THE AMENITIES OF THE FARM AND THE HOMESTEAD.
Following is the remaining portion of Mr A. W, Grant's paper on the above subject which was read before the Toko. Farmers' Club last week : —
I might say a very great deal more in this strain. You, yourselves will readily, I think, be able to apply the principle I have aimed at setting before you. Some may be disposed to say that all they need to care about is just to plough and sow and reap, and get as good a price as as they can for their produce. That is all very well, but I contend that by the exercise of care and method, by attention to the little matters I have mentioned, and others which will suggest themselves they will make the daily and yearly routine of farm work easier, pleasanter more satisfactory, and decidedly more profitable. If anybody in this nineteenth century imagines that there is money in slovenly farming it is quite time he disabused himself of that noiion ; if he thinks he need care about nothing but the very simplest elements of agriculture such as were practised centuries ago, he has got to learn the first principles of modern farming, got to find out how farming can be made to pay. As a matter of fact a farmer needs to be a very cyclopaedia of information ; there is not an atom of knowledge he can acquire ; not a thing within the whole field of his vision, scope of his imagination, or matter of his reading but may be useful to him in his great work of cultivating the land. A farmer must be something more than a farmer. Somewhere I have read that he should be a veterinary, so that he may understand and attend to the ailments of his stock. A chemist, that he may study the composition of his soil and understand the application of manure. A meteorologist, that he may know when to sow and to harvest. An engineer, to carry out drainage, irrigation, and other work. A fitter, to repair his machinery and implements. A carpenter, to make and repair carts, gates, and other woodwork on the farm. A saddler, to make and repair harness and saddlery. A timber getter and fencer, for obvious reasons ; and a cook so that he may not starve at a pinch. A general labonrer, or he can't ttll if he is getting work equal in value to the money he is paying in wages. Hs must have strong commercial instincts and appreciation of the market. He must have the bump of organisation developed to the size of a pumpkin, he must be ready on emergency and as capable of commanding as a successful general. He must be a nnanc er, so that expenditure on the firm does nob exceed income. He must be a perpetual reader, or he can't keep pace with those who do read. He must be a profound thinker, or his reading will avail him not. He must be a facile writer, to convey his ideas to those who may benefit by them. He must be on a bowing acquaintance with every branch of agriculture, horticulture, and fruit-growing, and intimate with special lines. Ho must know as much pastoral law as a lawyer, and as much general knowledge as all the rest of the professions and trades together ; in fine he must be a perfect man. But my subject embraces the hometead as well as the farm. I would like it to be distinctly understood that my remarks on this head are of a very general character. They caa hardly be suspected of any personal intention for the reason that there are really very few homesteads in the district which I have visited. If, then, my strictures should go right home in my case, I trust you will acquit me of any intention to be personal, but at the same time act upon such hintß I may throw out as may be of value. My contention is that a farmer's home and its surroundings ought to be beautiful, cheerful, happy, and refioed. It is not always so. I knew a farmer in New South Wales— l prefer to go abroad for my illustrations—who had a large freehold estate. He was a good farmer so far as cultivation goes, but very slovenly in other respects. In this he was an exception to the rule, for a slovenly man is rarely a good farmer. This man, however, was, and more than that, he was free of mortgages and loan companies, and had «i good balance in the bank. Bat his home ! How shall I describe it? Externally it was wretched in appearance. Not an inch of garden ground ; no fruit, no flowers. Inside, the furniture was of the roughest and coarsest description. Dirt abounded everywhere. His children looked as if they spent most of their time on the dung heap. As for his wife — well, it is no exaggeration to say that if you shoved her up against the wall she would stick. That man and his family may have been happy — there are some people so peculiarly constituted that they are never happy except when they are miserable — they may have been happy, but they didn't look it. I knew them for years, often saw them, and do not remember to have ever seen a smile on their faces. Drink did not lie at the bottom of it. I believe they were too stingy to drink, It was just sheer slovenliness. This is an extreme oase, but I am inclined to think that there are too many farmers who do not pay so much attention to the amenities of the homestead as they might do, and which they would be all the happier for doing. I do not attribute this to penuriousness in every case. It may be that in some casea in the early struggles all manner of discomforts had to be