Family celebrate 100 years on land

• Published date: 21 April 2021
• Author: Ilona Hanne
• Date: 21 April 2021
• Publication title: Stratford Press

The dairy farm has been farmed by Daniel’s family for 100 years, and Daniel is the fourth generation of Hancocks to be raising his family on the Pembroke Rd farm.

To celebrate the centenary, a family reunion took place at the farm this month, which included a tour of the farm as well as the sharing of plenty of memories from life on and around it.

The farm first came into the Hancock family in 1921, when Daniel’s great-grandparents Ida and Herbert Hancock had the opportunity to buy a lease on the Pembroke Rd farm, which at the time was 97 acres in size.

One of their sons, Colin (Collie) Hancock, with his wife Cecelia Hancock, took over the farm in 1965, but had already worked on it for many years.

Collie, who moved to town after selling the farm to his son, Daniel’s dad Paul, in 1981, has plenty of memories of growing up and working on the family farm.

“My father died in 1944 and so I left the high school then, when I was 15, to come and help mum on the farm. It was hard work, but mum was a hard worker too, we all were, we just got it done.”

Collie says Ida always trusted him to do the right thing on the farm, right from when he first left school.

“I remember deciding to pull down an old implement shed and building a new one. I started when we were putting the cows out and was done before calving. I was no carpenter, but I got it done. I do wonder know, how did mum have so much faith in me, just a 16 or 17-year-old boy, but she did. She knew I could do it.

“She was a great boss, she was always willing to let me have a go at everything. She believed in me. When dad died it would have been much easier for her to sell up, but she didn’t, she kept the farm going.”

The hardest job on the farm back then, he says, was manuring.

“They used to deliver the sacks as 12 to the tonne, so 80 kilos, I had to move those around at 15 years old. They were bloody heavy.”

Collie met his future wife Cecelia at a dance, and says for him at least, he knew immediately she was the one for him,

“When I ran into Cecelia I was just flattened. That was it. I never looked at another girl after that.”

The couple, who married in 1953, then sharemilked on the farm until they bought it in 1964, after Ida died in the December of 63.

Within a few years of buying the farm Collie and Cecelia added to it, purchasing 60 acres from a neighbour. Since then, the farm has grown again with Paul also purchasing neighbouring land, with the farm now covering 197 acres.

Herd numbers have also changed...