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ALBUM - Rosalie Constance (Lester) Gray ,Maruia - Memoirs.ca.1940`s.
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DescriptionRosalie Constance (Lester)Gray.Memoirs.Born 21 May 1925.My Father,Fred Lester and his brother Bill (W.J) took up property following a Government ballot in 1905. Bill’s section was around Woolley Creek and Fred’s about 4 miles further down the river. They each built a two roomed cottage, the timber being hauled up the river from Thompsons sawmill.
They ploughed and sowed seed for winter feed, working one farm and then the other. Bill’s sheep grazed on an island formed between Woolley Creek and the Maruia River down as far as Poultry Terrace adjoining Fred’s property. Later Walker’s took over Fred’s piece at Boundary Road and Bill split the farm at Woolly Creek. Fred took the west side and Bill the east. When the war broke out in 1914, they both saddled their horses and set off for Nelson, 225km away to volunteer for service with the Forces. Fred was accepted but Bill turned down for health reasons, so he returned to the farms, which he managed until Fred came home from the war in 1918.
On their arrival in Nelson they sold their horses to the Defence Department, who needed horses. Bill’s horse was a very fine one called “Corners All” When the war was over, a well known local soldier called Warwick Thomson, when embarking to come home, saw “Corners All” in Palestine being ridden by an officer. He was able to tell Bill his horse had come through the war in good order and condition and was in the high position of being ridden by an officer.
Fred was wounded in the war by shrapnel through his upper arm.He was also gassed. It was while he was in hospital in Hornchurch that he met my mother Constance Annie Barber.They married in Hornchurch and sailed for New Zealand .They arrived in early January 1918.
Mum’s arrival in New Zealand must have been a real cultural shock as she had to travel by horse and buggy eighty miles to Murchison to meet her in-laws and then another forty miles to her new home in the Maruia. This home was a two roomed bach with no conveniences. Meals were cooked over an open fire in camp ovens, water heated in kettles and kerosene tins, no bathroom, and the water supply being bucketed from a stream. She had to learn to bake bread and this is where Aunt Alice came into her own helping Mum to cope with these chores.
With a couple of rooms built on later, a wood stove was purchased but Mum still preferred to do most of her cooking over the open fire. She was never a fancy cook so all food was very basic and to our father’s disgust bread was wholemeal and we used brown sugar more than white.
Food was bought in bulk. Dad built a big bin and I can remember fifty pound bags of flour and sugar being kept there to keep the mice out. A lot of our groceries were bought from the Self Help store in Nelson. Once a month even after Uncle Bill built the store because the store was not large enough to carry a large amount of goods. The only newspaper we had was the Auckland Weekly News. It was devoured by everyone. A murder was big news and dealt with in great detail.
Our home was very basic. If we were lucky enough to have some linoleum on the floor it was because my mother had some shares in the Farmer Trading Company in Auckland and was able to afford such a luxury. Our kitchen furniture was all made by Dad. We had a long bench seat on each side of the table and Dad and Mum had a chair at each end. We had two sea-grass chairs of sorts, a sofa and deck chairs. Sacks were made into mats or we had a runner of coconut matting. Beds were wirewove with kapok mattresses. Calf and deer skins were cured for mats too.
Mum had brought her grandfather clock and some Wedgewood out from England following her’s and Dad’s trip back in 1924 to see her parents. It must have been about this time that the house was three bedrooms and we had a nice mantlepiece over the fireplace where Mum kept her precious pieces. We didn’t dare touch them. A big picture of the "Charlotte Padbury" hung on the wall. She had a piano which she had bought from Dr Warner in Murchison.
There was no bathroom and the wash-house was an outside room.It contained copper and tubs. Water had to be heated and clothes put into the copper and then rung out in the hand-ringer. Wash day was an all day affair. Most homes had a clothes line strung up in their kitchen/dining area and a wire rack over the top of the stove. Drying clothes in the winter was quite a business. Ironing was done with irons heated on the stove.
