Pickle Factory – Pat Taylor

Joyce Barry: Welcome everyone on behalf of Landmarks. What a great turnout for a wet night. Thank you for coming. This is just a personal journey tonight – we stumbled on Pat by reputation; she was referred as just a delightful speech about her life. She’s been through rural Hastings, on the edges with both farming and this pickle factory. So it’s over to Pat. Thank you very much.

Pat Taylor: Well, good evening ladies and gentleman, and a past staff member I’ve met here tonight. I’ll begin my story when I was twenty-six years old, and at this time I had three children who were all at school. Before we shifted from a pig farm in Te Aute road, we purchased a very old and run down house, beside the Awanui stream at Pukahu. There was a hole in the ground for a toilet and open drains, and all that was holding the house together was borer and the spider webs. [Chuckles] We had a builder come in to make it liveable, like a new roof to keep the rain out, and built on two bedrooms. We set about to make it a comfortable home, which we lived in happily for twenty years.

This property had four acres of land and also some old sheds. On the land we fenced the front paddocks with deer fencing, as we had a white pet goat that had been given to my son one Christmas by his aunt, who thought it was a cute present to give a little boy. But [chuckles] it was a life sentence for me. [Chuckles] I can tell you that they’re very expensive animals to keep, and are a pest. As Nancy loved my roses she devoured them all in one go along with anything else that I could grow in the garden. I’d saved up so long to buy some roses, and then after those she turned her attention to the clothes line, and anything like that was in her reach. She could even climb the fence. [Chuckles]

We kept nine red deer and one Sika deer. One of the deer we reared from a baby fawn – I had to obtain a special formula from the vet to feed her with a bottle, as the wild deer need minerals in their diet that they would normally get in the wild. The fawn we reared from a baby grew at a great rate, and it was a novelty as she liked to come inside to be petted. That was okay when she was a baby, but when she grew up she was a nuisance, so another reason that we needed a deer fence. At Easter time, when the deer came into season it was a particularly dangerous time – the stags would roar, and then in the spring the baby deer were born. Nature was at its greatest.

To finish off the family we had a Labrador puppy dog named Honey, and a large fat tabby cat called Mr Tibbles, who was a born thief. His specialty was our workers’ lunches. Lo [and] behold if anyone forgot to shut the windows on their car – he would get in and have a great feed. Often I would have to supply extra lunches in emergencies, but he was a great hunter, and that saved him from lots of threats … what everyone would like to really do to him.

We often had school trips when the Havelock schools came to visit. This was a novelty to the children to get close up to pat the deer and the animals, bearing in mind that these animals are naturally wild so that’s another reason that we had to have the deer fencing.

We purchased from a gentleman called Mr Lay a pickled onion business. He had employed four ladies sitting on boxes in his backyard to peel onions by hand. As the property we had purchased had several sheds, we set about and had workmen come in and lay concrete floors, drains, stainless steel walls, ablution block, office block, and brought the buildings up to the Health Standards. We put in a new well for water and began a pickled onion business, which we named Patuna products, which in Maori means eel, [?oia?]. We employed approximately twelve staff at first, and as the business grew we employed up to thirty staff in the high season. Most of the staff were elderly ladies from Bridge Pa who were mostly Mormons, and as the business grew we employed men to help with the heavy lifting as well.

I got up at six thirty every morning and prepared the school lunches and breakfast for the children; then I set off at seven thirty to pick up a car full of work ladies, dropped them off at work and then saw my children to the bus by eight ten, to catch the school bus. I can tell you it was a rush. Then I was off again to pick up another load of ladies from town, and back by nine-ish. Then I tidied the house and by that time, my husband had the factory all set up and working.

