NOTES FOR FARMERS.

Colonist, Volume L, Issue 12140, 15 January 1908, Page 4

NOTES FOR FARMERS.

The value df the "butter exported j from New Plymouth last year was £501,746, and the cheees .£82,066. It waß stated at the Farmers' Union meeting at Halcotnbe on Saturday night to consider the shearers' demand, that one farmer, whosß flock 'consisted of a pet lamb had been cited in the dispute. Reports of the cocksfoot harvest on the Peninsular generally are more favourable as the cutting proceeds (writes the Akaroa correspondent of tne "Press")and the shortage in the yield will not be so great as was at ; iirst anticipated. The bulk of the seed is clean, though light, but in some places both bright and heavy. A witness before the Conciliation | Board at Geraldine in the farm labour case, farming 200 acres, said be made his start injlife ploughing at los a week. He went from this'to Mr Tripp's station sorting pieces, and then to a flax mill, and at twenty three years of age he had saved pnough to pay a deposit of £110 on sixty acres of land. Land went up in price after this, and he sold the sixty acres at a profit which enabled him to buy '200 acres. It would be quite impossible for witness to carry on his farni under set rules, and he did not think that anyone could do so. If he had to pay 27s 6d a week to his ploughman he would cease farming; The writer of a series of articles on the King Country 'now appearing in the Auckland '. i Herald"gives some interesting particulars of the progress now being made by settlement in that, long-benighted region. "It is only*" he says, "A little while aso when the saleyards were established in Te Kuiti, and it was thought then that they were ahead of their time, and far too large for the district. They are too small already. 1 saw over 2500 head of cattle penned there on one day and there are entries of over 30,000 sheep for the sale to be held this month. The King Country will vie with Poverty Bay for sheep in the course of time ; it is just beginning its career as the land of the golden Beece. In 1906 its flocks numbered 40,428: in 1907 they numbered 68,148, an increase of over 50 pet cent. In cold figures these totals do not seem great, but the sheep industry is but of to-day. Wait until these hundreds of thousands of acres'of rollingdowns country come under turnips and rape— then the King Country will count its' millions. '" Some interesting experiments in oata have been conducted in Scotland. A number of varieties were tried—Potatoes, Goldfinder, Waverley, Storm King, and Tartar King, also several imported varieties, Banner, Siberian and Thousand Dollar. Banner gave the best result of the imported wheats. It is, says the ''Scottish Farmer, " an oat with a future. It produced the second best results iq* Aberdeenshire last year, and tests proved that it was more than equal to Potatoes. It was already becoming popular in the South-West of England, where it was ousting other oatSt Major Jarvis, a veteran of the North West Mounted Police, spent last summer in the remote Mackenzie Valley, hundreds of miles north of the settled portion of the Canadian North-West, and brought back a gloomy report of the surviving wood buffaloes. There are perhaps 300 in all left, and unless something is done to protect them, they will disappaar, for even in the wilds they frequent they are bunted by Indians and whites. The only large, herd of plain buffalo was recently purchased by the Canadian Government in Montana, and removed to a reserve of 3000 acres in Northern Alberta, where it is expected to flourish.