Boxthorn hedges are a common sight in Taranaki. Photo / Jock Phillips, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Boxthorn hedges are a common sight in Taranaki. Photo / Jock Phillips, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
The Country looks back at some of the biggest and best stories of the past 12 months, including readers’ favourites, news events and those yarns that gave us a glimpse into rural lives and livelihoods across the country.
Originally published April 25.
Kem Ormond looks into Lycium ferocissimum, aka theboxthorn, which she considers a Taranaki icon and menace in equal measure. She finds out the inventive ways to control the tenacious hedges over the years, from tractors to Army vehicles.
You will find that it certainly does not let its name down, as it is exactly that and more.
It grows vigorously and produces the nastiest, strongest, thickest, needle-looking spines.
It will grow in any soil, more or less, and when fully grown, which only takes a couple of years, no animal, big or small, would even contemplate making an escape through it.
The thorns are prone to getting stuck in the hooves of cattle, puncturing tractor tyres, and even piercing through the soles of gumboots.
Then there is the battle of keeping the boxthorn under some sort of control.
Until the middle of the last century, you didn’t want to be the unlucky person chosen to trim the hedges with a hand slasher.
Horses were used to pull the slashed pruning from the hedge, which ended up in piles to be burned.
Producing ways to keep boxthorn under control has resulted in some rather wacky ideas.
I read that a farmer in Pātea used an old sword to keep the hedge around his house trimmed. Another adapted a hay knife.
An adaptation of the Swiss Army knife?
The Tawhiti Museum houses one of the Butler brothers' machines designed to tackle boxthorn hedges. Photo / Kem Ormond, Tawhiti Museum
Then, in 1941, came a Swiss-born Inglewood engineer named Lou Butler, who decided to mount a large revolving three-meter blade on a Fordson tractor. Hey presto, Taranaki’s first mechanical hedge cutter was born.
And what a daunting, almost Frankenstein-looking machine it was.
Butler wasn’t new to engineering. Before building hedge cutters, he produced a variety of inventions such as a turf cutter, sheep sling, articulated trailer, trench digger, butter box press and the auto hay sweep.
If a labour-saving device needed to be designed, he was the man.
Butler and his sons became well known in the Taranaki district for their hedge cutters.
All were home-built and were beasts of machines, having been adapted and modified on trucks, tractors, Army tanks and even Bren Gun Carriers.
With boxthorn hedges getting out of control – and with the availability after World War II of numerous ex-NZ Army vehicles – their fleet of hedge cutters grew.
If visiting the Tawhiti Museum in Hāwera, you will find in the Farm Power Hall tractor display, a collection of the Butler Brothers’ early hedge cutters, created from a wide assortment of WWII service vehicles.
Among them is a rare survivor worldwide: a Local Pattern Observation Post Wheeled Vehicle.
Seeing these machines working in Taranaki caught the eye of another contractor, Frank Hooper, who grew up in Taranaki but moved to Hawke’s Bay, where the orchards were surrounded by shelter belts needing trimming.
Five years of planning and four engineers went into designing the first hedge cutter suitable for the large hedges encompassing orchards.
In 1965, Hooper’s bespoke model started trimming shelter belts on orchards.
While a gun carrier was suitable for the boxthorn in Taranaki, a Ford tractor was all the machine needed to be mounted on and enable it to manoeuvre around the tight spaces in an orchard.
