DON HARRISON - REHAB. FARMER

1946.....
Don Harrison and his wife looked at the list of Rehab. farms included in the schedule of the latest ballot.
"It's time I got one, "Don said, "I want to get started on my own farm."
"Yes dear, " agreed Beth absently, kissing the soft cheek of the baby she held in her arms. Madeline chuckled and reached out her little hand grab the paper that was interesting her parents so greatly. Her father shifted the paper out of her reach saying, "There are 65 farms in this ballot, surely one will do for us."
"Why, they are all over the South Auckland area," exclaimed Beth as she looked at the list, "and they are all different sizes too!"
"Yes," explained her husband. "The Government's idea is that a Rehab. farm should have a carrying capacity of 50 to 60 cows if it's a dairy farm; or 850 to 1,000 ewes if it's a sheep farm. There are four here on the one block just out of Hamilton. It would be rather good to be near other returned men."
They looked through the lists of farms, and decided to put their names down for 63 of them.
"That's 63 chances I've got." Don said as he posted his form, and though Beth hoped it would be near her parents in Dunedin, they were both determined to make a success of the venture where ever it was.
On August 1946 the letter arrived. Don Harrison had drawn 120 acres on cower Road, 14 miles from Hamilton. He was recommended to arrive as soon as possible to take delivery of his 50 heifers, some of which had already calved. The Rehab. wished to be paid its deposit, but the rest of the money required would be spread over 30 years at an interest of 4%.
It was with a feeling of dismay that Don Harrison stepped from the car to view his farm for the first time. The raw little house was set down a bare paddock with a dirty brown pond not far from the front door. The cowshed seemed to be on slightly higher ground, but between it and the house stretched 8 sea of rushes.
"Well, I wanted to make three blades of grass grow where one was before," he commented, "but there's only brown top and rushes here so I've really got a challenge."
It was hard work. As the autumn approached, the heifers dried off quickly. In the early morning fog the farmer drove his herd to the shed, but they slipped behind a clump of manuka and then silently turned and went back to wetter ground the other side of the shed where they thought they could find something more to eat. The tall rushes hid their progress so that sometimes it took half an hour to get them into the shed. By the end of the year, only 8,000 lbs.of fat had been sent to the Morrinsville Dairy Factory which had been able to pay out one shilling and 8 pence per lb.
"It's not much," thought the young couple, "and the farm doesn' t seem to have altered much for all our hard work." But imperceptibly the land was consolidating; the swamp was retreating.
"The grass can't possibly grow with those big rushes there." observed Don one Spring mornlng. "My horses and gear can't touch it. I'll just have to get a contractor with a set of giant discs." So the Drinkwater brothers, with a Crawler tractor and giant discs introduced modern farming methods in Gordonton peatlands. As he was having a cup of tea just before finishing the job, Mr. Drinkwater remarked, "Years ago my Grandfather and Grandmother crossed this place on the tops of the fenceposts. Grandfather had just got the job as shepherd on Woodlands.
Soft turnips were sowed.
"We had a beautiful crop of turnips." Beth was telling her friends one day at the Institute. "But I wasn't looking forward to feeding them out. You know, we used to pull them by hand, throw them into the dray and take them to the cows."
"Turnips frozen into the ground aren't much fun to pull," remarked one of the other ladies. "I remember howling with the pain trying to pull turnips with fingers covered with chilblains."
"Well, this year Don made an electric fence and fed them off a little piece of the paddock at a time," said Beth. "He said that it gave him great pleasure to see them pull their own turnips, but not as much as it gives me. Actually it has helped to control the rushes too."
There were a lot of worries to see if the idea would work," another of the ladies added, "but it seems a marvellous idea."
"Electric fences are wonderful for the Waikato farms," said Miss Williamson, "but during the war, I was teaching at Hatters Terrace, out of Greymouth. It was a little sawmilling district, and there were no fences by the mill houses, so my father made me an electric fence so that I could keep my pony in. I didn't dare put it up because the people were afraid of it! I still had to walk two to three miles to the only paddocks on the one farm in the district."
One evening at the meeting of Federated Farmers, (which had recently changed its name from the Farmers Union), Bill came up to welcome the new member.
"Rehab. aren't you?" he said. "You are the third group of Rehab. men in the district."
"The fourth group really, you know," said Mr. Puhipuhi, "the Maoris at the pa were allotted land there as 'displaced persons'."
"We've probably progressed," said Bill thoughtfully. "You shouldn't find it as difficult to make a success of your venture as the earlier settlers did."
