INTERNATIONAL CORNER

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 18986, 1 July 1933, Page 18 (Supplement)

INTERNATIONAL CORNER

THE BROADER VIEW :

The other day I was looking at a new milking shed that had just been built on a friend’s farm. The farm itself was at the end of a long lane, the land was heavy. Since the arable depression it had been one of the loneliest places in the district. Until my friend bought it. The day I was there the first milking was • taking place in the ultra-modern shed. All sorts of people were there to see, from the old-age pensioners (it lias been a considerable excursion for them to get so far) to the experts in charge of the latest mechanical milkers. From being “off the map” this farm has become the focus of local interest, or rather tins s'lied, all gleaming zinc and white paint, set down amid the lolling, leaning old barns. The whole farm has been reorganised for it, arable land turned down to grass, a pumping mill set up, fields re-fenced and their contours altered so as to converge towards it. It was Indeed something to stare at.

The Older Generation. A venerable old man in corduroys, erect and clear-eyed still, stood beside mo. “There's been a wonderful alteration about 'here,” he said. “That’s a famous shed. There ain’t none such premises as that in the whole parish.” He was very pleased: he had been shepherd on this farm in his working days, when it had been a rich arable holding. It had saddened him when bad times came and it had stood deserted, no stock in the yards, no people coming near. There is no stillness like the stillness of an empty farm. He alone had ever walked that way. But now suddenly It was the most noteworthy place in the parish. Like many old countrymen at meeting, he plunged without preamble into an’account of the most notable happening of his life, detaining me from going in to see the milking. 'lt was

(By “Cosmopcditan.”)

THE NEW ENGLAND

HERE THERE AND EVERYWHERE

that many years back he with his dogs had fetched home some sheep late at night from the station eight miles away. “There weren’t no glimmer of moon nor nothing," he said, “and we could only go by the hear of them." Not till just midnight ’had he led them all safely into the yard, a feat for which he gave his dogs the credit. The Mechanised Age.

He stood in puzzled admiration of the new milking shed; then he pointed to an old thatched Dutch barn opposite. "I helped build that,” he said proudly. “We used whole oak trees for the posts.” By contrast, rthe framework of the milking shed was spidery steel. Within, a zinc dungcarrier ran on an overhead rail; the floor was of concrete, likewise the troughs; the drinking bowls patent, non-foulable. An engine droned; the pulsing, mechanical milkers clung to the udders like synthetic parasites. Also attached to the udders, like an afterthought, stood the cows, a platoon in two lines, their necks between steel yokes. But here they weren't cows; they were factory plant, taking in hay and giving out milk. Two milkmen, robot-like in white coats and skull caps, attended the process. Outside again, yes, positively there was a shock, a moment’s sense of unreality in seeing the Helds again, the woods, the uneven horizon; like coming out of a cinema into the world of every llay. The shepherd, too. He was very pleased at the shed, it brought people to see the farm, his farm, scene of all his life's work. He had haunted it long In solitude. “Yes, that’s a famous building. . . But there had been one great, occurrence in his life. "That were dark as pitch that night, sir, not a glimmer of moon nor nothing. . . ” Adrian Bell In To-day and To-morrow."