Museum opens door to farming’s history

Manawatu’s go-to museum for agriculture came to life, offering the community a rare insight into farming history.

With the help of a few ‘‘old hands’’, the Coach House Museum in Feilding gave visitors firsthand demonstrations of the skills of early farmers. Wooden wheel making, farrier shoeing, butter making, wool spinning and rope making were on show.

Organiser Brian Hunter said the interactive displays challenged people’s perceptions about the tenacity of rural New Zealand farmers.

‘‘It was to let people see and appreciate the skills that went into the labour-intensive actions that made the world go round in those days,’’ he said.

‘‘Our main aim was to educate and inform, really. A lot of people had the chance to see some of these skills which shaped our region and are now gone.

‘‘The whole country was wrapped around those trades. The people that were there were thrilled to see these craftsmen at work.’’

Hunter said it was the second year the museum had hosted the event.

The skills on show were instrumental in the development of the region, he said.

Much of Manawatu’s farmland was covered in bush and, in the early years, forestry was the district’s biggest industry as early pioneers cleared the bush for farming. ‘‘People were in the Manawatu before 1850 and, back then, virtually everything was derived from the land.

‘‘The land was pretty critical to the district.’’

Hunter said crowds gathered around ‘‘anything that made smoke and fire’’.

One of the biggest hits was Greg and Ally Lang’s wheel making, which involved putting steel tyres on to wheels. The steel was heated to expand around the wheel and then coolled to shrink and fit.

‘‘Somebody said they were probably the only two people in the country that can do that with a wheel,’’ Hunter said.

Rosalie Hunter, who helped run the event, said not many people in today’s world possessed the skills that were on show.

‘‘I really like to share the things that not many have seen before,’’ she said.

‘‘To see a carriage wheel being ‘tyred’ is really interesting – also standing behind a steam boiler and hearing the noise.

‘‘It showed how hard our grandparents had to work to get where they did. We don’t know the hard work that goes into that work before we see it.’’