Bath night was once a week. The galvanised bath was put in front of the fire and we each had a turn. Clothes were only changed once a week. We did not suffer from any illnesses or sores and we seldom had colds. We were dosed with Lanes emulsion or olive oil during the winter. Later on we had a full sized galvanised bath in a bathroom but we still had to heat the water in kerosene tins and fill it. We all used the same bath water and, of course, Lifebuoy soap.
Kerosene tins were used for everything. Kerosene which was mainly for lighting the lamps came in four gallon tins. The empty tins were snatched up for use mainly as buckets. Dad would cut off the tops and put on a wire handle to be used as milk buckets in the cowshed or to preserve eggs for the winter. Anything a bucket was used for, the kerosene tins were used. Kerosene came in wooden boxes of two. These too were put to good use. They were made into cupboards, chairs, smashed up for kindling wood, and much used by we kids to make into carts and other play things. A hammer, nails and a box – what more could you want?
We thought nothing of walking six miles out and back to collect the mail at the Post Office twice a week. Odd groceries would be picked up at the same time or music lessons were fitted in with the visit which was something of an outing for us all.
Most families had telephones on the party line system. This system was such that each number would have a morse code signal for their letter such as 202S which would be three short rings. Toll calls were made at the whim of the Post Mistress as to whether she had the time to put them through. Never after 5.00pm.
The farm consisted of approximately 800 acres. There was not a lot of cleared land, much of it in virgin bush and what had had the bush felled was covered with fallen logs that hadn’t been burnt. Dad milked cows and ran about 100 sheep.There were several men who I guess would be bush felling and helped with the milking. The milking shed was at the bottom of a hill and Dad had a dam above which filled during the day from a mountain stream and milking time the gates were opened and the water rushed down the pipes to drive the pelton wheel which drove the milking machines and separator. The milk was separated for cream which was put into cans and stood in a shed with water flowing through to keep the cream cool until it was taken to the factory to be processed into butter. The factory was built in 1922 at Station Creek on the opposite side of the road from Uncle Bill’s boarding house. The skim milk left from separating the cream off was used to feed to calves and the pigs. This was once again where kerosene tins proved their usefulness as buckets.
There were no bobby calf collections then so surplus calves were killed on the farm and disposed of. The cows were milked from September to May. A House cow was always kept for the winter and the surplus milk had the cream taken off it and we made it into butter for our own use. There were days when that cream would not turn which was most annoying.
The pigs were slaughtered at the end of the milking season and made into bacon. My father cured the best bacon ever. He cured it with salt, saltpetre and brown sugar which was rubbed into the various cuts – hams, shoulders and belly pieces (which were rolled) and when cured, were hung in the kitchen. We didn’t think about it possibly having dust on it! Tasted great. So much for all this fuss we make today. There was usually enough to see us through to the next season’s killing. Those parts which were not used for bacon such as the heads, ribs and trotters also had their uses. The head was made into brawn. The ribs and trotters were roasted. Delicious!
The sheep were mustered in for dipping, shearing and tailing. Dad’s brothers, Bert and Perce usually came to do most of the shearing. This of course was done with blade shears. We had our own wood press. Uncle Bill brought his sheep to our shed for shearing.
Everything was done with horses so we always had a couple of draught horses for plowing, cropping and dray work. As Dad shod his own horses as most farmers did, he had all the necessary gear. We used to love to pump the bellows to get the fire going to get the coals red hot. Riding in the dray or on the sledge when the opportunity arose was fun. We had hacks for general purpose riding and a pony for riding to school.
Because we kept horses for all the farm chores, plowing, carting etc, they had to have chaff to be fed on. Dad grew a paddock of oats and there was the chaff shed where the oats were cut into chaff.
Haymaking was a slow process depending on the weather. If you were unlucky enough to get the hay wet the whole paddock would have to be turned by hand. Because haymaking was an intensive process, neighbours were called in to lend a hand. All hay was made into haystacks which were thatched with rushes to keep out the rain – a process unheard of with today’s farmers.
