Challenges of Mid-Canterbury farming – Part 2

Signs of neglect
When Ron took over the farm it was running 500 ewes and they were starving from lack of feed as the place was so run down. The problems facing Ron and Judith included dilapidated housing and farm buildings, lack of fencing, poor soil, poor pasture, rabbits, wind, porrina, and the need for irrigation.

The property had been farmed by an elderly man who had become unable to cope. Most of the area from the coast to the main road had been part of a big holding not intensively farmed, but run like a station. After World War 2 this land carved into 500 acre blocks which were considered to be viable one-man units by the Rehabilitation Board.

On the farm the Armstrongs had bought no paddock could be ploughed because of the gorse. There were no fences. Blue gum trees grew everywhere. The farm buildings were dilapidated.

House improvements The house was a hundred years old and had not been painted for thirty years. Before the wedding the kitchen was renovated and an electric stove was put in to replace the old coal range. Modern cupboards and a new sink and bench were fitted and the old scullery was incorporated in the kitchen. As finances permitted, in the living room and one bedroom the dark and tattered wallpapers were stripped and a decorator skilled at papering scrim walls put up new wallpaper.

Ron’s mother gave them a wedding present of a septic tank and an inside toilet and this was installed with a handbasin near the back door so that the men could wash before coming into the house from the farm.

Most farms now have modern homes and the living standard is much higher.

Poor state of the roads Most roads in the areas were shingle roads except the main south road which was sealed, but the road to their farm was just two wheel tracks with grass between them. There were shingle pits, but up to that time anyone wanting shingle on the road had to supply the shingle for the Council to put on the road boundary. Every day the Armstrongs had to drive more than a mile from their gate along the dirt road to get the mail. As the large farms broke up into smaller blocks the roads had to be developed because there was more traffic and more movement of stock. Finally the grader came along and levelled and shingled the road.

Problems with dust and wind The light soil was free-draining, silty and wind-borne, initially loess. When large areas of land were cleared of gorse and ploughed over huge dust storms resulted, sometimes reducing visibility so that they couldn’t see as far as the front gate.

The wind would blow in streams, so that at times there would not be a breath of wind at the house, but a gale blowing a mile or so down the road. On one occasion in later years the wind blew soil about one chain wide straight into the cottage on the farm where the Armstrongs’ son and daughter-in-law and their baby lived. The cottage was right in the path of the dust storm and the house was unfit to live in until it was scoured from front to back and top to bottom.

Problems with improving the pasture The natural cover of most of the Canterbury Plains was the native browntop grass and tussock. Browntop is a low productive grass. It is what Ron described as ‘a semi-twitch’ with rhizomes under the ground. When it dries out it doesn’t die. It can be grazed to the roots and will come away again. The sheep love it, but it doesn’t produce bulk. Hence it gives a low carrying capacity – one sheep to the acre. Ron’s aim was for the ground to be ploughed over and English perennial rye grass and white clover sown instead so that five or six sheep could be run to the acre. The white clover takes nitrogen from the air and puts it into the soil for the grass to feed on.

This would increase production, but it was incredibly hard work. Ron worked as long as it was light. Bare paddocks would have been easier. It was worse than starting from scratch because not only did the paddocks have to be cleared and re-sown, but the farm buildings were dilapidated.

There were also ongoing tasks coping with the porrina – grass grub – and the rabbits. With such low stocking rates as there had been initially and the amount of gorse on the property there had been cover for the rabbits to live undisturbed.

Long working hours for both Ron and Judith Ron wasn’t the only one to work long hours. Judith looked after their two daughters and two sons, often on her own for long hours while Ron worked on the farm. She had to cook for the family and the hired farm worker who lived in the sleepout but had all his meals provided.

Employing farm workers At first farm workers were often men who had come from the city to try their hand at farm work. Later the staff they needed were drawn from Lincoln students doing their practical work for the Lincoln College Valuation and Farm Management Diploma. The Armstrong farm provided them with the mixed cropping and sheep experience. Ron had to supervise their work and see that they had varied experience.

The main problems – money and work The problems could be summed up as money and work. It was possible to develop the farm only as money was generated, so it was impossible to develop at a fast rate at the beginning. Luckily the fifties were good productive years in terms of the financial return on wool and meat, just as the war years had been for many farmers.

Barley and oats as a cash crop Part of the development of the pasture included the growth of barley and oats as a cash crop. Basic equipment for this was a tractor, plough, grubber, drill and a set of harrows and bought secondhand at clearing sales they were not too expensive. For the heading they used contract headers who came in and charged by the acre.

Clearing the land through rotation Initially the aim was to break up 100 acres each year – the maximum they could handle financially and physically. That area of land went into rotation. The first job was ploughing the browntop down and producing great quantities of short rotation one-year grass which produced green feed from the rotting turf. While it was buried and rotting the sheep fed on the grass and their droppings added nitrogen to the ground and helped the rotting process. The next year the rotted material was worked in and provided good soil for a good cash crop.

Combating the weather with shelter belts In the forty years that they lived at Dorie Judith and Ron saw tremendous changes. The face of the land changed. Because of the planting of shelter belts the velocity of the wind dropped considerably. The old hands used to say that the wind blew the shingle off the roads. On the other side of the main road where the land was developed earlier the Winchmore irrigation scheme resulted in the planting of shelter belts before the Second World War. Each shelter belt helped to break the wind on the plains.

Later the Armstrongs planted their own shelter belts, first to shelter the house. They required time, money and care. They were very important. Not only did they give shelter, but they aided soil conservation by preventing wind-blown paddocks. They assisted with moisture conservation because the more sheltered the pastures the less moisture was lost. They helped lambs to survive in storms, and provided shelter for the stock, especially after shearing, to avoid sunburn.

Pasture Management After each crop the paddock was sown in permanent pasture which should last five years. Pasture management was an important part of farming. The better the pasture was managed and the more water was put on it, the longer it would last.

The aim was to improve the pasture by rotation. The first lot of grass that was put down reverted back to browntop. Lime was a big factor in improving the pasture. The soil was very low in Ph – it tested below 5. Samples from moist ground were tested by the Department of Agriculture. The Ph needed to be between 6 and 6.5 for clover to thrive and hence grass. Lime was a very important part of the production or good pasture because browntop and lime are incompatible. If the Ph test was 6.3 or more it would create an environment where the clover and
grass would survive and smother the browntop. The increased fertility was better for stocking.

After ten to fifteen years when the pasture had been through the cycle three or four times most of the land had improved.

Coping with dry summers Anything would grow when there was water, but the summers were very dry all along the coast. 25 inches of rain was regarded as a good year, but one year Dorie had only thirteen inches of rain.

In the writings of the early settlers the area along the coast was described as the Plains desert. Settlers walking through the area planted cabbage trees to mark the track. The road from Dorie to Ashburton has the original cabbage trees still growing along the road.

Visit the rest of the articles in this series: Part 1: An interview with Ron and Judith Armstrong – Farm training, farm purchase, and marriage Part 3: An interview with Ron and Judith Armstrong – Improvements well established, but problems insuperable – expensive electricity and labour costs and sudden government policy changes Part 4: Farming changes in Dorie since 1990 – problems with water, new dairy farms