FARMING AT HOME.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19918, 3 May 1930, Page 8

FARMING AT HOME.

A NEW ZEALANDER'S IMPRESSIONS.

Mr Hex Kippcnbcrger, formerly of Studholmc, but who is now in the JRoyal Air Force at llome, writes as folows concerning his impressions of farming in England: — England is great, also quaint, and still more dreadfully slow and oldfaßhioned.

Here is a farm of 384 acres, worth at ruling prices £3O per acre, and used, for mixed farming—growing wheat, oats, beans, peas, sugar beet, roots and barley, running 100 breeding ewes and from £0 to CO head of cattle.

The ploughing—much less than one acre a day—is done by two boys or youths, each with two very slow horses and a single beam hand plough. Tho mouldboards of some of tho ploughs are short, but they aro generally long. The favourite makes are of wood, except for the single wheel and actual mouldboard. Tho horses are small but heavy, and aro the slowest I have ever seen.

The ploughmen aro called "waggoners," and get 395, paying 18s keep. They are over 21 years of age, and have served their apprenticeship. They must leave tho yard at seven in the morning—mid-winter—stop for half an hour at 9.30 a.m., then work till 2 p.m. When the ploughing is finished for the day, they come home, have dinner, and are then supposed to groom and look after the horses.

All the winter the cattle are under cover, iu what are / called "crews." Here they are in roofed-in yards about a quarter of an acre in area. Pigs run among them. One man does nothing but carry straw, hay, roots, cake, crushed grain, or maize all day. The straw is put in racks in the morning, and what is not eaten next morning is scattered over the brick floor for bedding, with the result that by the end of the winter, the yard is feet deep in manure, and it is the heaviest work of the year carting and scattering it over the paddocks. There is another band of workers round doing odd'jobs, and still another cutting and patching the hawthorn hedges. All crops are carted into the stockyard handy to the "crews." The threshing is done with a little mill and a tractor. I saw in operation recently, an 8 horse-power tractor and a small mill with a separate elevator nearly as big as the mill, and very cumbersome, with no chaff blower. The hands comprised driver, feeder and band cutter —no more. The driver and feeder take turns every half-hour feeding and polishing the engine. The band cutter hands the cut sheaf to the feeder. - The railway companies find the bags. Some of them are dated 1904 and are a mass of pitches. They are huge things, hold 4 bushels' or 18 Btone, and just tied round the neck—far too heavy, and long instead of wide. With these fellows, 640 bushels of wheat are put through in a day of 8 hours. All measures here are in "quarters"'for oats, wheat, peas, etc., and in "stone" for live stock.

The roads here ■are very good. Most of them are done with plain asphalt or macadam, though the main arterial roads are concrete, straight and banked. A marked peculiarity is that except for these main roads there are scarcely any where the jroadway a quarter of a mile ahead can be seen. Twists and turns, double S's and hairpins add interest, but tyre wear also. The hard roads are quite beyond horse traffic during the winter frosts. A slight dew or Tain makes the surface damp and it remains like glass all day. Tractors are not even allowed to cross them without road bands. Every building hero is of brick; I don't think wood would last any length of time in such a continuously damp winter. The houses all look so bleak, just square blocks, with no verandah, and seldom a porch or bay window. The soil is full of flints, thousands of small glassy pieces as hard as diamonds. These play havoc with mouldboards and implements, and tractor cleats are sometimes renewed every two years. But farming is at a low ebb at present on account of foreign subsidised cereals pouring in from the Argentine, France and Germany.

HERD-TESTING,

The returns of tlie Xew Zealand Cooperative Herd Testing Association show that 84,184 cows were tested in March, and that the average yield was 5781b milk and 27.t>81b fat. The test was 4.7. For the corresponding month last year 68,611 cows were tested, and .they gave an average yield of 4101b milk and 20.191b fat. The test was 4.9. The increase in the yield this year is due to the more favourable autumn and the continued growth of pastures. These factors have accounted for a record production of dairy produce.