By Rhonda Bartle

Down on the farm

Standing on the rise of Ross Dunlop's farm, it's hard to imagine what it might have looked like in a previous owner's day.  The land undulates in gentle contours from the main road north of Hawera down towards Ohawe Beach and today, in May, it's bright green and lush with fresh growth.

Perhaps it doesn't look too much different from when the first Pakeha came, Dunlop says.  The first owners were the Livingstons though early Maori had passed this way, burning all before them. 

Once the grass grew back, it might have looked something like this, sans bush and native trees. After the Livingstons came the Battens.  Hamilton Batten would one day introduce some real innovations to farming.

Farm view: Across the Dunlop land to Ohawe by the sea.

Down below in the distance, seaside cottages ring the peaceful fringe of Ohawe beach, huddled together and snoozing in the autumn sun.  The only noise is from irregular highway traffic and the occasional resonant bellow of a dairy cow.

The herd has gathered at one of the farm's automatic gates.  At 2pm it will open, allowing the cows to wander up to a feed pad of maize next to the cowshed.

This cuts down on labour by getting the animals to the shed under their own steam.  You can almost hear Hamilton Batten sighing in approval from the grave.

A self-taught man

Farming has changed since Batten's time but he was definitely a forerunner of things to come. A self-taught man, he heralded major changes, experimenting not just with crops but in equipment to harvest them. 

He was the first farmer to grow Lucerne in Taranaki, cutting it for silage and building two huge American-styled silos to store it in.  He swapped his horses for a new fangled Fordson tractor - only the second in the district - and slung a micro power plant into the convenient Kaimoi Stream which slowly weaves its way through the landscape to the mighty Waingongoro River. 

His house ran on free electricity, which also powered a cowshed, and a workshop where it ran his custom-built tools.  A simple wheeled device in the kitchen meant Batten's two spinster sisters - whom he lived with all his life - could alter the flow of water to adjust the electric current.  It wasn't unknown for Miss Hilda or Miss Ida to look up when the supply faltered, clap their hands and say 'Eel for breakfast tomorrow!'

But these weren't the only things that Hamilton Batten, bachelor farmer, introduced to farming.  He adopted a new milk testing procedure where carefully kept records on milk production meant he culled the herd accordingly, keeping only the calves of the best producers. 

This was seen as a major breakthrough in stock management and Batten built up one of the best studs in the region.

'Yes,' Ross Dunlop says thoughtfully as he stands on his verdant hill. 'Hamilton Batten was a visionary all right.'

The Batten clan poses for the camera:  Back row from left - Hilda, father James, Ida, Hamilton, Norah with husband John.

Front row from left - May, mother Emma Rebecca, Leslie, Muriel and Aunt Lily with Rover the dog.

The Battens buy a better farm

As modern owner of the Batten land, Dunlop is someone who respects its history and the man who went before him.  He has a tattered photograph of the Batten family - father James, mother Emma Rebecca, posing with grownup children, a couple of spouses and even Rover the dog.  

Hamilton stands tall and straight at the back, his smooth, moustachioed face open to the camera.  He would be the last son left alive when two brothers died young - Stuart drowned in Lyttleton harbour when he was sixteen. Leslie died on active service during World War I.  

Hamilton was 8 years old when the family arrived in Christchurch from Kent. The family grew to four girls and three boys after Leslie was born.  For a decade James Batten worked in a Christchurch shipping office before heading north in 1890 to farm on Mountain Road, Ketemarae, near Normanby. Here he milked cows by hand to supply the Normanby Dairy factory.

In 1902 the large 1495 acre (598 hectare) Waipawa Estate at Tokaora (a Māori word that literally means Living Stone) was divided into parcels and the Batten family bought 170 acres (68 hectares) at 12 pounds 10 shillings an acre.

It was bounded on two sides by the Waingongoro River and a third by South Road.  With James now in his 70s, it was up to his children to develop it.

And develop it they did, firstly planting boxthorn hedges for shelter and stringing ordinary wire through their fence posts, as steel wire seemed to withstand the salt spray better than galvanised. 

