Life #1: Social Heritage
I have started a new series called Limericks in Life. This first chapter tells the personal story of my family’s dairy farming heritage in Ohauiti, Tauranga, Aotearoa, New Zealand, with an insight into the lives of my much-loved forebears.
Here’s the story of my heritage, in Aotearoa
When lives were primitive, harder and slower
My family forebears
Were farming pioneers
Bought a farm in Ohauiti, and made it a goer
My industrious grandparents, broke in their land
With only draft horses, and much done by hand
Bailing up the hay
Milking twice a day
To get the cream to the gate, in stainless steel cans
They were early settlers, near the end of the wars
With backbreaking work, and constant chores
While the physical strain
Brought crippling pain
They devoted their lives to the farming cause
Dad and his sisters, were soon embroiled
Attending to the cows, or working the soil
Calving or drenching
Or fixing the fencing
A full family commitment, to the daily toil
They cleared all the blackberry, ragwort and gorse
Their school had one teacher, with a limited course
The twin sisters travelled
On roads roughly gravelled
On their bikes into town, to work or their sports
My parents wed and settled, in the house on the hill
Took over the farm, with big dreams to fulfil
While Grandad and Nana
Built a humble new manor
At the bottom of the farm, and it stands there still
I’d drive the tractor for Dad, with the trailer in tow
We presented prize calves, in the Pastoral Show
I’d help with the feeding
Or walk the hills weeding
But by the time I was nine, it was time to go
Milk prices had tumbled, and costly bills accrued
The farm became too small, for our fast-growing brood
We’d built piggery pens
Added chickens and hens
But couldn’t make ends meet, whatever we pursued
So the neighbour bought our farm, he said to expand
But soon bulldozers moved in, on our long-cherished land
The hills were excavated
Grandparents devastated
Watching from their front window, as new houses spanned
Waste soil was dumped, in a huge earth pile
On my grandparents’ boundary, across the fence stile
And despite all the dust
They never made a fuss
Hearts were broken and Nana, no longer mobile
After my parents had sold, and moved into town
Our house on the hill, was burned to the ground
Our heritage in embers
Now nobody remembers
As not any remains of our farm can be found
I walk the streets on the site of our family farm
I search for lost heritage, with remorse and alarm
My childhood bitter sweet
Now buried under concrete
No trace of the paddocks, old fences or barn
But thankfully there’s a walkway, with a new street sign
By my grandparents’ old home, up a slight incline
It has a proud name
It is called Holmes Lane
It’s a tribute to our family and bygone times
We are grateful for that landmark, where our legacy roams
The Ohauiti dairy farm, that we once owned
It’s a fitting dedication
To our three generations
And in long loving memory …. of Muriel and Herbert Holmes.
Kevin Holmes • 20th May 2022
