Horowhenua’s Vintage Machinery Club can look back on another successful harvest festival at Heatherlee East Rd.
Its members brought priced possessions to Graham and Susan Cottle’s Farm, to show the public what tools bygone generations used to do their jobs. Many had been saved from the scrap heaps and were loving restored, looking new and ready for many more years of work.
Stephen Prouse was there with his Jelbart, Warren Vaughan brought some of his boat outboard motors as well as a boat he recently completed. Rod Clifton brought the stars of his tractor collection and other restorers came over from further afield, such as Feilding, Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Wairarapa and Auckland, to show machines great and small and all in working order. The engine noise was only interrupted by two street organs at either end of the field.
There were classic cars as well as classic trucks, some huge. There were all sorts of machines driving other machines, such as pumps, and a sawmill.
Old farm machinery such as earthwork machines, hay balers, and ploughs were on show and where possible were demonstrated at work, such as the Clydesdales pulling an old plough. The steam traction engine and the barrel train were popular rides. The stone crusher also had a lot of interest. A smithy brought his mobile workshop and showed how his job was done in the olden days.
