By Jackie Ussher

We got milk and cream from our cows, so we had a lot of milk puddings e.g. Rice pudding, junket, Spanish cream, bread and butter pudding, sago pudding etc. Usually with preserved fruit of some sort. At times Mum made butter with the cream too. It was a small farm by today’s standards, but we raised calves and pigs on skim milk and sold the cream to a dairy factory for butter production. We had hens so we had a lot of egg dishes, and the odd chicken was killed for the pot. We went fishing occasionally, collected mussels and Dad sometimes went pig hunting. We had an extensive vegetable garden and apart from potatoes, we never bought vegetables. In the middle of winter when vegetables were scarce, we would have potatoes with parsley sauce over them with meat quite frequently.

The family farm supplied Piha village with cream, as well as taking cream into town. 

Over winter Dad would plough some paddocks and sow turnips and swedes for the cows. We would eat these too either roasted or in soups. We had a number of apple trees and a couple of peach trees. The peach trees weren’t very prolific.

Over summer when we were in Karekare, we would pick figs from the old fig trees in Pohutukawa Grove for fig jam. Cyclone Gabrielle has killed them now. We would gather blackberries from our grandmother’s property across the road and Mum would preserve them for winter pies and crumbles and also for blackberry jam.

Grandparents on our mother’s side lived in Waimauku and we visited them most Sundays for lunch. In those days Kumeu was a big fruit growing area and in season we would buy cases of peaches, plums and pears which Mum preserved and made into jams. Bread was delivered 3x a week from Connon’s Bakeries and a meat pack was delivered once a week.

We didn’t have a fridge, so the meat had to be partially cooked and preserved in fat,

then stored in the safe to keep cool. Sacks of flour, sugar, and rolled oats were also delivered when needed. When visitors turned up unexpectedly Mum always made scones which she served with butter and her jams.

We only went through to Glen Eden once a month to get anything else we needed or to do any business required.

While there we would pick up jerry cans of diesel, petrol and oil etc that were needed to run the milking machine. Times were quite hard and Dad also cut and sold firewood to help with our finances.

Story gathered as part of Kai West's exploration of the past, present, and future of kai across West Auckland. Shared as a taonga, with thanks to Jackie Ussher.