There were two houses on the farm. I only remember living in the bottom one until we moved to the top one to be closer to the cow bails and Dad and Pat did the milking with me helping on weekends. Dad built on a large kitchen and another bedroom. No one had any money and I think it was money my mother had inherited which was a lot of help to get Dad going.
At the lower house we had two bedrooms, a verandah which was closed in and a sitting room. When we had to board the school teacher, three of us slept in a double bed in what had been the sitting room.
At the top house Mum did the washing in the cowshed as it was close to the copper and plenty of water. The cowshed was run by a pelton-wheel by water which Dad had harnessed up to drive the machines. The milk had to be separated and the separator had to be wound up by hand until it reached a certain speed and then the machine took over. The cream was kept in cans standing in running water to keep it cool until it was taken to the factory to be made into butter.
Chopping wood for running the household always took a lot of time. We seemed to be always running out of wood or meat. Because there were no fridges, the meat, mainly mutton, was hung in a cool shed with mesh windows for ventilation and to keep out the flies. This didn’t always work and the flies had a way of getting in. We seldom had beef as we could not have dealt with the quantity and would have had to share it with neighbours and relations. Alternatively, it could be salted for corned beef. The odd rabbit and a piece of venison gave some variety. As we kept hens and bred chickens the young cockerels lost their heads. Trout and eels added variety to our diet. In season the men would catch flappers. These were paradise ducklings just about to the flying stage and the men would chase them up the rivers to catch them. They were very good at escaping by swimming underwater.
Dad cured bullock skins for leather made into harnesses for the horses, dog collars and belts.
Mum made all our clothes on a hand sewing machine. She was a very fast knitter and we all learnt her way of knitting and were able to knit for ourselves quite early in life. I was the one who was keen on sewing and spent many hours making clothes for my dolls and was delighted when Aunty Alice gave me a bag of her scraps full of all sorts of wonderful bits.
Making soap for washing was another item to be done. Fat was rendered down and caustic soda and other ingredients added. It was quite a dangerous exercise as it could boil over. This soap was shredded and put into the clothes in the copper and for rubbing into the heavy work clothes.
Dad later handed the farm over to Pat and Gus.Thorley had the lower end of the farm, which he sold to Bob White and left the district. Pat in turn gave the farm to her son, Glenn, who wasn’t a very good farmer.He sold it to a local family who are now milking 300 cows on it.
I started school before I turned five because I pestered to go. Pat and I rode a pony called Tom Thumb. He loved biting your feet and trying to scratch you off on the gate post but coming home he was the perfect horse. If it was raining very hard when we went to school and it looked as though the river would flood, Dad would come over and get us on the old draught horse Polly.
After some time the school closed and we had a teacher board with us and we shared with the Greig’s who had a large family about 3 miles away. The teacher would teach each family 3 days a week. Our last teacher was Mr Woods who had been shell shocked during the war and he would go away every now and then for treatment. He eventually went into a mental hospital where he lived until he died. He was a wonderful pianist and we loved to get him to play the piano at night.
After he left we went to the Correspondence School. Mum never let us off a minute. This caused me to do a bit of cheating. I would take my books up on the terrace behind the house “to study in peace” and read book.s She never found out and I certainly didn’t tell her. Many times we trailed after her with our books around the farm while she put poison on the ragwort. Mum always seemed to have big ideas for me. I had to take the academic course at High School, when Pat got away with doing "commercial"(Bookkeeping,
It was a case of "early to bed, early to rise" for the most part. We read books, and when we were at last to have a radio it was limited to a very short period, as the batteries would have to be recharged.
If we went to bed early, we would have to read by candle which had a time limit. Dad would check up to see if we had gone over our allocation. He would come down and say “You reading?”. We would blow out the candle forgetting that he would be able to smell the candle which had just been blown out. We would then be told to “Get off to sleep”.
When I got a bike at age twelve, I would think nothing of biking twelve miles over rough metal roads to visit a friend for the day.
