Ploughing

In 1840 Malcolm McKinnon used bullocks to plough the first 30 acres of Canterbury. In 1843 John Deans used horses. They became the main form of power on South Island farms for many years. The two-furrow lever plough riding on three wheels, invented by Pirrie, of Scotland, and later developed and improved by Reid and Gray Ltd. and P. and D. Duncan Ltd., was of light draught and eminently suitable for ploughing the tussock-covered plains and downs of the South Island. It was drawn by four horses in block yokes. Thousands were soon in use and made possible the bonanza wheat harvests of the 1880s and 1890s.

Harvesting Machinery and Tractors

Early crops were cut with a scythe or sickle and the sheaves bound by hand. Shortage of labour, due to the gold rush in Australia, made the 1855–56 harvest very difficult and led John Deans to import a “Bell's Improved Reaper” in 1857. In 1877 the wire-tying reaper and binder (the “Wood”, the “Osbourne”, and the “McCormick”) appeared and quickly became popular. In 1880, after Appleby's invention of the twine knotter, the twine binder appeared in New Zealand. There were 2,000 in the country by 1882.

At first grain was flailed by hand. By 1853 small portable threshing mills driven by oxen were used. In 1865 Messrs Osbourne and Rennie, of Prebbleton, imported a portable steam engine to drive a larger mill with a winnower incorporated. These units were not replaced until 1878 when the steam traction engine was introduced. Now steam power applied to large swamp ploughs made it possible to develop the heavy soils of scrub-covered swamps, which were beyond the reach of horse power. The big mill followed, and this pattern remained until the early 1900s when the first tractor was imported. The horse was finally replaced as a source of farm power. (Clydesdale horses, worth about £65 in the 1920s, had by 1932 fallen to £30, thence to 15 in the slump.)

The English “Sanderson” tractor was one of the first used, to be followed by “Titans” and “Moguls” from the United States. An “Ivel” was exhibited in Christchurch at the Agricultural and Pastoral Show in 1913, a “Sampson Seeve Grip” in 1916, and a “Fordson” and a “Case 10-18” in 1919. In that year there were 136 tractors at work in New Zealand – 78 in the North Island and 58 in the South Island. Of these, 13 were in North Canterbury, 10 in the Christchurch district, 11 in mid Canterbury, and six in South Canterbury. The Waikato had 11 and Southland and Matamata counties had six and five respectively. By 1929 there were 3,377 tractors at work; 9,639 in 1939, 27,447 in 1949, and 75,291 in 1959, and over 84,000 in 1962.

In 1925, the power-take-off shaft appeared on the McCormick Deering tractors 10-20 and 15-30, together with the power binder. Rubber tyres were fitted to tractors in the United States in 1932; the first in New Zealand was sold to J. C. Guiness, of Ealing, in 1935. Conversion kits were soon available to convert steel-wheeled tractors to rubber. Just before the Second World War the first hydraulic three-point-linkage farm tractor came to New Zealand, though they did not become numerous until 1947. This tractor is now predominant; few standard-type wheeled tractors are sold to farmers.

In 1928 Albert Amos, of Wakanui, threshed 3½ acres of wheat with a “Sunshine” header harvester imported from Australia. American makes followed, adapted for the traditional bagging rather than for the unpopular bulk storage. There are now about 3,000 working in the South Island. One rarely sees a steam-driven big mill at work. In 1958 bulk harvesting gained ground when three farmers followed the lead of Sir W. Mulholland, who bought his first bulk header in 1930. Since 1958 the numbers of bulk headers have more than doubled each year, due in the main to a desire for a cleaner, easier, less laborious harvest at a time when farm labour is at a premium. The trade now accepts wheat, barley, oats, peas, linseed, and other small seeds in bulk.

More farmers have installed bulk grain storage facilities on their holdings and some have also installed driers.

by Clement John Crosbie, B.AGR.SC., Farm Advisory Officer (Machinery), Department of Agriculture, Christchurch.