Tucked away in a lush garden surrounded by cropping paddocks is a horse-driven dray.
Somewhat worse for wear, the relic is from a time gone by when horses were indispensable for working the land.
Remarkably, it has survived many passing decades of farm mechanisation.
Behind the wagon is a sprawling bluegum planted by Henry Sprott soon after he and his brother, Samuel, first visited the fertile country south of the Rakaia River in 1874.
Ever since, a Sprott has farmed the property down the road from Mid Canterbury’s Pendarves — with Alister and Mary the latest generation on the family land.
In just over a month the couple will celebrate the family's 150 years of farming at Woodvale.
The property was part of Acton Station, sold by the Australia and New Zealand Land Co when there were no fences, only survey pegs in the tussocks.
After successfully bidding for the block the brothers moved from Cust in 1875, but the land title for the 160ha block is dated May 2, 1876, so that serves as the sesquicentennial.
Alister Sprott still has the original paperwork with a stamp at the top saying "granted", meaning this is the first time the land was sold.
The brothers bought another 80ha block on the north side of the farm and over 12 years accumulated more land — some of it for two pounds an acre — to bring this to 565ha.
Tussocks were ploughed in, bluegum and macrocarpa trees planted and sod fences built.
Farm hands, a full time blacksmith and a cook helped run the property.
A hut from one block was shifted to Woodvale and the first well was dug by hand in about 1878 and boxed in with timber.
When the worker broke through hard ironsand at 21m the artesian water poured in so quickly he had to retreat leaving all his tools behind.
This is where the horse wagon comes in.
The tanks came from England — initially with crockery packed in them — and still act as firewood bins at the farm.
In dry weather sheep would drink the water as fast as two drays could shuttle it in.
Another old wagon at the main gate used to cart the grain up to the Chertsey railway when it was later installed, towed first by Clydesdales and then steam traction engines.
Water delivery was solved when races began to be built across Mid Canterbury in the early 1880s.
Today, over 97% of the 370ha farm is irrigated, with Alister carrying out this work from 2003, installing an irrigator each year to transform the farm.
Mr Sprott, 74, puts the family’s long run on the land down to a pedigree of farming initially in Ireland and then as New Zealand settlers.
"There are lots of cousins who come from the heritage of Henry Sprott, but we are the ones who are here. That grandfather’s clock by the door, that’s 300 years old and made by a Spratt which they reckon could have been a Sprott years ago as it was supposed to be family made. That’s been here half its life."
Despite a slightly larger dairy farm down the road selling for tens of millions of dollars, they have never felt inclined to leave their home.
"I’ve had people approach me here over the years trying to buy me out — many. Why would you sell? They have stopped making land. I know a few people who have sold and they could never get it back, the property has increased in value so much. My great grandfather would turn in his grave if I sold."
They want to pass the leased farm on to their two daughters who have four children between them and are closely attached to the land and its legacy.
Where once dryland mixed farming ruled the district about one farm in three would now be in dairying; lately commercial apple orchards have appeared.
Mr Sprott has deep admiration for his great grandfather.
Without bridges or railway, they had to drive all the sheep and cattle through the Rakaia River when they first arrived.
Farming with one pivot and three lateral irrigators has its challenges, but farming more than a century and a half ago without mechanisation would have been hard work, he said.
After attending Ashburton College, he left to help his father, Ossie, at Woodvale, before working as a butcher on the chain at Fairton freezing works for three years.
He just managed to avoid compulsory military training when Norman Kirk became prime minister and cancelled the draft.
In 1979 he married Mary Robinson, returning from their honeymoon to help parents Ossie and Daph, shift from Woodvale to a new home in Ashburton.
They increased the stocking of the 285ha farm — split when Henry’s son married in 1917 to farm in his own right — from 1500 to 2200 ewes, growing 80ha of crops and wintering 1000 cows.
"I started growing for Talley’s from day one when they arrived. I used to grow 40ha of peas a year and won the top paddock twice while farming dryland."
In 2003 he made nearly $3500/ha for the best paddock — likely a wet year when early dryland crops flourished at Woodvale, 44m above sea level and 7km from the coast.
He won this honour three times and Talley’s top corn paddock twice between him and his leaseholders.
When the property was a dryland farm the crops had to be in the ground by mid August. By drilling barley in late July he could avoid large losses from sparrows as they would spread out rather than target his early crops.
With the nitrogen-fixing peas put through the header before Christmas, he found he could get a great kale or green crop afterwards to feed the cattle, winning the local green crop competition once.
The sheep flourished on hay made after the peas were harvested and one year they also topped the Mid Canterbury ewe hogget competition.
A fertile layer of Chertsey silt loam soils makes it prime crop growing country for barley, wheat and oats.
The Corriedale flock’s genetics were improved by Mrs Sprott’s stud breeding uncle, Bob Robinson, who supplied many ewes and rams.
This was a busy time for them with a new clinker brick home built in 1981 and daughters Julie born in 1984 and Holly in 1989.
In between they bought 87ha from another uncle.
Mrs Sprott got on well with his parents who treated her like a daughter.
That didn’t stop her from putting a rope around Henry’s wooden cottage and towing it away with a tractor: she was determined to put in a large lawn and garden.
A photo taken in the 1960s and hanging on their wall shows the old layout with Henry’s hut, the homestead and grain shed still intact. A flock of 50 geese used to roam the nearby open race only closed three years ago.