Gardening
Mum was a keen gardener and made the most of what was available. We had to have a good vegetable garden as there was nowhere else to get veggies and Mum didn’t preserve anything. There was no other way to get through the winter except for a good supply of carrots, turnips, swedes and brassicas. We couldn’t grow pumpkins because the season was too short. The ground used to be frozen hard during the winter – who needed a freezer? Dad always had a good crop of potatoes planted on the farm. A job I hated was anything to do with potatoes. Planting, rowing up and digging. After digging up the crop of potatoes they were stored in a pit lined with straw. We always tried to have new potatoes and peas ready for Christmas Day. Podding peas was another chore and a good many peas never reached the pot.
We had a good supply of fruit trees. Apples, plums and gooseberries and raspberries which of course were made into a variety of jams. Top and tailing gooseberries was another chore to be dodged but I would give anything today for a good pie or a pot of goos-gog(gooseberry) jam. My mother never made pickles or sauces as she declared they were no good for Dad's health. However our breakfasts would make today's health fanatics shudder. We had porridge with cream and brown sugar every day followed by bacon and eggs (when available), toast and fried potatoes. Midday was our main meal and something light for tea at night.
Mum always had a flower garden but it was very difficult because everything was grown from seed and did not get too much encouragement from Dad. The flower garden was daffodils, peony roses, primroses which all grew well because of the cold weather. Following the spring flowers there were mainly perennials for the summer. Gardening was purely organic as there was not the availability of sprays and fertilisers. Cow manure was used as a fertiliser and lime was available. We didn’t have a lawn because Dad believed it was a waste of good ground.
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Christine Klempel
What a great read , so lovely to see history how it was over 100 years ago in print
7m
Reply
Bruce Baldwin
Great look back at hard times….tho’ back then they prolly didn’t think they were in hard times….its only from our privileged ‘soft’ times that we think of it as hard…
11m
Reply
Judi Mears
A great read... thank you for sharing! I would love to know more about your father's war time experiences, and any images as I believe he was with the NZ Tunnelling Company?
1h
Reply
Colleen Yee
Enjoyed your memories - thanks for sharing. ?
2h
ReplyDate of Photoca.1940`sMap[1] ContributorJohn Lester
They ploughed and sowed seed for winter feed, working one farm and then the other. Bill’s sheep grazed on an island formed between Woolley Creek and the Maruia River down as far as Poultry Terrace adjoining Fred’s property. Later Walker’s took over Fred’s piece at Boundary Road and Bill split the farm at Woolly Creek. Fred took the west side and Bill the east. When the war broke out in 1914, they both saddled their horses and set off for Nelson, 225km away to volunteer for service with the Forces. Fred was accepted but Bill turned down for health reasons, so he returned to the farms, which he managed until Fred came home from the war in 1918.
On their arrival in Nelson they sold their horses to the Defence Department, who needed horses. Bill’s horse was a very fine one called “Corners All” When the war was over, a well known local soldier called Warwick Thomson, when embarking to come home, saw “Corners All” in Palestine being ridden by an officer. He was able to tell Bill his horse had come through the war in good order and condition and was in the high position of being ridden by an officer.
Fred was wounded in the war by shrapnel through his upper arm.He was also gassed. It was while he was in hospital in Hornchurch that he met my mother Constance Annie Barber.They married in Hornchurch and sailed for New Zealand .They arrived in early January 1918.
Mum’s arrival in New Zealand must have been a real cultural shock as she had to travel by horse and buggy eighty miles to Murchison to meet her in-laws and then another forty miles to her new home in the Maruia. This home was a two roomed bach with no conveniences. Meals were cooked over an open fire in camp ovens, water heated in kettles and kerosene tins, no bathroom, and the water supply being bucketed from a stream. She had to learn to bake bread and this is where Aunt Alice came into her own helping Mum to cope with these chores.
With a couple of rooms built on later, a wood stove was purchased but Mum still preferred to do most of her cooking over the open fire. She was never a fancy cook so all food was very basic and to our father’s disgust bread was wholemeal and we used brown sugar more than white.
