Ploughing on

                                           

                                     

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt shows an old tractor on display at an international agricultural fair in Turkey.  No sepian photos of tractors in my family collection, but I do have a few photos of tractors, both old and more modern models. Our son-in-law John is a dairy analyst, but describes himself as "having been passionate about tractors before he could talk", and in his spare moments he writes a light-hearted, laid-back column entitled 'Grunt' for a monthly paper called Dairy News Australia, all about tractors and various farm equipment that John has acquired for use on his 40 acre property. Click here if you'd like to read one of John's Grunt columns. In this month's edition, he makes the point that he doesn't think much of tractor racing, because tractors are not built for speed, but for the amount of power they can put into the ground to operate ploughing and other kinds of farm machinery. 

The mention of tractor racing reminded me of the related concept of ploughing matches. I'm not certain about the exact criteria taken into account when judging such competitions, but I understand the main things to be looked for are the straightness and neatness of furrows. No point being finished first if you've made a hash of the field! Back before tractors were invented to make things easier, horses did the work, and the following sketch and historical account of a ploughing match describes how a few farmers got together and helped out one of their neighbours, in this case my 3 x great uncle William Cruickshank, by spending the day competitively ploughing three fields on his farm at Monquhitter Aberdeenshire. The names of the judges for each field are given, followed by lists of the winners and placegetters. I see that my 2x great grandfather Adam Cruickshank, brother of William, won his field of 12 ploughmen. Hopefully no favouritism was involved, especially as one of the judges' names was also Cruickshank.  There were a lot of Cruickshank families around the district, not necessarily related. At the end of the day a sumptuous dinner was provided for the participants by William's young wife Jane, and a good time appeared to have been had by all. 

These two Cruickshank brothers and their families were to migrate from Scotland to New Zealand some nine years later in 1863. 

                

Aberdeen Journal, 1 Feb. 1854, found through the Findmypast web site

When visiting the Southland district of NZ in 2013, 150 years later, we visited William's farm of Rosedale on the outskirts of Invercargill. It is a sheep property and is still run by Peter Cruickshank, a great grandson of William. No doubt there was a tractor or two around somewhere, but my photo only shows this old truck that the sheep looked to have commandeered.

We were also shown the property called Oakdale where Adam originally farmed, near the town of Gore. It is no longer in Cruickshank hands and the homestead that Adam and his sons built doesn't exist any more, but we were allowed to look around, and see old trees along the driveway and behind the homestead that the Cruickshank men had planted. I've shown a painting of Oakdale by Adam's granddaughter Charlotte Petrie in a previous post, and here is an aerial view of the property, taken while still owned by the family.

While there I took this photo of an old piece of equipment that might have been another remnant of that time, with a stand of big old trees in the background.

Later everyone gathered for a 'sumptuous dinner' at the nearby property of Helen, another Cruickshank descendant, and we hadn't even worked for it. Helen and her husband Frank have a beautifully designed garden, a feature of which is this huge piece of old machinery that one of their sons found and parked there permanently. I think it was some kind of harvester, not sure, but it was definitely going nowhere fast!

This next tractor photo comes from a colour slide collection, and my husband Roger is standing on the right in the back row. The photo was taken in about the summer of 1966, when his father Bob had been working in Vienna and took the family to stay with his wife Mary's relatives in Herefordshire for their summer holidays before returning to Australia. While there Roger was able to join  the local scout troop on a working camp across the border in Wales and remembers a very hard day's work collecting hay bales for the farmer. Part of that huge stack looks rather precarious, and several of the boys have bottles in their hands, but surely these scouts weren't drinking beer!  Little did young Roger know that decades later he would occasionally give his son-in-law John a hand collecting and stacking bales.

Here are a couple of shots of said son-in-law John with his pride and joy, a second hand Deutz-Fahr model, having fun enlarging the dam and ploughing a new track around it. 

    Here he's using the post hole attachment to dig holes for a new fence. There are always jobs to be done.

Whatever interest I have in tractors and farm equipment stems from John's connection, which is why I texted him this amusing advertisement that I noticed in a local newspaper in Invercargill on that NZ trip. I think he had taken a few days' leave from his day job at the time and was helping his dairy-farming father with silage, with only the occasional break.

Finally, here's another photo I texted back to John in Australia when my daughters and I were driving in Kent or thereabouts and got stuck behind this little old Massey Ferguson for a short time while it trundled along. Thankfully it wasn't too long before a passing opportunity came up.

