By Sorrel Hoskin

The goat that could harrow

Roland Kennedy learnt how to harrow with the help of a goat. 

The young boy used to hook the white nanny up to a small set of harrows his father had made and cut farrows up the hillside next to the house on his parent's Tāhora farm.

"I was mimicking my Dad I suppose," recalls the 83-year-old. "It was a good learning opportunity. 'Nanny' was just the right size. I would follow along behind my father."

The young boy was to "graduate" on to a bullock, then horses, and carry on the tradition of hillside ploughing, on the 400 hectare farm nestled among the hills inland from Stratford. It was a skill taught to him by the late Bill Shine.

Now, over seventy-five years later, he's training a horse to hillside plough. It's a dying art he'd like to see rejuvenated.

Training Kate: Roland hopes to train Kate the draughthorse to pull a plough.

"It's something that is important to the history of New Zealand. I feel I owe it to the people of the country."

Kate is a draughthorse in training. Roland, a keen horseman, reckons the secret to working with horses is their good memories.

"The first thing a horse learns is the last thing she forgets."

He's taught Kate to follow him, and walk to a stick. It won't be long before she is ploughing up the hillside.

Horses have been on the Tahora farm since its beginning, transporting the family and helping break in the land, hauling logs and pulling ploughs. Roland has always used them on the property, and in past years, has taken a horse and dray to the Whangamomona Republic Day.

Proud Heritage

Farming is in Roland's blood.

A weather-worn face, as craggy as the surrounding hills, grins out from beneath a grizzled beard. A tam-o'-shanter, a link to his Scottish roots, perches on his head. This is a man who is as much part of the land he has lived on for the past 83 years as he is human.

A slice of history: Roland Kennedy hillside ploughing in 1953 with Queenie and Raja.

Image: Roland Kennedy

The farm is land that Roland's grandparents purchased over 100 years ago, travelling in by horse to start a new life on a block of bush in the middle of nowhere.  Roland's grandfather clear-felled nearly 400 hectares of land with just an axe and saw.

The settlers in Tāhora, as in other parts of the Whangamomona county, suffered due to lack of access to the area. Riding 19km to the store at Whangamomona, they often found supplies short and had to return home with little, or no stores.

There had been great hopes of using the Whanganui and Tangarakau rivers as access to the county, but the subsequent felling of large areas of bush along the river banks, clogging up the river with logs, soon put an end to hopes of getting in supplies by water.

Keeping the clay roads passable, especially in winter, was a difficult task. Horses and bullocks got bogged, some even having their necks broken. In the dry weather the ruts dried up and became almost impossible to negotiate.

"It was hard back breaking work, and they were so isolated," says Roland. "If they wanted to go to Stratford it used to take them about two-and-a-half days to get to town to get supplies, and then come back. It was a major task. They had to get a lot of food that would keep - they made their own butter and bread, even made their own yeast out of boiled potato juice and hops. They knew no better in those days and they were wonderful days."

In 1906 the 19 farmers in the Tāhora district received mail three times a week by the Royal Mail service. The mail was supposed to arrive at the village between 6pm and 7pm, but often, due to the state of the roads, it didn't arrive until much later, or even the next day. Settlers who had come in from the back blocks to collect their letters would wait patiently around a fire built by the local postmaster.

The settlers of the Tahora district were the first in the county to have a rural district telephone service. Five settlers were connected up in 1913.

The railway didn't arrive in Tahora until 1920. This made farming in the area more economic and the Tahora settlement grew to comprise a couple of shops, hall, railway station and post office. A couple of sawmills also set up. A new school was erected on Tahora Rd to handle the growing role.

A wit wrote a poem about the old school:

Tahora School

Built of slabs and leaky tin?

Just a kind of shelter

To put pigs and cattle in

In summer like a furnace

In winter more than cool.

Bid two bob and take it -

The Tahora Public School

Once it reached Tahora the railway stalled. It remained the railhead and a construction centre until 1933 when the link to the Main Trunk was opened.

