Farm family marks a century

John and Sandy Griffin with some of the photographs and documents illustrating 100 years of the Griffin Farm on Te Puke's Rangiuru Rd.

The Griffin family has owned the same farm in Rangiuru Rd for close to 101 years.

With three generations of the family still alive - Bob, the son of one of the original owners, his son John and John's son Alex - the family recently held a celebratory dinner.

John's grandfather Walter and Walter's brother Mapson, who were the youngest brothers of four, moved to the Bay of Plenty in 1915 where they bought 300 acres in Old Coach Rd at Pongakawa and leased a swamp property on River and Pah roads.

When the Old Coach Rd property was sold, the leased land was retained and the brothers bought the Rangiuru Rd property on July 7 1916.

They added a further 73 acres in 1919.
Walter went to fight in Europe in World War I, was shot in the ankle and repatriated back to New Zealand in 1917.

Post war the farm was used for fattening stock with animals then driven to Ngongotaha to be transported to the freezing works in Auckland.

After 1926, when the railway to Taneatua was built, cattle could be loaded onto trains much closer to home, at the Rangiuru siding.

During the 1920s and early 1930s the brothers moved away from fattening cattle and into dairying.

Robert was born in 1926 and went to school in Rangiuru on horseback before going to Mt Albert Boys' Grammar School until the outbreak of World War II when he had to return home to work on the farm.

A shortage of labour made dairying impractical, and the land was again used for fattening cattle and sheep.

Bob met Verna Washer in 1943 and they married six year's later. John was born in 1950 and twin girls, Kathryn and Anne, in 1953.

Walter retired and moved with his wife Blanche to Auckland in 1949.

However that didn't stop Walter's involvement in the farm, and he and Bob challenged the requirement for stock to be transported to Auckland by rail.

They were able to show that, when transported by rail, because of the extra time it often took between loading and arriving at the freezing works, lambs would lose more weight than during the six hour journey and same day kill that resulted from being transported by road.

In a significant decision for the industry, Bob and Walter won their case.

Bob could then take 160 lambs to Auckland in his Commer truck, with bagged fertiliser being brought to the farm on the return trip.

In the 1960s, looking to diversify, Bob planted 50 acres in kiwifruit. It was the first kiwifruit orchard on Rangiuru Rd and at the time the largest commercial planting.

John assisted on the farm when on his holiday breaks from his Bachelor of Agricultural Science studies at Lincoln University.

Bob was one of the founding members of Bay of Plenty Fruit Packers when it was formed and was a director of the Kiwifruit Marketing Board.

In 1977-78 John entered a partnership with Bob and they continued to develop and more kiwifruit was planted, ultimately Bob concentrating his efforts in the 17ha of green kiwifruit and John running all the livestock.

There were other ventures including cashgora goats, and the reintroduction of dairying and forestry.

John's son Alex was born in 1985. He now runs the dairying part of the farm, while John runs the kiwifruit orchard.

John says the time felt right to mark the farm's history and record it for future generations, and a dinner with family, friends, contractors and others with associations with the farm was held recently at Te Puke Memorial Hall.