John's off to a trade fair called Farm World this coming Saturday, probably checking out a few tractors. Meanwhile I plan to read up on tractors in other Sepia Saturday posts, and you can too at Sepia Saturday 272.

Empty Chairs

I included a couple of statues in my blog last week, so now I'm simply going to focus on those chairs in the current prompt. I imagine they were awaiting the arrival of dignitaries for a speech concerning the Jefferson Monument.

Here is a recent photo of an old family heirloom. This sweet little chair is of particular significance to my family history, because it was made by my great great grandfather Adam Cruickshank for his daughter and eldest child Jessie. It's a child's rocking chair, and no doubt Jessie loved rocking in it. Perhaps she protectively guarded it from her seven younger brothers, because it's still in very good condition, and is now greatly treasured by Jessie's granddaughter Joyce.  If Joyce's grandchildren and great grandchildren are allowed to use it, I'm sure they would be carefully supervised!

Jessie Ann Cruickshank was born in Canada in 1856. Her parents Adam and Charlotte had travelled to Canada from Monquhitter Aberdeenshire, but apparently decided that the climate wasn't good for their health, and returned to Scotland for about four years before emigrating again in 1863. This time they set out for the port of Bluff in the far south of New Zealand aboard the ship New Great Britain, with their two children Jessie and William, together with Adam's brother William and his wife Jane and family, and Adam and William's widowed mother Janet Cruickshank, nee Mackie. They settled in the Gore district where Adam became a successful farmer and had six more sons, several of whom helped him to run the farm. A painting of his farm, named Oakdale, by Jessie's daughter Charlotte, who was an accomplished artist, can be found here. My great grandfather Charles Cruickshank, born in nearby Invercargill in 1866, was the fourth born son of Adam and Charlotte.

Adam, Charlotte and family, c. 1870. Daughter Jessie standing at rear, with Charles on his father's knee  The other sons shown here in order of age would be William, George, Adam and baby  Richard, with two more yet to come.

William and Charlotte Cruickshank, with Adam's older brother William.

Adam and Charlotte Cruickshank with their children and their families on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary in 1906. Adam seems to have favoured the same style of 'wrap-around' beard all his life, but it looks more distinctive in white.

Jessie Cruickshank married Isaac Petrie, a master mariner, and she lived to be 101 before passing away in Invercargill in 1957. No doubt she had some wonderful family stories to tell. The second photograph below shows Jessie celebrating her 100th birthday. She's seated, although not on that little rocking chair I'm sure. We were lucky enough to be able to listen to a short recording of a radio interview conducted with her on that momentous occasion in 1956, which very coincidentally happened to be repeated on NZ radio shortly before we were over there. If you'd like to hear Jessie speak for a couple of minutes, just click here, go to the first hour of the program and then if you move the slider along you can pick her up around the 38th minute mark.There were a few more verses of the poem that Jessie was able to recite, which are transcribed in full at the end of a diary of the voyage of the New Great Britain here, but she did pretty well for a 100 year old lady!

Jessie and Isaac Petrie and family outside their family home in Invercargill NZ. Elder son Arnold was killed in World War 1. Elder daughter Charlotte on the far left trained to become an artist at the Slade School of Art in London,and also lived to be 100. Daughter Gladys was also artistic, and she became an opera singer, living into her 90s. Younger son Frank was the only one of the four to marry and have children. His daughter Joyce generously shared these old family photographs with me. 

Jessie and Frank with their first three children, c.1898. Little Charlotte is sitting on a rocking horse here, perhaps also made by her grandfather Adam, who lived with the family in his final years.

Jessie Petrie, nee Cruickshank, on her 100th birthday in 1956

185 Empty Chairs

Last year, after we met Joyce and were able to see Jessie's rocking chair and hear that recording of her voice, we spent a night in Christchurch, the town where I was born, and were saddened to see how damaged the centre of the city was and still is, following the major earthquakes that struck in 2010 and 2011. The installation below is a poignant memorial to the one hundred and eighty five lives that were tragically lost as a result of this natural disaster. The empty chairs placed on the site of a fallen church create a very moving monument to all those people who were killed, much like the white bikes that are sometimes positioned where a cyclist has lost his or her life in an accident. Unlike the chairs in the prompt photo above, these chairs will never be occupied.

185 Empty Chairs, Christchurch NZ

              There are a number of stirring video tributes to the people of Christchurch to be found online, for example this one set to the stirring music of Bruce Springsteen, but in accordance with the theme of this blog, here's Don McLean, with his song Empty Chairs.

For more blogs from other Sepians on Monuments, Statues, and perhaps more chairs, just take a seat here