First Ploughing In Canterbury

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 34

First Ploughing In Canterbury

QN April 12, 1840, a small party of settlers (five men. two women and a child) landed at Goashore from the ship Sarah and Elizabeth and moved to Putaringamatu beside the Riccarton Bush to build huts on the Herriot-McGillivray properties and the work of breaking up the land for cropping was begun, four bullocks being used to draw the plough. Malcolm McKinnon, to-' gether with Ellis and Shaw, did the ploughing but McKinnon stayed the longest of the settlers—the farm being abandoned about 18 months later but not before 15 acres of wheat and 15 acres of potatoes had been harvested , and work had begun on ' ploughing a further 50 acres. Captain W. Mein Smith. Surveyor-General for the New Zealand Company, de- ,

scribed the farm in November, 1842—noting that the houses, farming utensils, stacks of wheat, etc., were left, but about February, 1843, these were all destroyed by a fire lit by the Maoris on the banks of Lake Ellesmere as an aid to catching eels. On June 17, 1843, John Deans landed at Rapaki with three mares and other livestock he had brought from Sydney and moved to Riccarton to a slab house built previously by his brother William on the same site that had been occupied in 1840 by Herriot and McGillivray. They ploughed part of the land that had first been broken up by the Her-riot-McGillivray party three years earlier. The three horses he brought were “good ones and fit either for carting, ploughing or the saddle" and William Deans writing in 1843 records: “John is now ploughing with them every day for a few hours. The ground for potatoes will be ploughed and the potatoes put in with the plough. . . .” Although they were late sowing that year which resulted in light crops, they got in 2f acres of wheat, one of oats and 2) of barley with five roods of potatoes in the field and one rood in the garden. The following year they ploughed 26 acres for wheat which yielded between 60 and 70 bushels to the acre. By 1851 they had two or three ploughs constantly at work and by September, 1853, had planted about 100 acres in grain crops and intended a further 20 acres for potatoes, one of swede turnips and one of carrots. The French settlers who landed in Akaroa on August 17, 1840, did no ploughing that year for their sponsoring company had sent out no draught animals and there was no ploughman among them. They had arrived too late to sow grain but within the first six weeks most of

them had started their gardens, sowing vegetable seeds, and had their potatoes in. In 1841 de Belligny imported working bullocks and some ploughing was done. It would be most interesting to locate the actual site of the first 30 acres ploughed In Canterbury which was the forerunner of agriculture in Canterbury as we know it today. The ploughing was on what was to be the Deans's property. The question is—in what field? A map of “Riccarton” on August 22, 1849, shows two fields to the west of Deans Bush—a 37-acre field bor-

dering on Riccarton road and Clyde road and a 56acre field to the north bounded on two sides by the Avon river.

The 37-acre field is well known in rural history for in it were held several demonstrations and trials of agricultural machinery. Under the auspices of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association, a trial of wire binders was held there on January 24, 1878, and a trial of digging

ploughs in 1891. The present Mr John Deans recalls a mole plough demonstration there about 1900 when under the effort of two traction engines, the superstructure parted company, leaving the blade in the ground. The trial of digging ploughs was fully reported in the “Lyttelton Times” of October, 1891. In it we read that the trial was in Mr John Deans’s paddock and immediately to the west of Riccarton Bush. This paddock brought up many pleasant recollections for the old colonists as it was situated within a few chains of where the first ploughing was done in Canterbury by a Mr Herriot. (Herriot owned the bullocks—McKinnon worked for McGillivray). The event was, therefore, a fitting jubilee of ploughing in Canterbury. This statement infers that the original Canterbury ploughing of 30 acres was not done in the 37-acre field but a few chains away—that is, in the 56-acre field. This is logical for it is known that McKinnon started on a further 50 acres before he abandoned the settlement Study of a present day map of Christchurch shows that it is likely that the original ploughing takes in the northern end of Totara street and the land between Puriri and Hinau streets.

This article has been written by C. J. CROSBIE. of the Department of Agriculture, Christchurch. »»» _ - .