"So the old woolshed is those broken timbers there in the photo and old Henry was out looking at his sheep one night they were shearing and he dropped two gold sovereigns through the floor. I cleaned them up and looked for them and got a metal detector when they came out but never found them. Henry told the shearers and when he went out they would have got them."
Putting in the irrigation was a large undertaking — firstly a 540m pivot, then a 500m lateral, while a 310m lateral alongside the road spelled the end of Henry’s beloved bluegums running 2km on each side of the homestead.
Three wells are all below sea level with the deepest at 144m — 96m below sea level.
"We were getting along alright as a dryland operation, but it was getting harder and harder and I was advised to get started so I got a consultant in as there was a lot of paperwork. So we brought the go-to people at the time in and it was the best thing I could have done. I pulled out all the gorse fences my father used to cut by hand with a gorse knife ... it would take him up to three months."
The farm layout was simplified into three main paddocks.
Introducing irrigation gave them the option of putting in spring and autumn sown crops.
Over the past 20 years the couple have progressively leased out the farm until they only grow a barley crop in a 9ha corner paddock irrigated by a wiper pivot from pressurised underground water on the Acton irrigation scheme.
Mr Sprott used to go from barley to green crop for the cows, but "too old" to chase them now, he leaves it fallow, growing barley eight years in a row at 10tonnes to the hectare last year and 9t/ha this year.
Mrs Sprott was an active farmer spending hours on a tractor and still follows the paddock lines with a backpack, spraying any weeds and crutching the lambs from a downsized flock.
Most of this land is leased to the Lepoutre family who run a vegetable growing operation from Dorie. One year they had a world record crop of beetroot seed at Woodvale.
Today, 40ha are planted in onions bound for export, 35ha in juicing carrots, 68ha in corn, 48ha in vining peas and 20ha in Agria potatoes for fries.
Mrs Sprott said the Lepoutres were good farmers.
"Ever since they’ve been here we go to bed and sleep at night. There have been no problems, we are friends and the boys call in and we talk to them and we help them if an irrigator stops and will get it going and they help us."
Originally, four Sprott brothers — including James and Joseph — left Ireland for a new life in New Zealand between 1863 and 1880. Another brother stayed at home as a school teacher.
A shark attacked one of the crew in the water, leaving nothing but blood.
Sickness was common during the long sea voyage and another man died, wrapped in canvas with weights and dropped into the sea.
The story goes the parson was so inebriated the final rights were limited to: "Ok boys, we commit his body to the deep: let him go".
After settling in, Henry built the 1888 homestead when he married: an orchard initially planted in 84 fruit and nut trees is still standing.
Electricity did not arrive until 1925 when it spelled the end of candles and the coal range.
Besides running sheep, crops were grown, including 120ha of wheat, and a side delivery mower brought out from England was used for contracting.
A man would walk alongside and rake the crop off in bundles where they would be hand tied with straw into sheaves.
One year the Sprotts lost 60ha of wheat to fire.
Well before 1900 a paddock of potatoes was grown each year and Ossie could remember picking them for a shilling a bag.
Pigs were often fattened on stragglers remaining in the ground.
To promote shelter belts the Canterbury Provincial Government introduced a scheme subsidising settlers by granting them two acres of land in Rakaia for every 4ha of trees planted.
The Sprotts planted a bluegum plantation along McRory Rd — some still stand at the front of Woodvale — and in return they got five acres in Rakaia across the road from the Presbyterian church.
They would take sheep up and hold them overnight on the small block before they went to Islington freezing works by rail.
Early in the 1930s this was sold for 150 sovereigns with Henry giving five of the gold coins to his son, John, for each of his five children.
Mr Sprott’s father, Ossie, took over the farm after returning from World War 2.
Volunteering in 1941, he served in Egypt under the Eighth Army chasing German general Erwin Rommel over North Africa. His war years took him as far west as Tobruk in Libya and east to the Syrian border with Turkey, learning how to swim in the Suez canal.
He was severely wounded in the right arm by a shell burst while following a tank in the battle of El Alamein.
Recovering at the Hanmer veterans hospice, he bought Woodvale from an uncle with the help of a returned serviceman’s loan.
Back then the rabbit problem was so bad in the gums and gorse that he ploughed a furrow and placed poisoned carrots along the full length, picking up more than 500 of them the next morning.
The same year he married Daphne Cromie in 1947 he bought a new Ford V8 pick-up for 608 pounds.
Today Mr Sprott has the same model to remind him of when they used to have about seven of them in the family.
He can recall towing a tonne of superphosphate from Rakaia in the early days and carrying stray lambs in the back.
They never had a traction engine, but a Bulldog run on crude oil was bought in the mid-1930s by John.
Horse stables which once ran from the still standing blacksmith shop to a single man’s quarters are now gone.
With another grandfather running the Rakaia garage, he learned to work on engines and went on to race jetboats and become a team member for his cousin on the world circuit in North America and Mexico.
At one stage he ran a dealership for a Canadian firm, Eagle Jetboats, selling them from hay sheds, including one which went on to win the world championships in Mexico.
Testament to his mechanical skills is the tractor he bought in 1973 is still going strong.
Another reminder is two missing fingers when he collided in a trail bike race — another pastime.
He won the gruelling Ashburton river race in the early 1980s and had other wins in drag and quarter mile racing.
The Sprotts’ four grandchildren are the sixth generation descended from Henry Sprott and regularly visit the farm.