endured, and when the turning point was reached, and comforts and even luxuries could be afforded, the habits had become fixed, and all desire for them was gone. That, h.qw, ever, can hardly be the case on Tokomairiro Plain in these days j the country has been too long settled. How seldom one sees a farmhouse surrounded by its garden and nestling in its orchard as one does in the Old Country. True, there are gardens, or patohea of ground which are apologies for gardens, and there are some fruit trees, but not so many as there should be. Why, there is not a farmer on this Plain who ought not to be able to make enough out of his orchard to $t least clothe himself and his family, As for vegetables — a farmer said to me the other day, " I have lived on the Plain all theße years and never had a cabbage which I did not buy from a.Chinaman I" As for flowers, Ah me, how beautiful some of those gardens which surround the farmhouses in England. Artists have delighted to paint them, and .poets have embalmed th,em. in. theiy sqnga. ' And for the interior of the homestead. Why
should it not be something more than a place where the man and his family eat and drink and sleep. The gudewife may, if she will, make it a little heaven — a poet calls home " ideaven's fallen sister," and she will do it too, if only the good man encourage her and appreciate her efforts. And it seems to me that when home is what it should be it is calculated to give a man heart of grace to go forth and tight against the adverse forces of Nature and harness them to his chariot — to make all the powers of heaven and earth bow to his superior will. I suppose every homestead has got a parlor, or a drawing room as it is now pretentiously called. Bug what is it ? I have seen some of these drawing rooms — so Etiff, so cold, and so fine. I have been shown into them as a place of honor, and I have been so glad to escape into the kitchen. Sofa 3 and chairs plastered all over with those horrible antimacassars which the good wife made in her girlhood, or before the first baby came— neither use nor ornament, but always in the way. The table plastered all over with books which nobody ever reads, with conspicuous among them the big Family Bible, the only use of which is to record births and marriages and deaths in ; the light, carefully excluded lest the carpet should fade. This is the best room, and about all the use it is is to receive the minister or any other distinguished visitor in, and taey always feel a sense of intense relief when they escape therefrom. Why not make it a place for pleasant recreation, a real withdrawing room where everybody can get away from the byre and the stable, the paddock and the I 1 jugh ? Possibly it may be that becanse the perfect idea of home life is so little understood by some farmers that there is apparently such a waut of cordiality between ttiemselves and their families. Here I am only surmising from appearances. But unless there is some ground for this suspicion it is not easy to understand why farmers are so rarely seen with their families. You may meet them alone on sale days, at meetings of the club, too often indulging in their beer and whisky, but seldom with their families. Too often the wife and children go to church alone, while the husband and father loafs about the house and farm, and possibly does an odd job or two. But I fear you will think I am too much on the faultfinding lay. Let me, rather, sketch the kind of life the farmers among whom my lot was cast in England led. I know more about their household affairs thau of yours. There were at least fifty farmhouses at which I was a frequent guest. Tv« moment 1 entered my especial ehurchwardeu was handed to me, and a jug of home- brewed placed at my elbow. These people were, of all the people I ever met in my wanderings about the world, the most homely and hospitable. They were not wealthy, but their houses were nicely furnished ; they never sat down to table or spent the eveuing with their working clothes on ; their wives and families were loved and cared fur ; music and song enlivened their evenings ; scarcely was a meal spread but there was a guest or two to partake of it with them ; friendly gatherings in each others homes enlivened their evenings ; as regularly as the Sunday came round all the family who could get away drove to church ; they could converse on other subjects than oats and turnips and stock — in fact, they were the kindliest, nicest, and most refined people imaginable. And they were only farmers, not wealthy, possibly many of them not so well-to do as the bulk of the Tokomairiro farmers, but they went in for the fullest and most intelligent enjoyment of life, and thoroughly succeeded. Whether all farming communities at Home resemble thia which 1 have described I cannot say, but this I can say, that neither in Tasmania, Victoria, or New South Wales, which I know well, are there such charming people dwelling in such happy homes. What they may may be in New Zealand I cannot say, for the reason that I am so little acquainted with the domestic life of the farmers, but judging from the fact that so many of them are so often ia the town alone by day and by night, I fear that ia their family life and associations they are uot qnite up to the standard I have attempted to desorihe.
