Recapturing The Days Of The Old Mills

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 31

Recapturing The Days Of The Old Mills

The introduction of the header harvester to Canterbury in the 1930 s revolutionised the handling of the grain harvest. Crops that once had to be cut with reapers and binders, then stooked and either threshed out of the stook or stacked and finally threshed out of the stack were all handled in the one operation. It was one of the greatest laboursaving developments in the fanning industry.

Today, of course, the header harvester is very much an every-day piece of farming equipment, and the bulk handling of grain eliminating the need to handle heavy grain sacks and the problem of sacks lying out in the field to suffer from the effects of rain is a further refinement in harvesting.

those great servants of former days the traction engines in particular—have not quite passed into oblivion. In recent years there has been a great revival of interest in them and today enthusiasts paint and polish them and give to them the tender care that a mother might give to a baby, and on special occasions bring out their treasures for the old and young to gloat over —the old to recapture the good old days in their mind’s eye, and the young to look with interest on these toys of a day that they did not know.

But with the coming of the header harvester the tractor-drawn and driven tin mills and their more stately and grand elders, the old wooden mills drawn and powered by those stately “iron maidens,” the traction engines, almost passed into oblivion. No longer were there those blobs of smoke on the Canterbury skyline indicating the movement of those great rumbling giants with their retinues of whares and water carts and old cars. But

The atmosphere of those old days will be recaptured in part, at least, at this week’s ploughing contest. Earlier in the year, on the part of the ploughing match site which will be used for the stubble ploughing section of the world contest, the crop of Aotea wheat was cut with a reaper and binder by Messrs J. and L. Smith, of Prebbleton. Then members of the Ladbrooks Young Farmers’ Club and threshing mill enthusiasts joined in helping to stook the crop and stack it. The two and a bit stacks that eventuated were built by Messrs A. Ward-Smith and W. Hinton, and these will be used in a display of old-time threshing with a Ransomes, Sims and Jeffries wooden mill driven by a Robey traction engine. The mill was incidentally made by the firm which are makers of several of the ploughs taking part in the world contest. The old mill which will be used belongs today to Mr Ward-Smith, who iS a farmer of Lincoln. But for some 50 years it was the property of three generations of the Everests. Its original owner was Mr J. Streeter, of Greenpark, who bought it back in 1904. The original price has been variously stated to have been £285 and £3OO. The late Mr George Everest, known as Dick Everest, bought it in 1905.

The most recent Everest to have had a part in its ownership is Mr G. D. (George) Everest, of Templeton, who was joint owner of it, and he will be with the old mill, all cleaned up and repainted this week.

The old mill did some big seasons in its day in the Greenpark, Tai Tapu, Springston and Motukarara

districts, so it will be in familiar surroundings this week. On a number of seasons it must have threshed around 100,000 bushels. Mr George Everest says that in one of its biggest seasons it probably did 110,000 bushels. The engine, which will drive the mill, is an 8 horsepower Robey engine built at Lincoln in England, apparently a well-known centre for the manufacture of threshing mills and traction engines in earlier days. This particular engine was bought new in 1909 by the Lemon brothers, of Killinchy. The price was £875. In 1952 it was bought by Bowmans, Ltd., of Riccarton, and in 1958, it was acquired by Mr George Everest, and is today owned by Mr George Everest and his son-in-law, Mr L. W. Hoff. Because in its later years it stood outside with straw and a sheet over it rust tended to get into some of its rods, but it has been wonderfully restored and looks like a new pin with its gay green, red and black paint. Mr Everest says that it still has its original pressure of 1801 b to the square inch. This is an agricultural engine as opposed to a hauling engine. That means that it is higher geared. It has three speeds and with a light load could develop a speed of about 15 miles an hour. Mr Everest will occupy the honoured position of driver of the engine this week. It is a post that many a small boy of earlier days envied. Mr Everest’s experience of threshing mills and chaff cutters goes back to 1922 when he first worked on a chaff cutter. After that he also worked on mills. The first engine that he worked on was a Burrell, now the property of Pearsons, at Southbrook. Mr S. S. (Stan) Bennett, of Christchurch, will be the feeder—the man who cuts the bands on the sheaves and feeds them into the mill. He first worked on G. S. Berryman’s mill of Lincoln back in 1925 and then in 1926 joined the Everests and worked for them on mill and chaffcutter for 15 seasons.

