The introduction of the simple plough was recorded in the diary of the Kerikeri mission superintendent Reverend John Butler.
“On the morning of Wednesday the 3rd of May, 1820, the agricultural plough was for the first time put into the land of New Zealand at the Kiddi Kiddi (Kerikeri) and I felt much pleasure in holding it, after a team of six bullocks – brought down by the Dromedary.
“I trust that this auspicious day will be remembered with gratitude and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn.
“Every heart seemed to rejoice on the occasion – I hope it will still continue to increase and in a short time produce an abundant harvest.”
Local Maori were well-acquainted with wheat from as far back as 1812 but they were more familiar with the edible parts of plants being beneath the soil surface and until 1815 they didn’t have a mill to get flour from grain.
The 1820 plough was brought to NZ to improve vegetable and cereal growing and to teach Maori agricultural techniques to expand their already productive gardens and grow exportable surpluses for passing ships and the much larger colony of New South Wales.
Though the plough had been in NZ as much as six months before it was used, suitable draught animals were not available until March 1820.
In January 1820 Butler’s diary records the employment of 30 Maori in breaking up the ground in Kerikeri for the planting of wheat, paid by rations of potatoes and pork.
John Gare Butler, aged 38 at the time, was the first ordained clergyman to live in NZ, arriving on August 12, 1819, on the ship General Gates with his wife and their son Samuel (not Samuel Butler the author).
He was accompanied by mission founder Samuel Marsden, from Parramatta, NSW, on his second visit to NZ.
Butler had been appointed superintendent of the NZ Mission, recently moved from Rangihoua Bay to Kerikeri under the protection of Hongi Hika.
Butler walked into considerable strife among the Europeans already in the Bay of Islands, especially Thomas Kendall.
His short period in charge ended in 1823 when Marsden suspended him after accusations of drunkenness and Mr and Mrs Butler returned to England.
Their son stayed in Northland as a flax trader, only to drown at Hokianga several years later.
An 1819 deed is the first legal document recording a transfer of land in NZ.
It shows land at Kerikeri was sold to the missionaries in return for 48 large axes.
The deed is signed by Thomas Kendall and John Butler of the Church Missionary Society and with the moko (facial tattoos) of Ngapuhi chiefs Hongi Hika and Rewa.
Kemp House, built shortly after the establishment of the settlement at Kerikeri, apparently as a residence for Butler, is NZ’s oldest existing European building.
The 1832 Stone Store is alongside on the Kerikeri Basin and the cropping and horticultural land was further to the northwest, on the southern bank of the Kerikeri River, upstream of the former road crossing and causeway, now removed.
The Stone Store contains an example of the single-bladed plough from the time (see photograph) but not the one used by Butler, which was lost or destroyed.
Marsden returned to the Bay of Islands in February 1820 on the ship Dromedary, along with six bullocks from NSW and the harnesses that enabled them to pull the plough.
The cattle had to be ferried from the ship to the shore in Kerikeri inlet by barge, powered by oars, which was a hazardous exercise for man and beast.
The primary purpose of the bullock importation was to haul kauri logs from the bush to the shore in Whangaroa Harbour, where Dromedary was tasked to collect spars for the British Navy.
An agricultural pioneer both in NSW and NZ, Marsden was present to instruct when on May 3 the plough was used for the first time.
Butler recorded in his journal that, after several days of ploughing, “We have five acres of wheat in the ground”, adding that “the plough will go remarkably well, after the ground is once broken”.
On May 16 he noted with satisfaction that six acres of wheat had been planted.
It was also around that time, a mid-September spring day in 1819, when the NZ wine industry was born, with the planting of a single grape vine by Marsden at the Kerikeri mission.
Thanks to his foresight the first wine was made and bottled some 20 years before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.
Perhaps Butler overindulged though he protested his innocence after falling out with the rather dictatorial Marsden.
