The vital years: the small farm settlement of the Upper Oroua and Upper Pohangina Valleys, 1885-1900

Abstract

The history of the small farm associations, which settled the area between the Rangitikei River and the Ruahine Ranges and northwards to the Kawhatau River has been neglected by New Zealand historiographers. Without detailed studies of the establishment and progress of new farming communities, the larger framework of national history can not suitably be remodelled. For instance, the value of settling labourers and townsmen, untrained in bushfelling and farming, on uncleared bush, can only be assessed by local histories. S.H. Franklin states that the proportion of new bush farmers in the Wellington Province, who were adequately prepared for agricultural work, is not Known. See The Village and the Bush, in Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 1 No.2, 1960, pp. 167-8. A summary of sufficient of these, would allow a clearer review of the small farm experiments of the eighteen-eighties and -nineties. Moreover, a more reliable test can be made of the claim that the aggregation of land is forced upon a majority of farmers by uneconomic units; the intention to provide enough land for each son, or to buy land as a sound business investment, are considered only secondary motivations. W.B. Johnston, in Land and Livelihood,ed. M.McCaskill, p.218.