Farmer Petitions For Road

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30829, 14 August 1965, Page 1

Farmer Petitions For Road

A petition to have an unformed Crown road in Cashmere opened for the first time in 80 years and to have four fences and pine trees 40ft high obstructing the thoroughfare removed will be received by the Heathcote County Council at its monthly meeting on Thursday evening. So far 31 Christchurch users of raw milk and cream, including businessmen with gastric ulcers, elderly people with calcium deficiencies, and parents of babies who cannot stomach treated milk, have signed the petition. 100 Users The outcome of the petition, it is claimed, will decide whether more than 100 persons, from Halswell to Diamond Harbour and Marshlands to Moncks Spur, will continue to be able to come to buy raw milk and raw

eream from the only farm in the Christchurch District licensed to sell both. The farm is of 176 acres in the upper reaches of the Cashmere valley. It is owned and farmed by the minister of the Livingstone Street Seventh-Day Baptist Church, the Rev. E. F. Barrar, aged 63, who with his son, Mr Daniel Barrar, runs 40 Jersey dairy cows. Yesterday afternoon Mr Barrar said that if he could not use the unformed Crown road by Christmas he would be economically forced to go out of dairy farming. 1000 Bales He would need to use the road to take his annual 1000 bales of hay from the flat on which it would be cut to his shed near his home on Dyer’s Pass road. He said that if he could not get his hay out of the valley, he could not afford to pay £5OO a year for hay to keep his farm going. In the past, he had been given access along a private road on the property known as “Cashmere Estate,” when

it had been owned by Mr J. F. Cracroft-Wilson. But after the property changed hands recently, this privilege had been cancelled. The only alternative safe (access to bring his hay off

the flat paddocks was by having the unformed Crown road opened. The Crown road, about three quarters of a mile long, was on the original “Black Map" of the original survey of Canterbury, he said. Mr Barrar said that at his own expense of £56 he had hired a surveyor, Mr G. Osborne, to peg the area defining the road. The Heathcote County Council, said Mr Barrar, had jurisdiction over Crown land within its boundaries. Because of earlier refusals by the council to give notice to the new owner of “Cashmere Estate” to remove obstructions on the Crown road, he was now proceeding under Section 116 of the Public Works Act to have the Crown road opened. Five Signatories Five signatories are needed to have the local body instruct that a Crown road be cleared of obstructions. If the road was reopened, said Mr Barrar, he would run a bulldozer along it to make it usable.