Food was bought in bulk. Dad built a big bin and I can remember fifty pound bags of flour and sugar being kept there to keep the mice out. A lot of our groceries were bought from the Self Help store in Nelson. Once a month even after Uncle Bill built the store because the store was not large enough to carry a large amount of goods. The only newspaper we had was the Auckland Weekly News. It was devoured by everyone. A murder was big news and dealt with in great detail.
Our home was very basic. If we were lucky enough to have some linoleum on the floor it was because my mother had some shares in the Farmer Trading Company in Auckland and was able to afford such a luxury. Our kitchen furniture was all made by Dad. We had a long bench seat on each side of the table and Dad and Mum had a chair at each end. We had two sea-grass chairs of sorts, a sofa and deck chairs. Sacks were made into mats or we had a runner of coconut matting. Beds were wirewove with kapok mattresses. Calf and deer skins were cured for mats too.
Mum had brought her grandfather clock and some Wedgewood out from England following her’s and Dad’s trip back in 1924 to see her parents. It must have been about this time that the house was three bedrooms and we had a nice mantlepiece over the fireplace where Mum kept her precious pieces. We didn’t dare touch them. A big picture of the "Charlotte Padbury" hung on the wall. She had a piano which she had bought from Dr Warner in Murchison.
There was no bathroom and the wash-house was an outside room.It contained copper and tubs. Water had to be heated and clothes put into the copper and then rung out in the hand-ringer. Wash day was an all day affair. Most homes had a clothes line strung up in their kitchen/dining area and a wire rack over the top of the stove. Drying clothes in the winter was quite a business. Ironing was done with irons heated on the stove.
Bath night was once a week. The galvanised bath was put in front of the fire and we each had a turn. Clothes were only changed once a week. We did not suffer from any illnesses or sores and we seldom had colds. We were dosed with Lanes emulsion or olive oil during the winter. Later on we had a full sized galvanised bath in a bathroom but we still had to heat the water in kerosene tins and fill it. We all used the same bath water and, of course, Lifebuoy soap.
Kerosene tins were used for everything. Kerosene which was mainly for lighting the lamps came in four gallon tins. The empty tins were snatched up for use mainly as buckets. Dad would cut off the tops and put on a wire handle to be used as milk buckets in the cowshed or to preserve eggs for the winter. Anything a bucket was used for, the kerosene tins were used. Kerosene came in wooden boxes of two. These too were put to good use. They were made into cupboards, chairs, smashed up for kindling wood, and much used by we kids to make into carts and other play things. A hammer, nails and a box – what more could you want?
We thought nothing of walking six miles out and back to collect the mail at the Post Office twice a week. Odd groceries would be picked up at the same time or music lessons were fitted in with the visit which was something of an outing for us all.
Most families had telephones on the party line system. This system was such that each number would have a morse code signal for their letter such as 202S which would be three short rings. Toll calls were made at the whim of the Post Mistress as to whether she had the time to put them through. Never after 5.00pm.
The farm consisted of approximately 800 acres. There was not a lot of cleared land, much of it in virgin bush and what had had the bush felled was covered with fallen logs that hadn’t been burnt. Dad milked cows and ran about 100 sheep.There were several men who I guess would be bush felling and helped with the milking. The milking shed was at the bottom of a hill and Dad had a dam above which filled during the day from a mountain stream and milking time the gates were opened and the water rushed down the pipes to drive the pelton wheel which drove the milking machines and separator. The milk was separated for cream which was put into cans and stood in a shed with water flowing through to keep the cream cool until it was taken to the factory to be processed into butter. The factory was built in 1922 at Station Creek on the opposite side of the road from Uncle Bill’s boarding house. The skim milk left from separating the cream off was used to feed to calves and the pigs. This was once again where kerosene tins proved their usefulness as buckets.
There were no bobby calf collections then so surplus calves were killed on the farm and disposed of. The cows were milked from September to May. A House cow was always kept for the winter and the surplus milk had the cream taken off it and we made it into butter for our own use. There were days when that cream would not turn which was most annoying.
