One Man, One Farm?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 756, 15 January 1954, Page 14

One Man, One Farm?

by *

SUNDOWNER

DECEMBER 20

WISH I could still get enthusiastic about the suggestion of a speaker at Lincoln College the other day that workers should be settled in villages at key points to . help on one-man farms. It seemed a sensible idea to me 40 years ago, and still worth consideration 30 years ago; but I have no enthusiasm left as I enter | 1954. The first problem would be to find a one-man farm, and the second to find

the money for extra labour on a one man one-

woman. farm. If the money. were available the labour might still be difficult to find; but such places are struggling to balance their budget now, and have usually sunk all their available credit in implements to replace men. The nominal owner is lucky if he is not tied up in time payments for seven or eight years ahead. In any case, it is one thing to build the cage and | another to trap the bird. Where would the men come from for these villages? If they are working |on farms now it would be a waste of time and money to move them. If they are in the cities, they are there in nine cases out of ten because they are getting | better wages for shorter hours in an environment more congenial to them, and especially to their wives and children, than they think the country would be. In a: few cases this is not true. It / saddens me personally to think that it is ever true. But I have lived 30 years /in the country and 40 years in the city and would not know where ‘to turn to find more than an individual here and | there anxious, and still not able, to change his place. New Zealand is dotted — on survey _maps-with village settlements in which no one was ever anxious to live. Now it is not necessary to live in them, since most people have more work than they |are willing to do at their own back _doors, and good transport if they think they can earn more money a mile or | two away. They have also a deep, often ‘foolish, but in general firmly based historical suspicion of anything that

looks like walking backwards. If the world must still have peasants, it must not try to perpetuate them in New Zealand. * *

DECEMBER 23

A CLINTON correspondent tells me "* that her mother, who came from the north of Ireland, would say "Weigh there" if a cow lifted its foot when being milked; meaning "Stop it!" Now her daughter at Otago University says "Weigh there’ when she means "Steady there." or "Gently there," or "Stop." Her mother, she thinks, brought the expression with her from Ireland. But I think someone took it to Ireland, My father usually said "weigh" (or "way")

(6 C for W 0 (or 68 whoa '); and he came from South-

ern Engiand., 1 nave not tied to Mie out where "weigh" came from, or how old it is, but I can’t doubt that it is » variant of "wo," "woa," or "whoa," and at least as old as Shakespeare. But I should like to know what Shakespeare would have said if he had been told that the call his yokels used to stop their horses would be heard on the other side of the world 400 years later "curbing excessive exurberance in . square dances," "tempering a wild kick in football," and sometimes "indicating an erratic stroke in golf." The north of Ireland lady, I suspect, would have been pleased to think that such kittle cattle as undergraduates could stil] (in Otago at least) understand, and now and again obey, the language of the cowshed. = --_ as

7" T was a relief, when Jim shore my sheep for me the other day, to discover that they had no ticks. It was better luck than I deserved. A week or two before they began to lamb they were badly infested, and as I did not wish at that stage to throw ewes into a plunge dip, I handled them one by one in the yards, applying the dip with a pint mug. Everybody, of course, laughed; but since one of the purposes (continued on next page)

DECEMBER 26

SSS .-». (eontinued trom previous page)» of farmers. of amy. type -is to: contribute to the.gaiéty of their. neighbours, 1 went stubtornly on, It Was perhaps in my

favour ™ that the -$ix pints *I° poured ‘in slowly from the

tail ‘to the ;top-knot were then kept moving by heavy rain. 1 don’t know what course the- fluid took when it left the centre. of the back. because the woot was then three or four inches long. But it found, the ticks or was found by them, and iremeined effective Jong enough to destroy what hatched, afterwards. I am not going to patent this. method, or ask for any kind of. protection for it. It is not fast, or Cheap, or good for rheumatism in the operator. But- the first 25 were the. worst. I was then so wet that another. mugful inside, the top of my trousers nmiade vety. little differ-. ence to my discomfort. (To be pandinted)