Aoroa Farm

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AOROA a little of it’s history.

The farm at Aoroa was bought off local Iwi along with two other blocks of land around Dargaville in 1877 by Alfred Harding. Bennick and Edwin were firstly sent north to farm the land. Both got sick and had to go back home. That’s when brothers Alfred and Maurice were sent north from Waipukurau in central Hawkes Bay about the same year to farm the three blocks of land. The Aoroa block was not farmed for another 10 years as one of the Iwi owners were over in England at the time and didn’t come back until 1892. Alfred Harding settled at Aoroa building the homestead in 1893 and marrying the local school mistress Margaret Astley. The farm is situated on Pouto road, from the river to the sea between Mt Wesley Coast and Notorious road, comprising of about 14,000 acres.

Alfred and Margaret started a family and eventually ended up with 4 boys and 4 girls. Aoroa was mostly cut over gum hills, peaty flats, river flats and a small strip of fertile Red Hill loam out by the coast. In the first few years the only money made at Aoroa was selling wild cattle, then there was couple of decades of income from leasing gum digging rites, buying the gum and selling supplies to the gum diggers. The better land was bought into pasture around the homestead and out at the coast. Eventually the gum was gone and farming of Aoroa shifted up a gear, with Romney sheep bought overland from Waipukurau and shorthorn milking and beef cows also being farmed here.

Over the years land was sold off and some was compulsorily purchased as rehab block for returned service men after the Second World War. Aoroa was whittled down to 1500 acres by the time Alfreds eldest son Ernest, and his son Keith bought it in partnership from Margaret in 1965. Over the next decade or to the remaining gumland was put into pasture and trees planted on the land deemed unsuitable for grass. There were two dairy units and a beef and sheep unit on Aoroa, with share milkers on the dairy and Keith managing the Romney stud and beef animals.

Keith and his wife Margaret moved into the homestead and had 3 girls and 4 boys there with the boys taking over the farm ownership in 1996. Margaret and Keith’s eldest son Hal with his wife Penny. They were growing squash and Kumara but now milk cows and grow a small amount of Kumara.