Details of two-way flows of primary products, implements, labour, information and finance drawn from runs of farm diaries, stock and station agents' records, and newspaper articles were used to analyse work schedules on three comparable properties between 1874 and 1930, and to track the development of mixed cropping and livestock farming in southern New Zealand when draught horses were giving way to either steam or internal combustion engines as the prime source of motive power. The earliest records are for two farms in the late 19th century, and the most recent are for a third property in the 1920s. K E Y W O R D S farms as systems, information flow, resilience, work domains, work schedules
The records of two large stock and station agents, Loan & Mercantile Agency in Dunedin and Wright Stephenson in Invercargill, allowed us to track the timing, nature, magnitude and rate of landscape change in southern New Zealand between 1896 and 1920. This period extends from the final years of subdivision of large estates, and includes closer settlement, the shift from pastoral farming to intensive agriculture, growth of dairying, and increasing mechanisation of agriculture. These changes are reflected in clients' annual expenditures on capital items such as fencing and building materials, tools and implements, materials for drains.
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