Twenty Years

My beloved father passed away twenty years ago today.  It seems so long ago and yet my memories of it are like they happened yesterday.  

My father was a hard-working dairy farmer for most of his life, having bought the farm from his widowed mother after he returned from duty in World War II.

In this old 1972 photo, he is 'teddering' the hay.  Grass would be cut and then teddered to scatter it around the field so it would dry better.  This would be done at least twice to help it dry faster (the machine on the tractor would be configured differently to how it is here).

Here he is raking the hay up into rows ready to be baled.  The tractor was a Nuffield, a true work horse on the farm for many years.

The cowshed on the far right was a walk-through.  Whole milk was collected daily from the shed by a milk-tanker, supplying the Waharoa Butter Factory (now defunct).

The farm was around 120 acres and the herd normally was around 120 cows.  Bulls and heifers were also kept on the farm, along with a couple of steers and a few sheep that were destined for the freezer.

I feel I was fortunate to have grown up surrounded with farm life.

Margaret xx