Feilding folks are now quite familiar with the advantages of electricity as more than a convenience in the home, office, and factory.
It is now actually a very real necessity.
Let the power go off for even ten minutes, and we know all about that.
In Feilding and district many appliances attachable to the use of electric power are being introduced and readily adapted by an enterprising people who are quick to appreciate the convenience and labour-saving qualities of the devices.
It has been well pointed out that life on the farm is not what it used to be.
The farmer has found a new hired man, through whose help drudgery has been banished, with much weary, back-breaking toil.
In the change, the farmer’s wife has also benefited, and so have his children, to say nothing of the cows, the poultry, the pigs, and other inhabitants of the farm.
An advertisement from a supplement in the Te Awamutu Courier, July 26, 1937. Image / Papers Past
It is interesting to count the blessings that are provided by this new helper — Electricity.
An American authority tells us that there are no fewer than 227 profitable and helpful uses of electricity on the modern farm alone.
Electricity pumps the water, shreds the fodder, husks the corn, separates the milk; grinds bones, food, fertiliser and sausage; cleans bags and hoists grain into the bins; dries, bales and elevates hay; heats water, hotbeds and incubators; helps ventilation in the house and the stock sheds, and also traps insects in the orchard and garden or thieves in the poultry run.
It cools or warms, sterilises, or pasteurises, and bottles the milk.
It stimulates plant growth and furnishes refrigeration.
It shears sheep and sprays whitewash and insecticides.
In the homestead, it does everything that electricity can do in a city home, including the operation of the player piano.
But we in New Zealand have not yet reached the economic stage that has been achieved over in some of the States of America with regard to electricity.
For instance, in the use of electrical power, over there 5d (10 cents) will pay for any one of the following tasks: Cook for two persons for one day, do family washing for one week, run the vacuum cleaner 10 hours, operate the milking machine one hour and 20 minutes, separate 1,500 pounds of milk, heat a 150 egg incubator for two days, saw one and two-thirds cords of wood, pump 500 gallons of water, run a windmill three hours or cool a refrigerator for 12 hours.
California’s farmers claim to be the heaviest users of electric energy, as there are 55,000 electrified farms in that State.
Altogether, more than 500,000 farms in the United States are served by electric-light and power companies.
In 1924, there were, in the State of Illinois only 2,201 farms provided with central station service.
But on January 1, 1929, there were 13,284 electrified Illinois farms.
Indiana has 15,163 farms getting such service.
It does not prove a wise thing nowadays to sneer at the possibilities of applied electrical energy, for we have the wonders of wireless and other modern miracles to confound and confute the sceptical.
Research is working marvels so frequently that even Doubting Thomas is no longer a doubter.
Yet what do we think when it is seriously stated that investigators have now turned their attention to that greatest of all tasks on the farm, ploughing, with a view to its elimination!
Actually, an electric plough that also radiates a current into the earth is now under test in America.
What it can do has yet to be reported—it may be one of the surprises of 1930.
Heavy demands on electricity compel economical use
Wanganui Chronicle, March 8, 1947
No further power cuts have been imposed in the Wanganui-Rangitikei Power Board’s district since the emergency period earlier in the week, but the engineer, Mr. H. Webb, stressed yesterday that electricity must be conserved.
One effort to bring about reduced consumption is the restriction placed on hot water services on farms.
“We have had no further trouble, but we have had warnings that we must keep our power consumption down,” said Mr. Webb.
