedded, the horses, giving a sharp pull, were able to loosen it. Sometimes it needed extra power from the team, but often Fred had to lift the harrows over the obstacle, promising to give it special attention at some time later. The loosened timber was picked up by hand and put in a pile to burn. As he unharnessed the team at milking time he glanced up at the house to see a strange dray standing by the back gate. “I wonder who our visitor is,” he thought. “Do you know him Sam?” he called to his brother who had started milking. The dray turned and went away, and the visitor began to walk down the track to the shed. At once Fred recognized him. “It’s Mr Priest, Esther’s Father,” he told his brother as he went to welcome his future father-in-law. 

After tea, they sat around the table discussing the prospects of the Waikato farm. 

“The rates this year are £11/4/0 and our best cream cheque in December was £46/11/5. I’m afraid the cows are dropping now, and we’ll finish the turnips tomorrow, so we’ll turn them out next week. I’ve just been doing the books, and I’ve spent £1,422/12/1d this year and I’ve got £257/4/9d from the farm. I’ve £47/5/9d left in the bank though, so the bank manager is still a friend of mine.

“There is a lot we need yet but we won’t have to buy another farm next year,” Sam joked as the men looked at the ‘Statement of Expenses’ for the year ending May 19th 1914.

EXPENSES for YEAR ENDING MAY 19th 1914 

Deposit on property - - - - - - - - - - - - -           £50/0/0d

Commercial hotel, while waiting 

               to take possession - - - - - -             £2/0/6d

Balance on Property - - - - - - - - - - - -         £361/1/6d

Cart - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -            £8/10/0d

McDaimid (Solicitor re purchase) - -         £41/16/1d

Jones (saddle, chains, etc) - -  - - - - -            £6/3/0d

Blacksmith - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -            £1/0/0d

Massey Harris (plough, chain harrows)       £7/17/6d

Laidlaw Leeds - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -         £7/0/10d

Dillicar Brothers – (Groceries) - - - - - - -        £1/12/8d

Carrier Timber - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -          £2/0/0d

Furnishing Co - (bed) - - - - - - - - - - - - - -             18/6d

Bullock (timber for Bails) - - - - - - - - - - -      £10/10/9d

Crosby – neighbour (pigs) - - - - - - - - - - -       £12/0/0d

Gordon’s interest - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -        £11/0/0d

Johnstone Brother’s (steelwork for plough

Triangle, swamp harrow - - - - - - - - - - - -      £75/0/0d

J B McEwan & Co (milking machine) - -      £58/2/6d

State Fire - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -       £1/3/6d

Sexton Grass Seed - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -      £1/10/0d

Dalgety & Co (grass seed) - - - - - - - - - - -    £12/0/0d

Boots - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -     £1/0/0d

   Bennett (interest) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   £30/0/0d

   Clarke & son (manure) - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    £2/1/0d

   Casey (cows) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  £24/0/0d

  AMP - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - -   £5/6/8d

  Rates - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  £11/4/0d

  Dad’s Policy - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   £9/2/9d

  Ear Mark - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   £1/0/0d

  Water tank - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  £2/10/0d

  Farmers Auctioneering Co - -

            (horses, cows & sheep) - - - - - - £552/17/9d

  Butcher - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    £4/0/0d

  Grocer  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  £16/19/0d

  Bank charges - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   £1/0/0d

  Cash Expenses - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - £56/10/0d  

                                                                    --------------

                                  Total Expenses     £1422/12/1d

“You’ve taken on a big hurdle, young man” said Mr Priest. Fred stiffened, and then he noticed the twinkle in the older man’s eyes. He knew that 22 years before, his fiancé’s father and mother arrived in Napier with £10 in their pockets. Now his farm was one of the best in the district near Pahiatua.

“I see you have put in milking machines,” said Mr Priest. “Do you think they are a good idea?” “I don’t want Esther to help in the shed,” replied the young man. “With machines, two of us can manage 40 or even 50 cows. There is a skimming factory in Gordonton but it’s too far for us to take our milk there, so we’ve got a home separator. The New Zealand Co-Operative dairy Company has a paddock just near where the road is and the wagon comes out there at night. The driver sleeps in the whare there and in the morning he collects the cream from the Gordonton factory and then from the farmers own stands by the road. It works very well. For a while they talked politics.