is this latter man’s responsibility to deliver the sheaves to the band cutter in the most suitable way. Mr W. H. Bennett’s memory of mills goes back to the days when his father had mills and he travelled to school in the coal bunker on the back of the traction engine. A treasured possession of his is a now fading first prize card for a competition held at the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association’s show in 1903. This was won by his father, Mr Herb Bennett, and involved drawing up to a stack and setting up an engine to a mill. The young Bennett started work on mills and chaffcutters about 1924 in Southland and later he worked on these machines in Otago. Subsequently for a number of years his work was with steam boilers and steam engines in jobs outside the chaff cutting and threshing mill industry. The other members of the stacking team will include Mr W. Hinton, of Templeton, who owns a traction engine and mill himself, R. Gibbs, of Halswell, whose family has been associated with threshing mills as long as the Everests, and C. Rutter, of Hornby, who has worked on mills around Gore. “The baggie”—the man who takes the sacks off the mill and weighs them—will be Mr L. W. Hoff. Of a younger generation he nevertheless did some forking about 18 years ago for Mr W. H. Hayes, of Halswell, who had a mill, and in the last seven or eight years he has been associated with Mr Everest with the sparkling Robey engine. He has also worked with the header harvesters and is at present a boiler attendant at Borthwicks at Belfast. A cousin of the engine driver, George Everest, is. Mr R. E. Everest, who will be the bag sower. Currently a boiler attendant at Lincoln College, he has also been associated with mills and traction engines all his life. The water-man or water Joey will be Mr K Stewart, of Lincoln, who will have his own draught horse in the shalves of a water cart

A cousin of Mr Stan Bennett, Mr W. H. Bennett, of Milton, in Otago, will be one of the forkers. Incidentally there are four forkers on the stack, including one who is on what is called the stage that is built on the stack. It

with a 200 gallon tank. The cart belongs to Mr K. Boyle, of Templeton, and is about 60 years old. An essential part of any threshing mill is the whare or cookshop, and at this week’s ploughing contest the

cookshop will be in operation to cater for the needs of the inner man—that is of course for the mill crew. Presiding over it will be Mr H. Hoff, who is the father of Mr L. W. Hoff. Mr H. Hoff has worked on mills for many seasons. The whare, which belongs to A. R. Gibb and Son, of Halswell (Mr R. Gibb is the son), was built in 1912 and has been done up for the occasion—a few weather boards have been replaced and the whole structure has been repainted.

Normally the threshing mill team would Include in its number a straw walloper —the man who would slide the straw coming off the mill’s elevator to the farmer who would have the responsibility of building his own straw stack. There will be no walloper in this team. There will be a chaff cutting outfit at PrebbletonBroadfield, too. It belongs to Mr S. Pester, of Culverden, who has also spent a lifetime working with mills and chaffcutters. The chaffcutter is a 12inch (the size of the mouthpiece) Commonwealth built by Andrews and Beaven, and she was new about 1910. The engine with this machine will be a four-horsepower, single-cylinder Burrell mounted on solid rubber tyres. She was new about 1913 and came originally from Balclutha, where she was used for chaff-cutting. Mr George Everest says he believes that these small engines were used in Southland in earlier days for mole drain ploughing. A great deal of work has gone into the preparation of these machines for this week’s display and it has not been confined to males only. The Robey engine has been described as Mr George Everest’s “second wife.” The other Mrs Everest, too, has had her hand in the preparations. She has helped in the repainting of the mill.