History: Appleby pea viner made easier work

BY ROBYN PARKES

In the early days of the pea canning industry, farmers’ wives used to shell the pods, tie the peas up in sheets, and send them in by cart the next day to Kirkpatrick’s factory. A step up from this was a hand-fed shelling machine, which was followed by various types of shelling machines and ultimately, the automatic shellers.

In 1944, Waimea farmers were able to put the reaper through a field of peas in the morning, deliver the vines to a new viner machine at Appleby, and within a few minutes there were boxes of peas ready to go into Nelson that would be canned on the same day. The plant was placed on what came to become known as ‘Peaviner Corner’.

The new pea viner plant was installed by Messrs S. Kirkpatrick and Co. Ltd. to cope with pea crops in the Appleby district. The new plant machines were estimated to be able to cope with the available crops within two weeks. The machines worked through approximately eight tons of vines per hour, meaning that they could cope with about nine or ten acres of crops in a day.

At harvesting time, lorries, tractors, and trailers could be seen always entering the plant grounds and it was said that a strong smell of crushed pea pods would waft through the air. The vines were unloaded at the entrance to the viner shed and men fed them constantly into the two machines.

The plants were pulled into revolving drums consisting of rubber mesh screens, turning at the rate of 25 revolutions a minute. Steel bars lifted the vines to the top of the drums and as they fell, 24 steel beaters at 180 revolutions to the minute, thrashed the plants and pods. The pods were rolled open, the peas dropping through the rubber mesh into a chain of small buckets. Winnowing separated the peas which fell onto an agitated grid where any remaining pieces of pod or vine were carried away, and the clean peas poured into boxes.

The plant and pod waste passed along a chain and deposited on a platform outside where it was loaded onto lorries by the farmers to use for silage. The peas were fed from the machine into air-conditioned boxes and taken to the factory ready for canning.

With the capacity of the new plant, a call was suggested for crops to be sown for several months each season to make full use of the plant. At full speed, the plant handled five acres of crops in one shift with the men working from 5.30am to 7pm.

Full advantage of the factory was not achieved in the first season due to the machines which were made in Auckland arriving late. As a result, the roof on the shed was still being built and tarpaulins were providing temporary shelter.

It was planned the have the factory operating from early in November the following year but only pea crops intended for canning were processed while green peas for the market continued to be picked manually.

In March of 1944, Kirkpatricks advertised, indicating they would require some 300 acres of peas the plant in the next season. True to their prediction, the factory was in use by early November.