WAIKERIA BORSTAL

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21368, 12 March 1941, Page 2

WAIKERIA BORSTAL

PRODUCTIVE FARM FINE TRAINING GROUND INCREASE IN BUTTERFAT 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 Waikeria Borstal institution, some ten or twelve miles from Te Awamutu. for figures are rarely published. However, at the Te Awamutu sitting of the No. 2 Armed Forces Appeal Board yesterday, 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 102,2501 b lat, while the present season, 1940-41. is expected to show a very substantial increase, probably approaching a 100 per cent rise. There is also on the farm 2000 dry stock, over 100 horses, 4(100 sheep, 90 breeding sows and some hundreds of young pigs, while under crop are 20 acres of potatoes, 10 acres of other vegetables, 10 acres of orchard, five acres of tobacco, besides a very large apiary. Fruit, vegetables and honey are marketed in competition with private growers, or sent to prison camps wnere 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, cattle and sheep are frequently penned at public saleyards and orrng top or near-top prices, and the milk irom the several dam formerly despatched in bulk to the nearest dairy lactories, is now, in part, diverted to supply the Otorohanga and le Awamutu primary and secondary schools, where about 1500 pupils have a dairy issue of fresh milk. The balance oi the milk is supplied, as formerly, to the dairy factories. The institution has its own saddlery, bootmaking, iellmongery and butener shops, biacksmitny, and, in fact, quite a number oi otner useful workshops, ihe eiectric-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 farmmg methods are an example to many iarmers in tho neighbourhood, and even much further afield, and it is also a remarkably fine training ground for scores of young fellows, who otherwise would nave been denied the opportunity to take up a useful vocation to enable them to earn a decent living.