Prison Farm Manager To Retire

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31221, 19 November 1966, Page 9

Prison Farm Manager To Retire

Mr G. S. Barwell, who will retire from the position of farm manager at Paparua Prison at the end of next month, will go to his last show with prison stock today. It is appropriate that it should be the Courtenay show, for it was at Courtenay and Rangiora that in 1923 Mr Barwell began exhibiting at shows. Then it was with sheep dogs.

The name of Barwell and the quality cattle, sheep and pigs from the prison that are well known at shows around the district are synonymous, for it was Mr Barwell who established and has nurtured this activity on the farm. When he leaves the prison farm Mr Barwell will go to work for another Government department—this time the Lands and Survey Department as a land development

officer under Mr S. G. Taylor, who has acted in an advisory capacity on the prison farm as farm supervisor. Mr Barwell has inherited a love of animals from his father, who was a successful breeder of Clydesdale horses and Shorthorn cattle on his property at Lobum. He recalls that his father bred Clydesdales weighing about a ton and sold colts to Australia at £lBO a head, which was

big money in those days. Horses were also bred on the home farm for the Christchurch City Council and the Lyttelton Harbour Board. Mr Barwell’s grandfather, George, came out to Canterbury in the late 1850 s to be a storekeeper in Christi church, but after about eight years he grew tired of the lif because of a lack of business activity and bought a farm of 1000 acres at Lobum. Mr Barwell’s brother, Mr K. H. Barwell, is on the property today.

Brought up in the district Mr Barwell, not long after getting his proficiency, was fitted out by his father with three blankets, a set of clothes and given a pound note and sent off on the train to work for a man in the Cheviot district Back on a visit to his home he was given a job on the 470 acres Dulator homestead block in the Lobum district and three months later was managing the property. About 1925, he recalls, they averaged about 61| bushels of solid straw Tuscan wheat to the acre off 147 acres and in a day Pulley’s mill threshed 3333 1/3 bushels of wheat out of the stook a record for the mill.

When a new fangled tractor was brought on to the property, Mr Barwell recalls that local residents raised a petition protesting that the machine would pollute the air, disturb the horses in the district and ruin the land.

Up until about 1939, Mr Barwell remained in the district working about North Canterbury gaining a wealth of farming experience. In his last season with the blades, for instance, he shore 11,200 sheep. For many years he served on the North Loburn school committee, part of the time as chairman. He also served on the hall committee and ran the telegraph office. He believes that with Mr S. A. La Roche, of the Canterbury Education Board, he may have been a founder of the boys’ and girls’ agricultural club shows. A show held at Rangiora about 1935 or 1936, he believes, may have been the first of its kind in the country. In 1939, Mr Barwell left Lobum to work in the Kirwee district and then in 1941, he went to the Springfield estate at Lyndhurst in Mid-Canter-bury to • work first for the Ruddenklaus and then for Mr A. W. Taylor when he bought the property. Here he also took an active interest in the district and served on the Lyndhurst school committee and was an exhibitor at the Methven show.

When part of the property was sold he looked round for another job and it was not long after this he found that the farm managership at Paparua was becoming vacant. When he went there in 1950, the farm was carrying 909 ewes and about 187 hoggets. In recent years sheep numbers have been as high as 5000, and in the most recent season there were about 4500, including 3000 ewes and 1300 hoggets. As well on the 1900 acres property, of which a a sizeable proportion is taken up by buildings, dairy and poultry units, etc., a major cropping programme is also undertaken with some 470 acres being under cultivation.