Hamilton, who had studied engineering by correspondence, now began to read extensively about farming. Dunlop still has a few of his books, some with bright illustrations of pasture grasses and weeds, some with diagrams of farm structures Hamilton later put to good use.

A self-sufficient family

In the Batten family photograph, the assembled group is posed at their home at Mountain Road, Ketemarae before they moved to Tokaora.

They were a health conscience bunch, often going off on holiday with their lettuce seedlings so they could enjoy fresh vegetables while they were away.

When cars became common place, the Battens could sometimes be seen towing a boat towards the sea.  According to Dunlop, the family was totally self-sufficient and supplemented their home kill meat with plenty of fish.

'They were wonderful people, my father said,' Ross Dunlop says. His father, Ian Dunlop, owned the property from 1948. 'He said Hamilton was the most fascinating man.  He died the year I was born.  My father used to talk very highly of him.  The family were dynamos.'

Though Hamilton thoroughly earned the name of visionary farmer, he was known as a humble man.  Dunlop recalls a story:  'He sang in the Anglican choir for 60 years and they decided to hold a function for him to celebrate his long service.  And he said, 'That would be really good, but I won't be there.' 

He thought they should have the function but he was such a modest person he didn't think he should be the centre of attention.'

House and home: Despite busy lives, the Batten homestead looks neat and tidy.  The Dunlop family found a clock in their shed which could be the one on the mantle.

Ross has added to his father's holdings over the years. Though nothing remains of the Batten homestead, he can show you the flagstone which probably lay at the front door. 

He laments the demise of the towering palm tree, almost 100 years old that would have stood sentry over the house and is now bereft of leaves, obviously on its way out.

Sheds full of tools and tales

But Dunlop knows where everything was and that's almost enough. More manageable relics are stored in several out-buildings.

There's the handsome gig made by Hawera's Hurrell brothers, a couple of carriage lamps, an old candle chandelier that goes up and down on a pulley arrangement anchored to the ceiling and a dusty old treadle lathe that Hamilton used extensively in his day. 

Though some of the Batten leftovers beg to be restored and shown, most seem perfectly fine where they are, neither forgotten nor lost in the dusty gloom but put aside for a later date. 

In Hamilton's workshop, a rattling collection of tools in cut down kerosene tins that once supplied fuel for the Fordson tractor, lie in wait as though waiting for the man himself to come in and gather them up. 

Up near the plateau of paddock that lies level with the main road, is one of the boldest of Hamilton's big ideas; a huge concrete silo leaning into a bank.

A giddy 10ms high, 5ms wide and made of concrete, this one sports a brand new hat while its old mate rises, like the turret of a neglected castle, in a stand of twisted trees. 

Dunlop gets in close enough to the bank to put his fingers into the grooves left in the clay, by shovels swung by Hamilton, Miss Hilda and Miss Ida. Just digging the site was an achievement in itself, he says. 'It's amazing how it all worked.'

He speaks again of the books that were Batten's inspiration. 'There are pictures.  I mean, we can build anything that they have in North America, we have a similar climate and we can adapt to suit. But I don't think there are any other silos in Taranaki,' Dunlop says. 

Looking into the restored silo from the top, the size is doubly impressive.

'I wouldn't mind turning it into a Bed and Breakfast,' Dunlop says.  He's joking.  He'd never be so disrespectful.

'It was getting to the stage where I had to do something. When they're gone, they're gone. They were falling completely into disrepair. 

'I've only done one.  The other is beyond it.  It doesn't have a roof on it or anything inside.  It's just a concrete structure now.'

A Motivated Man

Batten was motivated to make silage because he'd watched the intensive labour needed to cut hay. 

Often all summer was spent haymaking, with large gangs of men and horses, up to 25 of each, moving slowly through the district, field by field.  There had to be a better way, he thought, and latched onto an American fashion.

Some time in the past, Ian Dunlop sat down and wrote invaluable notes on how the system worked:

The farm had two low sledge-like conveyors which, with the assistance of an implement which was towed behind the sledges, gathered Lucerne and deposited it on the sledge.  As the Lucerne was deposited in the one spot, labour was required to spread it evenly over the sledge. 

