Staff writers
THORPDALE said farewell to one of its most colourful characters recently.
Les Horsfield left an indelible mark on the potato industry, which remained his great passion right up until his death at the age of 91.
Mr Horsfield used to oversee 224 hectares of growing sebago and kennebec spud varieties on Horsfield Farms, producing about 200 or 300 tonnes a year.
As recently as last year he was still working and tending to 50-head of cattle on about 40 hectares.
Mr Horsfield moved to Thorpdale in the late 1940s and started out dairying and share farming with his cousin.
He took over the farm a few years later and switched to spuds which was suited to growing in the region’s well-drained soils.
“The sebago variety are good spuds, and as far as the public is concerned it is still the best variety of chipping, baking, mashing and has a good flavour,” Mr Horsfield told Gippsland Farmer in February 2020.
“I eat potatoes with every main meal and I eat potato chips instead of biscuits and cake for my snacks.”
He said his best year was in 1956 when spuds “reached 15 quid a bag” and in the peak years between 1960 and 2000 he was loading up 25 semi-trailers a day.
Mr Horsfield said some of the biggest shake-ups to Thorpdale spud farming was automation and irrigation which he said “got going in the ’70s when the power came through”.
He said the farm “got really automatic” in 1970, when they began importing modern harvesting and grading machinery from Europe and the United States.
His commitment was not just to the farm, as Mr Horsfield served a number of local initiatives.
He was just 20-years-old when elected president of the Narracan Herd Testers’ Association, and was also involved in Young Farmers, Mirboo North Hospital Boards, and was president of the Victorian Produce Merchants Association, the Australian Quarantine Boards and many other organisations.
He was in the Thorpdale CFA for 70 years and formed a co-operative that returned shareholders of the local store a profit.
He was also president of the Thorpdale Liberal Party for more than 50 years, handing out how to vote cards and never shirking other political battles – he was a regular contributor to The Express’ letters to the editor.
Mr Horsfield married Jane Bell in 1958. They had two daughters, Janice and Lynette and four grandsons.
A memorial was held last Friday at Thorpdale Public Hall.
Mr Horsfield was buried at Mirboo North cemetery, where his mother is buried.
