PAPARUA PRISON FARM STOCK FEED VALUES.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20621, 10 August 1932, Page 8

PAPARUA PRISON FARM STOCK FEED VALUES.

TO THE EDITOB OIP THE FEESS. Sir,—The descriptions, reported in The Press, of the Paparua prison farm have been a little overdone. A large part of that farm is not the poor land it is said to be. A considerable portion of it was the Templeton settlement, and'several"of the settlers told me it was £4O per acre land. That was bow the Government of that time, priced it. Mr Knight was superinten'deiit for. many years from the start, and Mr ( Macpherson advised him to sow lucerne on part of it, which he did one or two years after tho Prisons Department decided to . plant a small orchard on tho farm. Mr Knight came to me for advice ; and help. At that time the farm was - muuii smaller than it is now, and 1 advised him that a part of the lucerne paddock was the most suitable. I also went there to show thorn how to plant the trees, prune the roots and tops, etc., and J found the soil was quite equa.l to the best laud where my orchard is planted. At that time another block on the poorer land was sown in lucerne., I noticed that they had a largo' water race running through the ground on the highostsjevel or thereabouts, from' which water could be taken for irrigation; and as a matter of fact, that part was later made into a garden to grow vegetables. After a lot of the gravel had been taken out and the soil and sand been levelled, it made a splendid garden, because water could bo led on to it. Mr Edward Hinton told me he had done potato digging on parts,of what is now the prisonfarm, and in those days was Mr Bailey's land, and that land grew large crops of"potatoes. So it is a mistake to call it poor land. At any rate, a large portion is certainly not poor. Then it has been said that if ten men had a inrgo block of land, they would do a* will as tho prisoners are doing. Tn this Deople are greatly mistaken. Those pi isoners are under discipline, whilo each of Hie ten men would, want, to ho bow, and next to nothing wonld be done. I "no%tce that "Mr Scott, and Mr Whcelfr are at variance over the value of lu'irr'ne and other stock foods, and I n«to that Mr Wheeler quotes from Henry's book. Books on agrioultoro

or -anything are of very. little use nowadays; the changes and experiments make books obsolete and out of date almost as soon as they are printed. Lucerne is rarely quoted in the Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture. "When it has • been quoted its food value is usually ten to fifteen shillings below good clover hay. I quote the. food values table given in the June number: Starch Protein - Food . equiva- eqttiva-' value, lent. lent. per ton. Crops. p ; c. p.c. • • £ 8. Wheat .'■.. 72 9.6 . 6ilo Oats ..60 7.6 5 7 Barley >■:* ■■■- ..:>*7l ;■-■.- ' 6J2 ".■'" : 6 3 - Potatoes' "... 18 "0.6 110 Swedes - . ; ..7 - 0.7 0 12' Mangolds .......7 o*4 013 Beans ..66 20.0 .615 Good meadow .. 37 4.6 36 Good oat hay straw .. 90> . % .0,9 113 Good clover .. 38.-'\ 7.0 311 T«tch and hay ~13 16 13, Barley rtraw .. ?3 0.7 ' 118 Wheat straw •.,33 0 1 - 1-1 Bean straw , .. 23 - _;L7 - - l ».- ( —Yours, etc., GEORGE LEE. Templeton. August 7th, 1932.