When the load was gathered, the gatherers were unhooked and the load taken to the silo.  There was a chaffer which cut the Lucerne evenly around the silo.  This was done by a series of galvanised pipes about a metre long which required the man to walk around the silo to evenly distribute the silage. 

As the silo filled, a pipe was unhooked.  The Lucerne had to be forked into the chaffer and while this was taking place, the tractor and the other sledge was gathering another load.  All 25 acres of Lucerne was ensiled.  No hay was made after the silos were built…'

Though silage has since taken over from hay as the main winter feed, no one grows Lucerne as Batten did.  There is still a small amount grown in South Taranaki, but it's a bit of a fiddle, according to Dunlop, with an aphid that attacks it now, meaning it must be sprayed.

The man makes electricity

Traversing more of the Batten property, Dunlop stops at the dam Hamilton built to provide his own electricity. 

The water lies quiet today, but it once followed a deep drain before dropping 50 metres down a near-vertical pipe to the Kaimoi stream. Across the gully on a distant bank grow ancient walnut trees.

Though it must have seemed a big ask, he had his sisters help dig the trench.  It's doubtful that they minded. Having already helped construct two silos, Miss Ida and Miss Hilda do not seem ones to be stuck inside a tidy parlour. 

 Ian Dunlop writes:  The next big project by the family was to build a dam to generate electricity to use to milk the cows and provide lighting for the house and sheds.  This task required the stream to be diverted while the earth works were in progress. 

A narrow drain was hand dug to carry the water and in places it was 2m deep.  This allowed work to proceed in the initial stages of construction.  The first dam only lasted a short time. 

Water built up after heavy rain at the culvert at the road which finally gave way and a large wall of water swept down the gully and washed the new dam away.  

Disappointed, but not downhearted, Batten simply set about building a new dam further downstream, which provided a much larger volume of water and is still in perfect condition after almost 100 years. He then produced his own power from 1910 to the late 1940s.

No limits to his power

Batten's electricity supplied the house, the workshop and of course, an innovative cowshed.

Ian Dunlop: A milking plant was installed, a 2Kg, one of the first in New Zealand.  A report in the paper at the that time highlighted this labour-saving device and steady stream of farmers showed great interest in this 'new-fangled device.' 

The milk was extracted from the cow into a sucker (vacuum) and because there was no overhead pipes, this method was most satisfactory…'

It is said the Batten house was the envy of Tokaora, with its dangling light bulbs and noisy refrigerator - the first one in the area - made up of one third icebox and two thirds motor.  Imported from the United States, it would chug away like an eager servant for the next thirty years. 

Later, when electricity became more widespread, Batten generously gave his time and knowledge to train others in the art.  And he conceded to hook up to mains supply only when he grew too old to maintain his own equipment.

Generating power again, using Batten's methods, is high on Dunlop's wish list.  'The penstock going down the hill is all rusted out so it would be a major to get it up and running again,' he says.  'But it's not impossible.'

An impressive history

Hamilton Batten went on to become the engineer-in-charge of the Stratford Electric Light Company's first hydro-electricity plant at Tariki which is now operated by the Taranaki Power Board. 

He was also keenly interested in natural gas for household and industrial purposes and became a director of the Hawera Gas Company.

His farming led him to the old Farmer's Union branch at Tokaora and the Riverdale Dairy Company at Inaha, where he was director during a time of expansion, 1914 - 1917.

He died in 1954 at the age of 82, survived by three of his sisters.  Batten Road carries his name.

As Dunlop heads back down to the flat, past an impressive dairy herd and pointing out Batten's boxthorn hedges, it's easy to understand his passion for the place. 

He's loved history, he says, 'right from when I was a kid.'  He doesn't remember any one thing that sparked his interest, 'except perhaps the Māori Wars, now called the Land Wars,' so significant in these parts.  

His role as South Taranaki District councillor means he represents the council when it comes to historic places.

Dunlop pulls into where he and wife Jan's warmly restored 1930s house sits in its perfect lowland setting.  To be allowed over his farm and inside some unique living history is an experience not to be missed.