These ladies were a pleasure to work with. Most of the ladies were past retirement age, and were pleased to have a job peeling onions. They sat on high stools at a stainless steel table piled high with onions. All wore a uniform – smocks, head covers, large rubber aprons and gumboots, rubber gloves etcetera, were all supplied. And of course we all wore lots of socks in the winter to keep our feet warm – this was a wet factory with lots of running water. The tables were piled high with onions ready to peel. They had been put through a potato peeler first. We used a small peeler at first, but as we expanded we purchased a commercial-sized one. The ladies were paid by the bucket and some of them were very quick and very pleased with the wages they received. But one drawback to pickled onions was the smell. [Chuckles] I don’t know whether the onions were worse or the spiced vinegar. The smell was hard to get rid of – we tried every suggestion and old wives tales we’d ever heard about, but to no avail. Crying eyes … well, all that goes away after a few minutes if you stay with it; never, never rub your eyes. I always wore gloves when I went out especially to the theatre. All was well ‘til your hands warmed up. [Laughter] Oh – there was that smell again. [Chuckles]

The process for a pickling onions: they were put through a potato peeler for about a minute to bruise the outer skin. Then they were top and tailed, and you squeezed them and they popped out. You didn’t have to sit and peel them like this. They were put in a brine and a forty gallon plastic container and left for twenty-four hours in the brine. They were then drained and packed into jars filled with prepared cold spiced vinegar. We always packed the onions in a cold mixture, as using hot tends to soften the onion. Our largest ever production was ninety tons – quite a lot of onions. We sourced our onions from local growers, for example Ron Flowers, John Emerson, Edgar Lay, and then we went further afield to Pikipiki in Palmerston North, Pukekohe, Gisborne and Tauranga. These onions had been graded to a small size that was not used for export.

Often the ladies would burst into song, and there were many great voices and talent amongst them. It was a very happy place to work. There was always lots of laughter and tales told about each other. One discussion we had was, ‘What is a friend?’ Well this discussion was last[ed] a week, as there were so many different thoughts as to what friends should be, and each day they had a different angle.

I was always included in all their outings … a trip to Wellington to take a bus load of children to see Parliament; across in the ferry to Picton, a picnic on the beach before we returned home. What a lot of excited children they were – most of them had never been out of Hastings. And of course we all had fish and chips on the way home. Another time a women’s bus load of us went to Wellington to see the opera ‘Madame Butterfly’. Gooch Panahi, a husband of one of the staff members, had the second lead role in this overseas show. We were all so excited at attending the show; we all had new outfits to wear for the occasion, and we had our best smelly hand cream. [Chuckles] Had dinner at a hotel and a great time was had by all until, coming home at eleven thirty up the Ngauranga Gorge, just out of Wellington, the bus got a puncture. So it was turn around, go back to Wellington, and search for a garage that could find us a tyre and fit it.

We were able to park the bus in a big shed at the back of a garage, off the street, and to entertain ourselves we sorted ourselves into groups and had a concert, the stage being a back of a truck parked there. We finally started our journey back home, arriving at six thirty. All the while, I never heard any moans or groans about what had happened.

Another time I was included in a carload to go to Wellington to attend a football match. Sitting at the top of the Mallard stand on a windy day – not my idea of fun. I spent most of the time trying to work out how I was going to get off that grandstand after the match. Coming home after the match, and having to sit at the side of the road while our driver had a sleep … I offered to drive but he’d have none of it. I made a lot of friendships with these people – some of them I got to know very well. I was always invited to weddings, funerals and special occasions that came by, but it was always back to work on Monday.

After about three years producing pickled onions, the staff were asking if we could extend the season, so we decided to increase our products. At this time we installed a large steam boiler to do the cooking and this was done in large forty gallon stainless steel steam vats. Also, we built a conveyor belt which was great as a rolling line to make handling of the glass jars easier. The ladies stood alongside the conveyor belt and filled the jars with onions, and then [they] were filled with a vinegar mixture. At the end of that line was an automatic vacuum jar capper, which chugged away most of the day. I worked at the end of the line – after the bottles were filled and washed, then I glued the labels on by hand, and there were thousands of them. I then packed them into cartons, onto a pallet, and then we used a forklift to stack the cartons in another storage shed we had built just for that purpose. Learning to drive a forklift was a challenge. That took some time for me to conquer as this machine had a mind of its own and wanted to go where it wanted, until I learned to take charge.

My husband and I made a trip to Melbourne to see an automatic onion peeler, thinking that this would make the preparation of the onions easier. But this was a waste of time as the peeler left a cut mark on every onion that didn’t look good in the bottles. Another product we viewed, the onion skins were burnt off, and that was hopeless so it was back to New Zealand to peeling by hand.

