Making hay while the sun shines
From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection
From Tauranga City Library’s archives
Activities in January can include putting New Year resolutions into practise, summer swims, camping holidays, and haymaking - so here are a few snapshots from the archives of local farms and families haymaking and haybales.
In 1926 it was 'blazing weather' when Ethel Louisa and Charles Edward Macmillan were haymaking on their farm 'Yatton Rise', at St George's Hill, Fraser Street.
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Ams 80/11/40
Ethel noted in pencil on the back of her watercolour. Fifty-six of her watercolours are viewable online in Pae Koroki, many of places around Tauranga 1920-1949.
Local farmer and chairman of the Te Puke branch of Federated Farmers, Mr T.B. (Rex) Benner, of Pongakawa was in the news on 29 November 1967 for inventing an 'ingenious' device to gather hay and mechanically toss the bales onto the trailer. After three years development, trial and error, he had registered at the Patents Office and a firm in Morrinsville was starting manufacture. While demonstrating the prototype to the Bay of Plenty Times, he described the New Years Eve that had inspired the invention - while friends were all enjoying a New Years party, him and his wife had milked 120 cows, then were in the fields until midnight with aching backs from 'lifting up hay bales the hard way to beat the weather'.
Not all haymaking was for farming purposes, the Bay of Plenty Grand Prix racetrack relied on haybales to stop careening cars on corners. The Mount News publishing this photograph of J. Murphy's Anglia in hay bales on 16 January 1967 - check out the spectator stand.
For more information about these and other items in our collection, visit Pae Korokī or email the Heritage & Research Team: research@tauranga.govt.nz
Written by Kate Charteris from the Heritage & Research Team, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries.
