Commitment to farm and the All Blacks
Back in the 1970s, rugby was professional in attitude, commitment and skill, but not in payment. For John Callesen, the powerhouse of the All Black and Manawatu¯ scrum, it was a financial sacrifice.
Looking back on his career, Manawatu¯ farmer Callesen, was unavailable for several big tours because of work commitments on the family property. He missed the 1976 tour to South Africa and France the following year, but fitted in shorter tours to Australia, Great Britain, Ireland and South America.
Even then, at the peak of his playing career, he was away for 15 weeks a year on Manawatu¯ and All Black duty. ‘‘It put pressure on dad, the family and children,’’ Callesen recalls.
He retains many rugby memories, especially winning the Ranfurly Shield and the era that followed. ‘‘We had an incredible team with 13 All Blacks,’’ he says.
Then there was the ‘‘water polo test’’, when the ground was flooded and ‘‘we ran on with water over our boots’’.
That afternoon in 1975, the All Blacks beat Scotland 24-0, with the Scots lucky to get zip.
The ref blew up the scrums and rucks quickly before players were drowned.
By 1978, Callesen had serious back injuries from too many scrum practices and hours on the tractor. He was a fourthgeneration farmer and the property that Danish immigrant Hans Callesen bought from former Danish Prime Minister and Bishop Ditlev Monrad in 1870 became his fulltime work.
The Longburn farm which, in 1900, grew 90 acres of oats for Wellington tram horses, was an established beef, cattle and cropping farm. To that, John added a seed-cleaning business to purify wheat, barley and grass seed regionally and nationally for Wrightsons and Dalgetys.
He started 40 years ago with one seed cleaner and five silos. Now, the property is populated with huge structures as his business has expanded to four seed cleaners, three dryers and 50 silos.
‘‘We’re a service industry. Farmers and agents send in the seed and clients pick it up,’’ Callesen says.
Grass seed and oats are cleaned in summer ready for autumn sowing, and wheat, barley and maize dried and stored over winter, then cleaned for spring sowing. Many other seed varieties are cleaned throughout the year, some from as far away as Auckland.
Seed cleaning has been extremely successful, not just because of Callesen’s business acumen, but his creativity. His great strength has been his design and build, both plant and machinery. Currently, he’s building all the ancillary equipment needed to install a colour sorter, sourced from overseas.
‘‘I’ve always been interested in engineering and, when a client rings up and says ‘can you do such and such’, I respond to the challenge.’’ These days, Callesen is more of a rural industrialist than a farmer.
Callesen is an organic processor and, in recent years, he’s added popcorn to his business.
The popcorn comes from Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne and is dried and stored in Callesen’s silos, then cleaned and sent to the manufacturer. When you purchase a bag at the cinema or supermarket, you know it’s likely to have passed through Callesen’s hands.
Callesen can thank his years on farm implements for another passion. As an 18-year-old, he was driving a combine harvester by a Kairanga property when he noticed the shell of a 40-year-old car under a macrocarpa tree.
It was a 1927 Dodge and Callesen immediately became committed to saving and restoring it.
That one-off project has become an important part of his life. The Dodge is fully restored and has been driven around the country, and he owns several other antique cars.