The pigs were slaughtered at the end of the milking season and made into bacon. My father cured the best bacon ever. He cured it with salt, saltpetre and brown sugar which was rubbed into the various cuts – hams, shoulders and belly pieces (which were rolled) and when cured, were hung in the kitchen. We didn’t think about it possibly having dust on it! Tasted great. So much for all this fuss we make today. There was usually enough to see us through to the next season’s killing. Those parts which were not used for bacon such as the heads, ribs and trotters also had their uses. The head was made into brawn. The ribs and trotters were roasted. Delicious!
The sheep were mustered in for dipping, shearing and tailing. Dad’s brothers, Bert and Perce usually came to do most of the shearing. This of course was done with blade shears. We had our own wood press. Uncle Bill brought his sheep to our shed for shearing.
Everything was done with horses so we always had a couple of draught horses for plowing, cropping and dray work. As Dad shod his own horses as most farmers did, he had all the necessary gear. We used to love to pump the bellows to get the fire going to get the coals red hot. Riding in the dray or on the sledge when the opportunity arose was fun. We had hacks for general purpose riding and a pony for riding to school.
Because we kept horses for all the farm chores, plowing, carting etc, they had to have chaff to be fed on. Dad grew a paddock of oats and there was the chaff shed where the oats were cut into chaff.
Haymaking was a slow process depending on the weather. If you were unlucky enough to get the hay wet the whole paddock would have to be turned by hand. Because haymaking was an intensive process, neighbours were called in to lend a hand. All hay was made into haystacks which were thatched with rushes to keep out the rain – a process unheard of with today’s farmers.
There were two houses on the farm. I only remember living in the bottom one until we moved to the top one to be closer to the cow bails and Dad and Pat did the milking with me helping on weekends. Dad built on a large kitchen and another bedroom. No one had any money and I think it was money my mother had inherited which was a lot of help to get Dad going.
At the lower house we had two bedrooms, a verandah which was closed in and a sitting room. When we had to board the school teacher, three of us slept in a double bed in what had been the sitting room.
At the top house Mum did the washing in the cowshed as it was close to the copper and plenty of water. The cowshed was run by a pelton-wheel by water which Dad had harnessed up to drive the machines. The milk had to be separated and the separator had to be wound up by hand until it reached a certain speed and then the machine took over. The cream was kept in cans standing in running water to keep it cool until it was taken to the factory to be made into butter.
Chopping wood for running the household always took a lot of time. We seemed to be always running out of wood or meat. Because there were no fridges, the meat, mainly mutton, was hung in a cool shed with mesh windows for ventilation and to keep out the flies. This didn’t always work and the flies had a way of getting in. We seldom had beef as we could not have dealt with the quantity and would have had to share it with neighbours and relations. Alternatively, it could be salted for corned beef. The odd rabbit and a piece of venison gave some variety. As we kept hens and bred chickens the young cockerels lost their heads. Trout and eels added variety to our diet. In season the men would catch flappers. These were paradise ducklings just about to the flying stage and the men would chase them up the rivers to catch them. They were very good at escaping by swimming underwater.
Dad cured bullock skins for leather made into harnesses for the horses, dog collars and belts.
Mum made all our clothes on a hand sewing machine. She was a very fast knitter and we all learnt her way of knitting and were able to knit for ourselves quite early in life. I was the one who was keen on sewing and spent many hours making clothes for my dolls and was delighted when Aunty Alice gave me a bag of her scraps full of all sorts of wonderful bits.
Making soap for washing was another item to be done. Fat was rendered down and caustic soda and other ingredients added. It was quite a dangerous exercise as it could boil over. This soap was shredded and put into the clothes in the copper and for rubbing into the heavy work clothes.
Dad later handed the farm over to Pat and Gus.Thorley had the lower end of the farm, which he sold to Bob White and left the district. Pat in turn gave the farm to her son, Glenn, who wasn’t a very good farmer.He sold it to a local family who are now milking 300 cows on it.
I started school before I turned five because I pestered to go. Pat and I rode a pony called Tom Thumb. He loved biting your feet and trying to scratch you off on the gate post but coming home he was the perfect horse. If it was raining very hard when we went to school and it looked as though the river would flood, Dad would come over and get us on the old draught horse Polly.