"Well," said the other man, "the Maoris of 1868 were given the land but they had to build their pa themselves. I think there was a sawmill down Sainsbury Road, and the timber was pit sawn and dressed there. Things weren't too rosy for them till they'd got their gardens going, though there were plenty of eels in the creek then and that helped. The militia after the end of the Waikato War had a hard time too. They were supposed to get enough slabs for a house when they took up their 50 acres in the country, but the roads were almost non-existent and most of their farms were bog and rushes.
"The boys after the Great War were the most badly treated," observed another man, "the Government didn't bother to vet the farms they were given, and down Piako Road, anyway, they toiled and sweated for years, and then during the depression, just had to walk off with nothing."
"Lack of good water and an excess of bad was one of the main troubles," said Bill. "Of course, the main difficulty was that they just did not know how to deal with Waikato peat."
A few evenings later, Don Harrison had spread his books out on the table considering his work for the year and planning for the new. Bill's words echoed in his mind.
"Didn't know how to deal with Waikato peat."
What was the best way he wondered as he looked through an article in the Straight Furrow. Production had increased to 15,000 lb.of fat for the year 1949, and he had been able to employ a lad, Matiu Rata, so that his wife did not have to take the three children to the shed. But how could he make the best use of all the ideas he had read? He smiled at Beth as she came back from putting the children to bed, and just then there was a knock at the door.
"I' m Fred Alexander, one of the directors of the Morrinsville Dairy Company," one of the visitors introduced himself, "we are inviting thirteen farmers to become the pilots for a Farm Improvement Scheme."
"I am concerned,'' said Mr. Murry, "that our scientists are doing so much research at Ruakura that is not getting to the farms."
As he listened, Don Harrison became more and more convinced that here was the answer to the problems of a young man working on his own.
Mr. Murray said, "I'll test each paddock every year, advising on manures etc." The farm economist was to do all the accounts, while other scientists drew up a five year development plan; "drain, re-gress, crop, sub divide", was their theme song; a theme, incidentally, that was echoed in the hearts of Gordonton farmers since 1864! But there were new ideas of how to do it and new machinery to take the sheer physical labour out of the tasks. First they tackled the 34 acres of wet bog between the house and the shed. A Jeep trencher dug a hole 9" wide and 3 ft. deep, and field tiles were laid in a herringbone pattern over the whole paddock.
"Bang goes 500 Pounds," said the farmer as the trencher pulled out of this gate, but the results were dramatic. Increased production and an increase pay-out of 34 to 38 pence per lb. of butterfat in 1953 certainly helped; even more important was the altered look of the paddocks. Not that it was always easy of course. The first Farmall tractor seemed to take a delight in getting bogged. Then out would come spades, logs, sacks; anything and everything that might help till it was on firmer ground again.
As more farmers began to see the value of sub-division, electric fences were produced commercially, and that other breakthrough of the 1950's, the herringbone cowshed, made a greater production possible. In the midst of the busy schedule on his farm, Mr. Harrison made time to help in the district; especially in the Springtime.
Beth often said, "Oh Don, must you go out tonight?" as he prepared to go out in the stinging rain to a meeting of the committee of the Hamilton Farm Improvement Club, or to a Farmers Federation meeting, or School Committee.
"You know, it's ridiculous. Miss Williamson is teaching in the Sunday School Hall, and there are two pre-fabs as well as the three school rooms - and there's no more space to play than when there were only 32 pupils in 1891."
"The Education Board must give us a new school," said parents whenever they met, and Mr. Harrison, as chairman of the school committee, was especially concerned.
"It is a nationwide trend; this big influx of people in the rural areas," said another member of the committee.
"The dramatic increase in the practice of putting on sharemilkers has made a difference in Gordonton." said Mr. Boyd.
"Colvin's buses, and the extension of the bus routes is another factor," said another member of the committee.
"Well, whatever is the cause we must have a new school," they all agreed, and at last the Education Board gave permission to look for grounds for a new school.
"We want several acres, preferably flat land," said Don Harrison. "And it must be near the village," said someone else.
The land used by the Hukanui Golf Club was considered the best site, and Mr. Drummond consented to sell if the Education Board was interested.
"When the committee of 1929 thought of shifting the school, I offered this site; but the Education Board then said it was too expensive to fix up the old race track road or to put in a new bridge, and they may say the same again."
After numerous letters, visits and discussions, so it was arranged. The site was bought, the Waikato County Council was to put in a new bridge and road. At one of the school committee meetings, someone had a great idea.
"Could we put in a contract to prepare this site for the school? It would be worth a lot to the district, and with a new school, there's bound to be many things we want."
So the committee put in a tender of one thousand thirty eight Pounds seven shillings to prepare the new site for the school.
"It's most unusual," wrote the Education Board as they had written years before when an earlier committee had offered to do major works on the grounds. But, as in the earlier times, they accepted the committee's assurance that the farmers of Gordonton would do a good job. And they did.

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