STUMPING IN THE PEAT..

"Five hundred eighty four owners hold ten million acres of land; one thousand six hundred hold eighteen million acres," stormed John McKenzie, Minister of Lands in Dick Seddon's Government. "It just will not do. Unless we take steps to curb their greed, this country will be as bad as Britain with its big landholders and "subsistent tenants.'' John McKenzie knew at first hand the misery caused when owners "enclosed" land and disposed tenants where their families had lived for generations. Several acts and regulationswere passed. Their "land for Settlement" helped to subdivide the big estates while the "Advances to Settlers Act" of 1892 offered loans to young men willing to buy their own farms. Enthusiastic young families, often with very little experience of farming took up the land. Most of the Waikato countryside looked decidedly unproductive, but the Governmental Experimental Farm at Ruakura was growing good grass on peat country, as green and luscious as any in the South Island.
"Drain the land, burn it, and then apply fertiliser from the German Island of Nauru," the owners were told.
After the first burn, the grey ash was often over a foot deep. The farmers, floundering in the soft powdery stuff as they sowed the precious grass seed by hand, stumbled over something hard just below the surface and they wondered what was there. The soldiers of the 4th Waikato Regiment who had been allotted this land in 1864 could have told, but most had walked off their sections; the older generation of Maori men could have told too, but most of them had died. For one Saturday in 1880 the Maoris had brought 500 Pounds worth of kauri gum to Issac Coates' store in Ngaruawahia. The kauri gum had been well below the ground, but now draining, burning and trampling of stock was consolidating the peat and within a year of two the kauri logs were appearing on the surface. Indeed, by the second Autumn, the farmers were dismayed to find the grass dying in strange lines and patterns all over the paddocks. This was especially so in a broad band from Rototuna to Orini and Mangawara where a magnificent kauri forest, with trees over 30 metres high and often 4 metres in diameter had been growing probably a thousand years earlier. Some holocust had snapped the great trees off at ground level and now they lay like ninepins, some preserved so perfectly in the peat that the leaves were still intact. Elsewhere the trees were smaller, often manawa which had been growing even longer ago.
What a heart-break for those farmers. They had bought land covered with twisted manuka, cutty grass, toi toi and flax. With hard manual labour, drains had been made, the manuka cut and burnt and grass seed sown. Now, instead of smooth green paddocks there were huge trunks and twisted roots. It is not surprising that many gave up then, Stumping in peat country was one of the hardest tasks men and horses encounted in the pioneering history of New Zealand.
"Well, you've either got an excess of courage of a lack cf brains," his friend said.
Victor Ballard laughed. They were looking at the land he had just purchased.
"It reminds me of the story we read at school about the joker who sowed dragon's teeth. There's nothing to see but blackened logs of all sorts of weird shapes."
Victor laughed again. "You can walk all over the farm on the stumps lthout treading on any soil. I know it will be hard work but I am young and strong," he paused and then he added, "and God will be with me,"
"Fred Williamson's technique seems to work," said his father, so with four horses pulling a triangle harrows Victor drove round the stumps. As the sharp prongs scratched the soil they caught any logs in the way. The team pulled harder. If the chunk of wood broke away it was picked up often the harrows had to be lifted over the obstacle.
ln the little patches he sowed rye grass or cocksfoot. "Like the sower in the Bible," Victor thought each year. It was cut and stocked by hand when it was ready it was thrown onto a tarpaulin on the ground and hit with a flail. As he showed his young helpers how to do it, Victor always warned them, "You'll give the top of your head a good crack if you are not careful." At first the money from the sale of the seeds was the only return from his work.
A straight trunk, about 80-100 ft long, was lying near the entrance to the farm. About 2 ft of it was showing above the surface; how much was buried underneath no one knew. With a cross-cut saw they cut post lengths as far down as they could, then along at ground level. Lying on your face in soft dusty peat pulling a heavy saw is not everybody's idea of fun. Wedges (and much muscle power) split the chunks into suitable sizes for posts and battens. At last out came spades and shovels and holes were dug deep. A fence was erected! Was it any less effort than the hawthorn ditch-and-stake fences of the first decade? As the peat consolidated more of these huge trunks were exposed. When they were needed they were split for fencing; otherwise they too were just burnt... enough good kauri to build half the houses in Hamilton if only there had been some way to mill it.

Hauling logs from the peat. The hardest work for man and beast.

The knotted roots of the old Kauris spread like giant spiders. Where the peat had sunk most, the cows and sheep could shelter underneath; where the fires had burned more fiercely, strange black shapes were left. All had to be removed.
The cross-cut saw bit deep. Charges of gelignite were packed carefully into the right places, with a cord running to detonator. Experience showed where to put the explosives but there were many accidents throughout the Waikato. Sometimes great chunks of logs were flung a long way; even a small piece hurtling further than expected at great speed could cause a lot of damage. When the bangs came close together it was quite difficult to tell whether all the charges had gone off, and a man's impatient inspection sometimes resulted in an explosion right under his feet or in his face.
"I feel like a rabbit,'' Victor commented one day as he scraped the dirt away from a piece of root already loosened. The snig chain had to be put round. The team of six great horses was backed into position and hooked on. Victor picked up the reins and clicked to the team. The horses tightened their chains and paused. A word from the young driver and they threw their weight into their collars and pulled. A strong pull. A steady pull. The log stayed firm. The man urged them on. The obstacle began to yield. Encouraged, the team, using all their great strength, pulled harder than ever. Immediately the log came free they stopped.
The freed logs were piled into heaps to be burnt when they had dried sufficiently several years later (and even that wasn't easy).
Now there was more space and white clover grew to fatten lambs to be sold before everything dried up in the Autumn. When the bottom fell out of the fat lamb market in 1925 there was enough cleared land to milk 50 cows and keep pigs.
All the time the land was consolidating. Each year, before it was possible to make hay or sow the root crops, many hours had to be spent harrowing, blasting and pulling out new roots and tree trunks. They were glad that the forests that had lived probably hundred of years before the kauris had not grown as big.
After the war tractors became available. Victor and his sons, now growing up, used two. One was sunk into the ground as a stay, and using a block and tackle, they wrenched the timber out of the ground with the other. Still hard work.
As Victor, remembering the unremitting physical toil that turned acres of black stumps into a fertile farm of grass feeding more than a hundred black-and-white cows he said, "I reckon I have spent more or my life stumping than doing anything else.'' And he added thoughtfully, "But I would not have been able to keep going if I hadn't always made Sunday the Lord's Day, and no unnecessary jobs were attempted."

References:
Rushes ‘an Raupo, To cows an’ Clover by Edith Williamson