“Small Homesteads”

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 11

“Small Homesteads”

Sir, —Much capital has been made out of the feeding of wheat to pigs, but many of the best pigs supplied to the trade never had a grain of wheat. In the district where I lived some years ago we all grew crops of horse beans in place of purchasing concentrated foods. This is a crop that is particularly attractive to the small homestead, and although I believe the bumble bee has been very destructive to this crop, this can be overcome by planting in the autumn, which allows the crop to flower before the bee? get about. Crops may be grown regularly on the same ground and seem to improve and enrich the soil each succeeding year. The crop has a threefold value—its feeding value, its resistance to the weather, and the convenience of handling and the length of time that could be taken over the harvesting—very valuable items on a dairy farm. The best method of harvesting was found to be to cut with a reap hook and tie and stook by hand, as the binder knocked too much of the grain out. ’ Sometimes the bundles or sheaves were fed direct from the field to the pigs in the sty, otherwise thrashed out with flails and bagged up in the field, and, if handy to a mill, produce could be carted and ground into meal and stored for future use in a very convenient form. The haulm or straw is also a valuable food and much relished by stock, horses or cows. It was thought by many that feeding the grain whole was preferable and more beneficial, as the pigs could not then bolt the food. There are, of course, other crops, such as peas and barley, and the chief objection to growing wheat or oats in small isolated patches is birds. I have kept breeding sows entirely on “fern,” where there was a good supply of water, and the buyer who came and bought the porkers told me he got his best pigs straight off the fernhills from the farms round Wellington at that time.—l am, etc., W.G.T. Marton, December 9.