About this time, we heard that the Pukahu Church was for sale, as it had not been used for many years. The people who’d purchased the property had no use for the church and wanted the site cleared. The local residents of Pukahu disposed of the contents, which included an old pedal organ, hanging lamps and Kauri pews. We bought the building home and installed it as a storage for all our cartons and labels. I believe that today it is somewhere in Whakatu. The children loved to have concerts there as it still had some of the pews and a stage.

So then we began bottling gherkins. The Gunn family grew the gherkins and delivered them daily during the season. They lived out at Fernhill. The gherkins were also put in a peeler for a short time, to get all the bumps and prickles off; topped and tailed; placed in large forty gallon plastic pails in brine; popped between layers of grape leaves. These were left for three weeks to grow glassy … or rather ferment … and then were washed and we cooked them slightly, packed them into jars and filled them with hot spiced vinegar.

We then produced cocktail gherkins. These cocktail gherkins were very small and were a bright green colour. They were very popular at that time. Today I don’t think they would be. I remember, to get this bright green we needed to use blue food colouring. Yes – yellow and blue make green. And then gherkin and apple relish, followed by baby beetroot and large reserving jars. To get the beet the same size to fit the jars we put them in a potato peeler ‘til they were all the same size. And not to forget – we also made chow chow.

We were able to purchase some equipment from Wattie’s, who no longer found it useful, and then we began to produce crayfish soup, canned kiwifruit, and potato salad. We employed the help of a qualified [quality] control person with the recipes, and made all the handling of the products assured that they were tasted and tested in a laboratory. About this time of expansion my mother came to offer and [to] help me in the house, and she made the morning teas. The morning teas were a great occasion – should I add she made cocoa and fruit drink, and always produced scones and pikelets and also her famous apple fritters on a cold day. The ladies could never thank Nana enough for her efforts.

Canning kiwifruit was a tricky one as it required a special lined tin on account of the acid content. The ladies hand prepared them and had to wear gloves, and the acid wore down their skin and made it bleed. Some even had trouble doing the job with the gloves on. We made kiwifruit pulp and supplied the ice cream makers; another product was kiwifruit jam. That was a tricky one as kiwifruit are difficult to get to a certain temperature.

The one product that the staff liked best was the crayfish soup. [Chuckles] We steamed boxes of crayfish bodies to cook them, then the ladies hand-picked the meat out to make the chowder. It was my job to do all the cooking. Occasionally the staff had crayfish sandwiches for lunch, when we had too much processed for the day. Another product they made was potato salad. This was a popular product, and sold well. After twenty years a friend came to me to say he had found a can of our potato salad in his garage, so I invited he and his wife for dinner, and we sampled it. It was still edible after twenty years, but I might add, we only just sampled it. [Laughter]

Also at this time, we started a night shift from six to ten, to pack all the products as there [was] no time in the day to fit it all in. Quite a few Havelock housewives came to earn extra pocket money.

My husband and I travelled around the North Island once a year to get orders for the products for the coming season and to place orders for glassware, cartons and vinegar. Often you would have to wait to see the manager or salesman even if you had an appointment, and it took a lot of patience. But places like Foodstuffs, Woolworths and Co-op shops were great, and they would send us their orders through the year.

We had all our labels designed and produced by Cliff Press, and I found them very agreeable to work with. Mind you, labels are not cheap to produce as you need the skills of an artist … Keith Brazier … paper, colours, etcetera all decided before they go to print. So next time you’re at the supermarket think of all the preparation and cost that goes into a product before it’s on the shop shelf.

We bought all our glass jars from a New Zealand Glass Company in Penrose, Auckland, and they were back loaded to Havelock North by truckload by Roadair-Nimons. And the vinegar we purchased from DYC … Dominion Yeast Company in Auckland. We had all our cartons produced here in Hastings, so that was one product we didn’t have to transport to Havelock North. By this time we had two salesmen selling our products around the North Island, to all the supermarkets and delis [delicatessens] – one in the Wellington area and the other covered the Auckland area.

Our next door neighbour wanted to sell their property and offered it to us, so we gained another house and another three acres which we planted an asparagus. We hired two ladies to come each morning to cut the asparagus. The land was so fertile that the asparagus seemed to grow behind them as they cut it. [Chuckles] That was back-breaking work.