Not only have stock numbers gone up. In an area that tends to be copper deficient, drenching with copper sulphate has made a big difference to wool weights which have risen from barely 71b a head when he came to the property to 11.81 b a head last year. Mr Barwell also launched the programme of purebred

stock breeding. He did not see much future in some of the crosbred stock that were being run when he came. He was granted £32 to spend on establishing a Milking Shorthorn herd. He was able to buy three heifers but had no money left then for a companion for the females. Mr George Goodwin, of Rangiora, was one of several good friends who came to his rescue in allowing him the use of a bull that year, and in the next year the prison was able to buy this animal. The Milking Shorthorn herd today comprises about 32 milking cows and with sale stock and breeding heifers the herd totals between 70 and 80 head. Artificial insemination has been used in the process of upgrading the herd and notable among the sires used in this way has been Histon Dairy Premier, the leading sire of all breeds in Britain whose daughters averaged 817 lb of fat. Mr Barwell was also allowed the use of a bull which Mr O. Gray, of Parnassus, bought in England for £lOOO at 10 months of age. It was his aim to have a herd with a fat average of 5001 b and Mr Barwell says he believes that this goal could be reached in about four years’ time. Pigs Mr Barwell also acknowledges help he has had in building up his pig enterprise. He recalls that Mr Duncan Petrie initially sold him three sows for Bgns each, which was well under their real value, and with the limited funds at his disposal he recalls that he had sometimes to resort to a swap of stock to secure the sort of animals he was wanting—thus when he took a team of four Berkshires to the Ashburton show one year, he swapped two of these for two Large Whites to get into the Large White field. There have been up to 60 sows on the property and as many as 600 pigs at the one time. In 1960, Mr Barwell also set up a Corriedale stud at the prison using ewes from Double Hill in the Rakaia gorge and from Mr J. F. G. Blakely at Waikari. Prison sheep have been exported to Kenya, Colombia and South America. The dozens of ribbons and award tickets around the dairy and other buildings at Paparua are striking evidence of the success of Paparua stock in the show ring. Mr Barwell is particularly proud that the prison was able to win the William Baxter memorial trophy at the Amberley show one year for most points in the flock sheep classes. At last week’s Royal Show the prison’s Parkview Noel carried off the Milking Shorthorn bull championship. The light drought-prone Paparua soils are not the easiest to manage. Dust from the Waimakariri can be a problem in the wool of sheep and to obviate its effect all shearing is done at the end of September. To keep sheep contented and from wandering unnecessarily around in dry conditions, it is customary to feed hay out to stock in the summer as soon as dry conditions develop. For this reason all possible areas are shut for hay in the spring and up to 26,000 bales have been saved. Against the possibility of drought conditions Mr Barwell also likes to have a few stacks of oats in hand. Just now there are eight such stacks and if they are not needed they can be sold for threshing or cutting for chaff. Mr Barwell remembers how in the great snow of 1918 oats were a great standby on his father’s Loburn property.

Most people have heard of the Paparua crows, and before Mr Barwell took over at Papa-

rua the retiring manager, Mr H. Wilson, told him that the crows were likely to put the farm out of production. Mr Barwell recalls how grass was pulled up by the roots, a crop of wheat was sown four times and turnips were pulled up and deposited on the surface of the ground. Traps, scatter guns and shooting parties were all of no avail.

Then one day a bird slightly injured by a rifle shot was captured by a prisoner whc was out on a tractor. He remarked to Mr Barwell that it would eat bread out of his hand and subsequently a number of birds were trapped as they were attracted by bread crumbs and when the crumbs were treated with 1080 they died in about two hours. Subsequently after several feedings on crumbs of bread a major trial of poisoned bread was mounted in the central prison area and the morning after the bait was put out some 1700 birds died. Mr Barwell estimates that altogether they must have killed 26,000 or 27,000 crows by this means. Mr Barwell has found his work at Paparua rewarding. He has approached prisoners with a combination of kindness and firmness. He has been prepared to trust prisoners and to treat them fairly so long as they did not let him down and he has found that few have failed him. It has been a matter of pleasure to him that he has had so many kindly messages from former inmates of the prison. Mr Barwell is a former president of the South Island branch of the New Zealand Pig Breeders’ Association, a former Canterbury representative on the South Island Dis-

trict Pig Council and is currently a member of the Canterbury District Pig Committee; for two years he was president of the Canterbury branch of the Milking Shorthorn Association; he was president of the Yaldhurst branch of Federated Farmers for a number of years and re-

presents the branch on the meat and wool section of Federated Fanners and belongs to seven agricultural and pastoral associations and is a member of the committee of the Courtenay association. He has judged sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry, ponies and pet classes at shows.