Power made a difference to farmers when it was finally connected to their farms. Photo / Bevan Conley
Kem Ormond takes a look at the world of farming back in the day.
Imagine farming without electricity, hand milking cows or grinding grain for your cattle manually. It all seems too hard to imagine, but that is how it used to be.
It must have revolutionised farming when electricity was introduced, and coal really was banished to the back door!
These articles will make us all appreciate the difference in one’s life with the flick of a switch.
Pahiatua Herald, December 15, 1919
“The country is now passing from the age of steam to the age of electricity“.
This is the carefully considered statement of the British Ministry of Reconstruction, and when a body of such standing makes such an important statement it is necessary that we, as a farming community, should follow it up to the extent of seeing how far it applies to agricultural problems and farm conditions.
The pamphlet, “Reconstruction Problems No 24, Electrical Development, The Pamphlet ”Reconstruction Prodon,” referred to, goes on to quote various instances in support of this statement, drawn from British farming and industrial experience.
But, here in New Zealand, we do not need to rely on British experience.
In Canterbury and elsewhere we are already proving the enormous difference in outlook and comfort that it brings to the farmer to have at his disposal an ample supply of electricity for lighting, heating, and power.
The possible and economical application of electricity on the farm cover such a wide range that it is impossible to deal with them all in a short article.
There is no industry even the most unlikely, whose development does not demand a supply of electricity and stimulate its use.
Its immediate applications include lighting, heating, cooking, motive power, transport and haulage, chemical reactions and stimulation of vegetable growth.
It requires no very great adaption to make these include practically every operation carried on the farm.
Untitled article from Poverty Bay Herald, February 8, 1930
Notice was given by Mr J Brandon at the last meeting of the Whanganui Farmers’ Union executive for the discussion at the next meeting of the cost of electricity to farmers.
He said that dairy factories throughout the island were finding electricity more costly than coal, and, if this continued to be so, some would have to go back to the latter.
Essential for farmers
Northern Advocate, July 9, 1935
Wellington, This Day.
“It is essential that cheap electricity should be available to farmers”, said Professor J. N. van der Ley, formerly Chief of the Government Service for Water Power and Electricity in Netherlands, East Indies, yesterday when he gave some of his impressions of hydro-electric development in New Zealand following a tour of three weeks covering both North and South Islands.
He visited Arapuni, Waikaremoana, Lake Coleridge and Waitaki.
With the engineering aspects of these schemes he was, he said, more than impressed.
New Zealand appeared to be working on the right lines, taking full advantage of its natural advantages in the way of abundant and convenient water supply.
The system of district power boards to attend to the distribution of supply was one which he had not had great opportunity of studying.
Speaking of charges for electric power, Professor van der Ley emphasised the importance of cheap electricity for farmers.
Care had to be taken that in scattered settlements charges were not made too high.
Electric power was coming to mean more and more to those on the land, not only in farm development, but also in home life.
- Source: Papers Past
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