After some time the school closed and we had a teacher board with us and we shared with the Greig’s who had a large family about 3 miles away. The teacher would teach each family 3 days a week. Our last teacher was Mr Woods who had been shell shocked during the war and he would go away every now and then for treatment. He eventually went into a mental hospital where he lived until he died. He was a wonderful pianist and we loved to get him to play the piano at night.
After he left we went to the Correspondence School. Mum never let us off a minute. This caused me to do a bit of cheating. I would take my books up on the terrace behind the house “to study in peace” and read book.s She never found out and I certainly didn’t tell her. Many times we trailed after her with our books around the farm while she put poison on the ragwort. Mum always seemed to have big ideas for me. I had to take the academic course at High School, when Pat got away with doing "commercial"(Bookkeeping,
It was a case of "early to bed, early to rise" for the most part. We read books, and when we were at last to have a radio it was limited to a very short period, as the batteries would have to be recharged.
If we went to bed early, we would have to read by candle which had a time limit. Dad would check up to see if we had gone over our allocation. He would come down and say “You reading?”. We would blow out the candle forgetting that he would be able to smell the candle which had just been blown out. We would then be told to “Get off to sleep”.
When I got a bike at age twelve, I would think nothing of biking twelve miles over rough metal roads to visit a friend for the day.
Gardening
Mum was a keen gardener and made the most of what was available. We had to have a good vegetable garden as there was nowhere else to get veggies and Mum didn’t preserve anything. There was no other way to get through the winter except for a good supply of carrots, turnips, swedes and brassicas. We couldn’t grow pumpkins because the season was too short. The ground used to be frozen hard during the winter – who needed a freezer? Dad always had a good crop of potatoes planted on the farm. A job I hated was anything to do with potatoes. Planting, rowing up and digging. After digging up the crop of potatoes they were stored in a pit lined with straw. We always tried to have new potatoes and peas ready for Christmas Day. Podding peas was another chore and a good many peas never reached the pot.
We had a good supply of fruit trees. Apples, plums and gooseberries and raspberries which of course were made into a variety of jams. Top and tailing gooseberries was another chore to be dodged but I would give anything today for a good pie or a pot of goos-gog(gooseberry) jam. My mother never made pickles or sauces as she declared they were no good for Dad's health. However our breakfasts would make today's health fanatics shudder. We had porridge with cream and brown sugar every day followed by bacon and eggs (when available), toast and fried potatoes. Midday was our main meal and something light for tea at night.
Mum always had a flower garden but it was very difficult because everything was grown from seed and did not get too much encouragement from Dad. The flower garden was daffodils, peony roses, primroses which all grew well because of the cold weather. Following the spring flowers there were mainly perennials for the summer. Gardening was purely organic as there was not the availability of sprays and fertilisers. Cow manure was used as a fertiliser and lime was available. We didn’t have a lawn because Dad believed it was a waste of good ground.
Christine Klempel
What a great read , so lovely to see history how it was over 100 years ago in print
7m
Reply
Bruce Baldwin
Great look back at hard times….tho’ back then they prolly didn’t think they were in hard times….its only from our privileged ‘soft’ times that we think of it as hard…
11m
Reply
Judi Mears
A great read... thank you for sharing! I would love to know more about your father's war time experiences, and any images as I believe he was with the NZ Tunnelling Company?
1h
Reply
Colleen Yee
Enjoyed your memories - thanks for sharing. ?
2h
ReplyDate of Photoca.1940`sMap[1] ContributorJohn Lester
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Location (city or town) MaruiaPersonRosalie Constance (Lester) Gray
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Date Created13th August 2025
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West Coast New Zealand History (13th Aug 2025). ALBUM - Rosalie Constance (Lester) Gray ,Maruia - Memoirs.ca.1940`s.. In Website West Coast New Zealand History. Retrieved 21st Mar 2026 06:13, from https://westcoast.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/35091