At this time my husband started catching eels. We had sent some samples to Germany and they were very interested in these. So we bought three large eel tanks and sunk a new bore on that property, and used to store the eels. We had several fisherman who caught the eels for us – they were delivered to us in wet sacks, weighed and put into the tanks and held until a truck would come every week and take them away to Levin to be processed. I didn’t take part in this project very much as I couldn’t even look at an eel … slimy things anyway, and I was too busy elsewhere.

To end this ramble, I must tell you – at the end of each season we would have a hangi, and the factory concert on a Saturday evening. And all the workers would stack up the pallets for a stage, and sing and dance and perform items. We supplied all the food, and Uncle John put a hangi down in the yard. On the last occasion it rained, and the hangi didn’t cook. There was a lot of discussion about bad luck. I did my best to finish off the food in the oven, and the party progressed.  On the Monday, Aunty Mona, Uncle John’s wife, had biked to town to see the film ‘Dr Zhivago’. When she arrived home she suffered a heart attack, and she passed away at the clothes line. It’s bad luck if the hangi doesn’t cook – so this is one of the most memorable funerals I’ve ever attended, with the Mormon choir singing several of the songs from that film. ‘Lara’s Theme’ will always stay with me.

On another occasion my husband and I were asked to be witness[es] at a wedding for a couple who worked for us, and a happy occasion that was with the reception being at the Mayfair Hotel. In those days that was the place to go.

Now to end my ramblings, I would like to add that I made many friends during this period of my life, and I treasure the friendships of them all. To this day most of them [have] passed away, leaving only … I was going to say three, but four original staff still alive, who greet me with the biggest hugs and kisses.

In 1972 we sold the Patuna Products to a company in Pukekohe, who continued producing our products for some years.

This is a sketchy ramble of the second twenty years of my working life in a food factory. The next twenty years was so different, and that’s a tale yet to be told. And thank you all for listening to me. [Applause]

Joyce: I feel exhausted just listening. You had this quiet drive to just do more and more products, obviously?

Pat: Well, it just happened.

Question: What years are we talking about?

Pat: From ’72 on, to about ’89, ‘90.

Question: And who did the office work?

Pat: One of the Maori ladies we had who was very good at office work – she’d worked for a lawyers in town, so she took that work over. She did all our books.

Question: How hard you must’ve worked over those years!

Pat: We did, yes.

Question: What possessed you go into crayfish – it’s sort of just out there somewhere – eels, well, no … [chuckles] You know, did you have somebody who used to go crayfishing?

Pat: Oh, I can’t remember. Can you, Richard? [Previous staff member]

Richard: A lot of crayfish turned up there, I can tell you that – bodies.

Pat: It was about the time that they started exporting crayfish tails, and the bodies … yes. [Shows photos] That’s our first one there, of the pickled onions with the first label on them.

Joyce: I was impressed that you left them cold, because I think we’ve all bought some onions and they’ve been heated obviously, ‘cause they’re too soft.

Pat: Yes. [Shows photos] This is our gherkin relish. That was the cocktail gherkins. Remember in those days we used to buy bright green onions, and bright red little cocktail onions? They were ghastly. [Laughter] There’s our chow chow and our baby beet; the kiwifruit we canned, and the jam – as I say, that was hard to get to set … to get it just at a setting temperature. And this is the label after twenty years, of the potato salad.  And that’s the rock lobster one …

Joyce: I wish you could get it today. So your staff were very loyal, Pat?

Pat: Oh, they all became friends really – yes, they were.

Question: What was the label actually called?

Pat: Patuna products.

Question: Where was the factory?

Pat: In Te Aute Road. Do you know where the youth camp is? Well just past there on that next bend on the right.

Question: Back towards Bridge Pa or towards Havelock?

Pat: Towards Pakipaki – down there, just before you get to the bridge, on the right. The deer fences are still there I believe.

Joyce: Pat, we can’t thank you enough, I just think that’s just such a lovely journey. So the next twenty years is being written is it, Pat?

Pat: No. [Laughter]

Joyce: So thank you everyone for coming – I really thank you for your loyalty in coming along to the history talks, to hear these delightful stories of Hawke’s Bay’s history.

[Applause]