WAIKERIA BORSTAL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 285, 19 March 1941, Page 8

WAIKERIA BORSTAL

PRODUCTIVE FARM FINE TRAINING GROUND The old conception of a Borstal institution being a place where a hundred or more young men are incarcerated behind prison bars has. happily, been so often contradicted that it is seldom heard nowadays. But few people can have a clear idea of what productivity is obtained from a property such as the Waikcria Borstal institution, some ten or twelve miles from Te Awamutu, for figures are rarely published. However, at the Tc Awamutu sitting of the No. 2 Armed Forces Appeal Board last week, in support of appeals for three members of the staff at Waikeria, it was shown that the property has dairy herds totalling well over 400 cows. The butterfat production for 1939-40 season, by no means a favourable year, totalled 102.2501b iat. while the present season, 1840-41, is expected to show a very substantial increase, probably approaching a 100 per ccnt rise. There is also on the farm 2000 drv stock, over 110 horses, 4000 sheep, 90 breeding sows and some hundreds of young pigs, while tinder crop are 20 acres of potatoes. 10 acres of other vegetables, 10' acrcs o.» orchard, five acres of tobacco, besides a very large apiary. Fruit, vegetables and honey arc marketed in competition with private growers, or sent to prison camps where such supplies are not grown. Tobacco is cured and prepared for use at various other prisons and Borstal institutions.

Milk for Children. Fat stock, pigs, cattlc and sheep are frequently penned at public saleyards and bring top or near-top prices, and the milk from the several dairies, foimerly despatched in bulk to the nearest dairy factories, is now, in part, diverted to supply the Otorohanga and Te Awamutu primary and secondary schools where about 1500 pupils have a daily issue of fresh milk. The balance of the milk is supplied, as formerly, to the dairy factories. The institution has its own saddlery, bootmaking, fellmongery and butcher shops, blacksmithy, and, in fact, quite a number of other useful workshops. The electric power installation is quite an important institution in itself. Waikeria Borstal institution is certainly not a tax on the community to maintain nowadays. Its stock and farming methods are an example to many farmers in the neighbourhood, and even much further ah eld, and it is also a remarkably fine training ground for scores o! young fellows, who otherwise would have been denied the opportunity !o take up a useful vocation to enable them to earn a decent living.