A home built with love

Many early settlers built their own homes from timber pit sawn on the property.                                   

Today Roland and wife Margaret live in the house his father built in 1910, finishing the finer details when he returned from WWI in 1918.

It was during the first war that the influenza epidemic hit New Zealand. Tāhora wasn't spared from the grasp of the deadly virus. Roland's grandparents helped set up a hospital in a railway cottage, tending to the sick and dying. They only had rudimentary medicines like peppermint cure and hot lemon drinks to fight off the virus. "They never got sick - it was the blessing of the Lord," says Roland.

Roland's grandmother took many of the district's children for Sunday school lessons, first in the family home, and then, as numbers got up to 60 children, in the village hall.

The Lord has been a big part of the Kennedy family through the years. Roland's grandfather was a lay preacher who ran services on the ship out to New Zealand.

 "I suppose I would have to say it's a blessing from my point of view that I was brought up with Christ. At night I was read a bible story and that introduced me to the bible and allowed me to understand it. With the Lord's blessing I have had a full life."

Roland, an only child, was born in 1922.  "I was always very occupied as a child, being the only one I had to help out on the farm a lot. I went to school down here at Tāhora and then did correspondence schooling for my high school. I used to do it early in the mornings and late at night, and do farm work in between."

The Kennedy home has expanded over the years to accommodate a growing family. Rooms shoot off in all directions from the large kitchen where a giant-size table tells the tale of Roland and his late wife Violet's family of eight children.

Roland is immensely proud of his heritage. The family room is a walk through the ages. Paintings and precious ornaments line the walls, pictures painted by his parents: a pride of lions, a stormy ocean scene, swords, a family bible, two accordions and a cello. Above the fireplace is the family coat of arms and on the mantel piece is a small jar holding soil from the first sod of earth turned at the beginning of the East Railway Line in 1901. 

Roland taught himself to play the instruments, later forming a band that performed at local dances.

"In the older days there were always dances, two or three a month around the different districts. We had a band the Tāhora Hepcats and we used to play for the local dances. I played the button accordion and the cello and we had another accordion, a clarinet, banjo and drums. We used to go out as far as Toko and Ohura. I think the TV's damaged a lot these days. It's ruined the social side of life really."

The home didn't see power until 1963. Before that a generator provided enough electricity for a set of 12 volt lights. A coal range heated water and cooked the family meals. Until kerosene run refrigerators came along food was kept cool in a "safe" outside. Television didn't arrive until the 1970s. The family got their first car an Austin 10, in 1937.

Fowl minded

Dotted around the farm house are four hen houses filled with English game fowl, Chillian and Black Orpingtons. quails and turkeys.

Roland has been breeding hens since he was seven - his flock of around 150 fowls have a heritage line that runs back 78 years.

"You could say I consider myself a bit fowl minded!"

Hunting for eggs is always a mission - the hens are let outside to roam every day (the secret to the wonderful colour and flavour' says Roland.) and often results in a bucketful, 90 per cent of which are given away.

"I've always had caged birds - from canaries through to quails they've always interested me."

Doggone it: Roland and Margaret Kennedy with Sam the dog.

In the past he has held licences to breed and export birds, particularly the native green parrot - the Kākāriki. "I was very successful at captive breeding. I'd make them special cages to travel in and send them away overseas to people like Gerald Durrell, Dr Pinot in France and other countries like Africa and Iceland.

Roland's first wife Violet died in 1989. He met Margaret in 1992. "Our first date was taking the wool down to Wanganui in the truck!" The couple married later that year. Between them they have 13 children.

Roland and Margaret now farm only a small section of the original farm. "We got up to 1200 hectares, but my children have taken over some of that now. We're only left with 200 hectares. I call it my hobby farm. We've got 80 Murray Grey breeding cows and about 600 Perendale ewes - it keeps us busy!"

He has no plans to retire from farming or move off the land.

"I was born here and the good Lord willing, I will die here."