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Nelson Historical Society Journal, Volume 06, Issue 01, 1996
First Year on the Waimea East Farm:
First Year on the Waimea East Farm:
The land William Gordon Bell obtained from the New Zealand Company was in what became Lower Queen Street, Richmond, on the eastern corner of Swamp Road. Daughter Bessie (Elizabeth), who was to spend a lifetime as a page 40
practical farmer, kept a diary of day to day events of the first year here. It reveals the constant hard work of a pioneering family establishing a farm from scratch. The two daughters, Margaret and Bessie, their younger brother Willie, and a hired hand, Harry Tunnicliff, assisted their father with most of the work. During the month of August a house was built and the family moved in. In the early months there was much use of the bullock drawn plough.
Flax had to be grubbed, gathered and burnt, posts and rails carted from a nearby wood and fashioned into stockyards and pig pen, and crops sown.
Neighbours donated some assistance with the early ploughing. By the end of September Margaret had made the first cheese. By November potatoes were planted, more fencing erected to prevent the cattle from straying, and drainage ditches dug and bridged. Even today it is easy to see how necessary were these latter tasks. There was no work on Christmas Day; the hired man spent the day in the Ale House. The neighbours came first footing at 5 am on New Year's Day, bringing suitable refreshment with them, and no work seems to have been done that day.
The early months of 1848 were taken up with harvesting the cereal crops and helping neighbours with their harvest. Sunday dinner on 6 February saw them eating their own new potatoes. By late summer grass was being sown, firewood gathered and threshing of cereal crops continued. Income was earned from the sale of cheese to a Nelson shop, barley to a Nelson brewery and stock were traded at sales. There was a cart road to Nelson for transport of produce and infrequent visits by William Gordon Bell to the bank, for Grand Jury service and for settling the ownership arrangements with the New Zealand Company. Sundays were visiting days and in March young and old enjoyed a couple of days at the races.