This Strenuous Life

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

This Strenuous Life

AUTUMN is over, and neither man nor beast in the backblocks is grieved at its passing. Time was when the fall of tjm year was a slack period on farms; not that we ever attained the poet's ideal of quiet contemplation, nor regarded it as the season of exquisite memories and wistful regrets, but at least it was better than spring or summer. Now those days are gone; to-day autumn is only less frantic than summer with its hay and its ensilage, for this is the age of scientific farming and with science has come artificial manures— and with topdressing autumn has changed from a pleasant season to one of violent effort before the blessed ease of winter. Let us toil and labour, for to-morrow we sleep; such is the autumnal slogan—and, most of all, let us topdress. Day after day during the autumn the country roads have re-echoed with the rumble of heavy-laden lorries depositing their tons of fertiliser at every farm; in the fields may be heard the murmur of the topdressers—and of the farm employees; and, in the homestead, the complaints of the farmer's wife as everv morning she removes a heavy deposit of slag or super from floor and bath. Such is life on the plains, and strenuous enough it iB; but what of the same labour on the hill farms, where no lorries can distribute the tons of fertiliser to the different paddocks, where not even a sledge can be manoeuvred tip and down the steep hills, through logß and stumps and across mountain streams, and where no distributor can be used to scatter fertiliser over the. paddocks? "What's the use of land like that?" asks "the land agent from town. • "You can't get a plough into it to break it up. How can you topdress it?" The answer is the immemorial one of the back-blocks farmer to all such questions: "By manpower, of course." To that the agent makes the equally typical reply: "Oh. if you want to kill yourself" . . . and goes thankfully back to the plains. The Horse's Part But the farmer's answer was not really comprehensive. By manpower certainly, a great deal of the work is done, but by horsepower, too. If the strong draught horses in the flat country

have a strenuous time in autumn, their labour is yet light compared to that of the troupe of nondescript four-legged creatures that are pressed into the service for a month or two in the mountains. Then is there a mighty muster of the back paddocks where for 10 months of the year a mob of old horses quarter-draughts, kaiporkas, packhorses—have been peacefully pensioned off to enjoy life, but who must now come in, long tails flying in the winds, shaggv mane tangled and clotted with liutiwai, to do their annual turn at the topdrcss-

By M.E.S.

They know all about it and exchange disillusioned glanccs as they gallop into the yard, bucking a little just to show their spirit, their wise eyes flicker in:; warily towards the shed where the packsaddles arc kept. Nor are the saddles less disreputable than the horses; every baekbloeks farmer keeps two or three decent pack-saddles, but t«>yond that it is a question of skeleton shapes, seeurelv padded with tacks to protect back and I shoulder, fastened together with strin <r and infinite optimism! "That ought to see us through, with luck. Fut*"it on old Chips; he's used to Hie job and could carry a chandelier 4«nprliii£ on a steel hook." ('hips looks qrossly at the sorrv affair that is girthed upon his patient back, and sidles cunningly off with his load, balancing it as. carefully as anv tight-rope walker his parasol. A Canning Breed Cunning, indeed, is the one indispensable characteristic of a good packhorse; of breeding he may be singularly.free; his good points may escape the most charitable eye, his temper be variable and sulky, but sure feet and infinite guile must be his, whatever else he lacks. Chips looks a packhorse, from his patient but disgruntled eye to his scraggy tail. His age is as mysterious as Abraham's, but his legs are still sound. He has done it all l>efore; for 15 years he has picked his way up and down hilltracks, balanced bags of grass-seed and loads of fencing posts on precipitous hills, round hair-pin bends, across rivers full of pit-falls for the unwary. He knows to a fraction how to twist his way along a bush track, avoiding big trees, doubling back here, twisting "there like any ballet dancer, always slow, steady, grudging, ill tempered and utterly reliable. He wastes no time as the younger horses do in tricks and revolt; long ago he learnt that it does not pay to quarrel with your load; you may annoy your driver, out you are equally liable to injure yourself. Paddy may" find it interesting to kick off hfs load; Biddy may take a simple pleasure in the art of breaking from a walk into one of those sudden canters that dislodge a pack; Mick may smile sardonically as he bangs violently against a projecting rock with his bags of seed and succeeds either in bursting them open altogether, or in making a hole through which he will proceed to -ow many miles of stony track. But Chips knows that loads must be carried in the end, that the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep—for the rest of the year. Therefore, ; ie works grudgingly, ploddingly, with his clever head as well as his sure feet, and will be kept in comfort to the end of bis days because "he sees us through the topdressing." Certainly he has his limit; so many hours—