THE GOLDEN FLEECE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1939, Page 3

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

WAIRARAPA DISTRICT’S LEADING PLACE IN N.Z.

Success in Fat Lamb Production WEALTH FROM DOMINION SHEEP FLOCKS No district bf New Zealand is better known for its excellent flocks of sheep than the Wairarapa, which every year produces drafts of fat lambs which stand comparison with those from any part of the Dominion. This fact is proved by the success achieved in the fat lamb competitions conducted by the Meat Producers’ Board, in which the Wairarapa has won the district shield for the best North Island display on the Smithfield market no less than five times. Thirty million sheep graze on New Zealand’s hillsides. Their meat and wool and hides are worth £35,000,000 yearly to the country. There is £200,000,000 capital invested in this rich industry. Only dairyfarming can compare with it in magnitude, having in the last few years supplanted sheep-farming as the country’s dominant branch of primary production.

Nev/ Zealand sends Home annually 12.000,000 carcases of mutton and lamb, for which she is paid £10,000,000. Exports of sheepskins bring in £1,500,000. Wool exports are worth a further £13,000,000. These are the main sources of revenue of the sheep industry. They reflect the tremendous growth of the industry in the course of 95 years. WORLD’S BEST WOOL It is the proud boast of New Zealand’s farmers that theirs in the best wool in the world —and her manufacters are spinning and weaving that wool into garments for New Zealanders. New Zealand ranks third of the world’s great wool-producing countries. Only Australia and Argentina, countries that count distances by hundreds of miles and number their flocks by millions, take precedence. New Zealand produces one-twelfth of the world wool clip each year, and often her produce by virtue of its high quality tops the market in the price it brings. But although New Zealand exports more than 300,000,0001 b of wool yearly, she holds back some of her best, some 7,000,0001 b for manufacture at home. The oldest of New Zealand’s dozenodd woollen mills have been operating for half a century. One of- the youngest is at Napier, where a thriving industry has been built up since the earthquake of 1931. They provide em-/

ployment for, in all, some 2500 hands, and the value of their products is over £1,000,000 a year. Of this, more than half is “added value’ - —extra worth created by the processes of manufacturing. WOOL PROCESSING Before the wool can be milled, and after it leaves the farmer's shed, it must undergo the semi-primary processes of sorting and scouring, in themselves a considerable industry. Scouring is, of course, simply the/process of washing the natural grease and dirt from the fleeces with soda and soap and water; but what a quantity of matter is washed out is to the uninitiated a matter for surprise. Often the wool loses weight by 50 per cent in the scour. The story of the development of spinning goes back to 520 8.C., the first recorded date of the use of the distaff and spindle. In 1764 when James Hargreave’s family spinning wheel broke down he built an eight-spindle jenny. That was the' first automatic spinning frame used. Other noted names, including Arkwright, figure in the history of spinning since then. The spindle of 520 B.C. was, hard though it is to real l ise it, the forerunner of the self-acting spinning “mule” of today, one of the most complicated machines in the modern woollen mill.