Bat I must draw this discursive, and I fear not too suggestive, paper to a conclusion. And I would exhort farmers to stand more on the real dignity of their own position, and cultivate the amenities of their own calling. I fear they are apt to underrate themselves. I would have them magnify their office and glorify their occupation. Newspaper writers and public speakers, when disposed to be unusually eloquent, or when anxious to cultivate the favor of the agriculturists, are wont to refer to them as " sturdy yeomen." And a very good word it is. la England a yeoman is understoed to be a "gentleman farmer." And there is no reason why all farmers should not be gentlemen. They may be so without wearing broadcloth suits and belltopper hats while pursuing their calling ; if they did that they would not be gentlemen but snobs. Bat they may be refined in their manners, and cultivated in their minds, though some of them did not enjoy the advantages of education in their early youth in the Oil Country. Education no more makes the gentleman than does clothes. There is everything in the nature of the farmer's occupation to bring into prominence and develop all the noblest qualities of manhood if he could but perceive it — and when they are developed the real gentleman appears — the farmer no matter how limited his acreage or impoverished his purse, is at onoe the yeoman. I say stand upon your dignity. Did it never occur to you that the only things in the world of intrinsic value are those which you produce ? We could do without gold and silver, and dispense with precious stoaes — we could live without ten thousand things which are accounted necessaries* True, our lives would be shorn of many luxuries, of many pleasures, but we could live without those things, and very decently too. So long aa there were farmers in the world we should not do badly. Aud did it pever atrik6 voa that youra lies at the foundation of all other occupations ? But for you Bhips would have no cargo, trains no freight— the moat magnificent accomplishments of scienoe, the grandest conceptions of genius, the most pronounced triumphs of skill and ingenuity all owe their value more or less directly to the men who toil and moil in the fields. The colossal buildings in great citieß where merchants congregate, where financial business is transacted, are %hes not built up and supported, by yoik ye farmers? Why, yon dominate in all things. The sweetest strains of the poet's lyre are ever tuned, next to bye, to the praise of husbandry and agriculture. Art has thrown a glamour of romance over Hodge's occupationj and in every picture gallery, many of the best works of the first mastars represent scenea )r^m the field and the farm yard. .Religion has, drawn from you many of her grandest i lustrations. The most splendid of all truths we ve.U!u.t rated by the greatest of all teachers by means of homely scenes and incident* of rural life and occupation. The. intimate connection between here and "hereaftar, between the character begun in time and continued in itsrnity, is set forth in the well-known saying "Be not deceived, X>od is* not mocked ; whatsoever a .man soweth tbat shall he alga reap." That grandest of: al\ historical event 3, the death a.nd resurrect-on of Jesus Christ, and the glorious results to be, accomplished thereby are illustrafcsd by the germination of the
wheat. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground aud die it abideth not, bat if it die it briageth forth much fruit." The resurrection of the body is also embematised ia a similir fashion. The body is the grain cast into the ground ; it perishes, bat the life germ remains, and from it there arises a new and a glorious body— no more like the old body than the luxuriant wheat iv fall ear resembles the dry grain sown, bub withal preserving its identity intact. And at the consummation of all things, when kings and kaisers are no more, when the occupation of the merchant and the mechanic will pass into oblivion, and in the pattern of these great events nothing will remain of other trades and callings, your work will still be to the front for " The harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the angels."
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Bibliographic details
Bruce Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 2263, 8 May 1891, Page 3
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2,722THE AMENITIES OF THE FARM AND THE HOMESTEAD. Bruce Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 2263, 8 May 1891, Page 3
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