Father’s Wrong Outlook

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 191, 13 August 1941, Page 8

Father’s Wrong Outlook

FARM BEFORE COUNTRY’S NEED “The Board is asked to keep this man who ought to be in the firmed forces, out of tho services for the sake of eight cows,” commented Mr. A. Coleman, S,M., chairman, when James Nairn, retired schoolmaster, of Feilding, appealed for his 24-year-old son, Owen Nairn, before No. 3 Armed Forces Appeal Bqard in Palmerston North yesterday. • ‘ * The Board would not do that for twice eight cows. There are no merits in the appeal whatever and if there are too many cows, Mr. Nairn, senr., will have to make arrangements to reduce the herd,” Mr. Coleman added. Tho pleadings showed that there were 51 cows and the farm was on San-' don Road, Feilding., Evidence was given by a married brother of reservist, Norman C. Nairn, who has been on the farm for a number of years, that he and his wife were prepared to try and carry on so as to let the brother away. He had told his father that and could not say why the latter would not agree to such an arrangement. His brother, till September last, had been employed by a mercantile firm and witness had seen no reason for his being brought on to the farm. Answering Mr. F. G. Opie, witness said 51 cows would be a bit of a hurdle as he would not like to see his wife in .the milking shed indefinitely. Ho would 1 like to see the herd reduced to 40 or 43 cows. He denied any persomil motive for not wanting his orothcr there. He know it was his father’s intention that his brother should have an interest in the far mand did not resent that. It might be his father’s opinion that witness could not run the farm efficiently without assistance and somo outside assistance would be helpful. The Board dismissed the appeal, the chairman stating that tho father’s anxiety to make tho farm profitable overlooked the central fact that it would involve the loss to tho country of an able-bodied man essential to the forces. The Board would not say one man could milk 51 cows but nevertheless it had had before it a case where one man on 160 acres was milking 60 cows on his own in addition to cropping and looking after pigs. There had also been another case where one man and an old lady of 64 years of age were milking 100 cows on 263 acres with quite a satisfactory butterfat return.