COLD WEATHER.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 226, 17 June 1908, Page 3

COLD WEATHER.

" A fcLANCE AT THE OUTLOOK. This chilly weather is unwelcome. . Nobody, howevor. can call it unseasonable. Tho farmers liavo had a good innings during the last -three months. The beneficent spell of warm weather, with tho ground just moist onough to support the best sort of growth, changod a gloomy outlook to ono of at least average quality. Many farmers who "got a ;inovp on" so soon as the drought broke up and did .everything that good farming could demand to make themselves socure against tho wlnter,ahd spring can doubtless say that they aro ready for tho bitterest winter wea-ther-that can possibly come. There may bo others who took less drastic* measures, or •we're' delayed in their operations, for whom the otitlook bears only an average huo; but at all events," though the losses ovor stock sacrificed' havo not been redeemed, yet so far as feed is concerned it milst be admitted that the autumn and winter have removed tho scara of the lato summer. Perhaps the nest four months will not be' quite free from anxiety—farming" at any time is not quite such : an easy business as that—but _at all ovoijts, even with'a bitter finish to this winter,,'the prospects must still be fair. Very flowing optimism is_ perhaps scarcely justiedi Tile most glowing of the prophecies of lato have been mado conditional on a few months, more of last week's' weather—which practically dispensed with winter altogether antl presupposed; a perpetual spring. Evon a fa.rmer acarccly expects, that. ■ But that crops have advanced with such great leaps as they have done, that hungering cattle have re-clad their skeletons with a return of some I of their long-lost fat, that sheep and lambs have been aolo in large numbers at last to present respectable outlines to the. exacting eye of the butchers, that there are now some well covered "pastures awaiting tho stock that will,' later, bo turned into them—all these things,. when we think back to the days of the drought, will make farmers feel thankful/ And on top of these small mercies there is an animated . market for meat and ! produce. When wool recovers, and pelts get justice, we shall ibe able in truth to admit that there are some pickings left in farming yet.