“We must never let New Zealand become a land of big holdings,” said Mr Priest. “McKenzie had the right idea to get these large estates divided up for the smaller owner farmer.

                                  

 “Of course he knew the misery caused by the closure of land when absentee landlords wanted to grow more wool to feed the new looms of the Industrial Revolution,” said Sam. “It was especially disastrous in Scotland.” 

“It was in the Shetland Islands too,” said Mr Priest. “The landlords around Lewick just put the people of a whole village or two into a boat and sent them off to Nova Scotia. We hated Canada, chiefly because we were made to go, I think, but that’s why we came to New Zealand.”

Then he changed the subject. “What are the biggest problems in this land?” “Stumping and draining,” said Sam promptly, “and they are both hard work.”

On the following morning, Mr Priest went with the young men to see how they coped with the problem of clearing the land. Just in from the gate of the paddock, lay a long straight Kauri trunk 100 feet long and half buried in the dirt. With one man on each end of the long saw, they cut through the log until they reached ground level, sawing off a piece about 4 feet long.

“It’s very awkward trying to work a saw when you are sitting on the ground, but there’s no other way to do it as nothing can move it until it is cut,” explained Fred. Then of course the soil had to be removed from the sides of the trunk until the saw could go right through. Now the snig chain could go around the trunk.

“I feel like a rabbit,” commented Sam as he dug deep enough for the chain to go underneath, while Fred backed the horses into position and coupled up. Sam picked up the reins and clicked to the team. Knowing what to do, they tightened the chains, then at a word from the young driver, threw their weight into their collars and pulled. The horses pulled; the log stayed firm; encouraged, they pulled harder and as they felt it begin to yield, they pulled still harder using all their strength. Immediately the log came free they stopped; perfect co-operation between animals and man.  

“We’ll split this for battens,” Fred told his future Father-in-law who had been watching with interest and now came forward to help drive in the wedges to split the released log. “Kauri lasts for a long time, but I wish it wasn’t quite such hard work. The peat has preserved it because it’s probably thousands, perhaps millions of years ago that these trees were growing.” The roots of the tree, jagged and ugly where it had been snapped off, spread over a wide area, buried four or five feet under the soil. “We’ll use gelignite to loosen this”, said Fred and he packed the explosive, running the cord to a detonator. Mr Priest went over to talk to the horses, but although they all raised their heads at the bang that hurled pieces of log into the sky, only Darkie moved.  

‘Darkie’s a bit mad headed,” observed Sam “but Quid,” and he stroked the soft nose of the ungainly sorrel horse, “Quid’s got no paces at all but he’s a wizard at this game. He seems to know to a tee just when to throw his weight into the collar. He’s worth more than the quid we paid for him.”  Even if explosives had done their work well (and after a time most men working in the wooded swamps could see just where a log would split and just where the best place to put the gelignite), it still had to be pulled out and carried to the heap for burning.

“This is the hardest work for man and beast that I know,” commented Mr Priest; but I see that I shall have to make an extra special job of breaking in my daughter’s filly. Let’s see. Esther can’t marry until the 3 years bond with the Education Board is up and that will be at the beginning of next year. I’m breaking in a black mare for a neighbour – she’s a nasty animal with a bad tempered master; a bad combination, and she’s giving me a lot of trouble, but I’ll start on Esther’s horse as soon as I can.

As they looked at the paddocks where the young grass was beginning to come up, Mr Priest commented, “How uneven it is. In some places the clover’s growing beautifully, but in other places there’s only sorrel.” 

“I’m afraid it will be even more patchy in the summer. It’s like the Good Book says, some seed fell on the stony ground, only there are logs underneath where the grass is not growing,” replied Fred.

Often it is very lucky that we cannot see ahead. Soon after he returned home, the black mare killed Mr Priest when she smashed the seed drill she was pulling, into a post, so he did not live to see his daughter married, and someone else had to finish breaking in the bay filly.

Fred and Esther were married at Easter 1915. There was no gay honeymoon at the Mountain House as he had once planned. The improvements to the little house that they had planned so light-heartedly were still only a dream. He had begun to suspect that the trip to the ‘Old Country’ might be more than ten years away. 

“I have so little to offer you, sweetheart,” he said “except the love and tender care of a man, and the hope of better things in the years to come.” “That will suffice,” she said.