PAST AND PRESENT

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3447, 19 November 1932, Page 5

PAST AND PRESENT

MEMORIES OF HARD TIMES. FAT LAMBS AT ss. EACH. Mr. D. Stowell, of Timaru, who is retiring from the Canterbury Land Board, at the age of 83, after 16 years’ unbroken membership as Crown tenants’ representative, says he remembers the time when he carried a swag all over Canterbury in an endeavour to find work. He also remembers the time when fat lambs sold for ss, when the best wheat brought Is lOd a bushel and oats lOd a bushel. “You talk about hard times to-day,” said Mr. Stowell, in an interview last week, “but you don’t realise what hard times are really like.” He arrived at Lyttelton from Britain in June, 1870, and spent a few weeks in Christchurch before getting a position on a farm at Weedons. From there he walked with his swag all over North Canterbury and found that he could not get a permanent job anywhere. His old employer, Mr. S. Gillingham, of Weedons, took him back on the farm and Mr. Stowell spent 12 months with him this time, before he went to Timaru, where he started farming on a small scale near Pareora. He had 45 acres under wheat in 1873, the product of his first year’s labour and experience. Mr. Stowell said that even in his earliest days of farming there were such things’ as depressions, and he could remember the time when he sold wheat at Is lOd a bushel, oats at lOd and fat lambs for 6s.