WOMAN ON THE LAND

Evening Star, Issue 18374, 7 September 1923, Page 3

WOMAN ON THE LAND

QUALIFYING OR BIG ROLE. Tho part that women are qualifying to play in agriculture and horticulture has been overlooked. Wo think of the farm and the market garden as a part of man’s wide province, and look to him to effect improvements and take responsibilities. Yet to go through tho country with open eyes is to soo an over-increasing number of qualified women in charge of dairies, in charge of live stock, in charge of market and pleasure gardens. They are making a good impression and earning respect. Now and again we find women managing their own farms and carrying on with courage and resource. In ono sense there may bo little novelty hero. Tho farmer’s wife or daughter has always controlled tho dairy; now and again a widow has ca-ried on her late husband’s farm; but in most of those cases the work has been done by rule of thumb. There has been no exact knowledge, any exceptional happening. has led to trouble. Devotion is of small use without sound training, and it is only in tho past few years that education for tho land has been generally available for women. In spite of the bad' times through which farming has passed since 1920, women have not lost, heart; they are still coming forward in large numbers for training. This is not surprising when wo consider the measure of industry and thoroughness that an educated woman brings to any work she undertakes.

There are very few occupations that make a more persistent demand than agriculture upon patience and pluck, because no precautions can rule out accidents. IV o may have mild weather between December and March, and frosts will sometimes postpone their visits until May is nearly out, with deadly results to late fruit blossom and young vegetables. Tho best mare may slip her foal, contagious abortion may como to the oows, frit-ily or wiroworm may spoil a valuable crop, rain may blacken tho hay or cause the coni to sprout in the stocks. These are troubles wo have all known ; some of them aro not a month old to-day, but there are other evils that sound training helps folk to avoid, and wo can onlv survive unavoidable troubles it wo aro careful to add nothing to them through carelessness or neglect. While the fanners’ daughters are taking advantage of county institutes, co-opera-tive dairy schools, and tho rest in their own locality, many girls and women from our big cities are entering for the two or three wars’ course of an agricultural college. Some go there urged by a genuine revolt against town life; others seek on the land the robust health that has eluded them elsewhere; but, so far as figures are available, it would scam that three out of four are faithful to their first intmtipn—they train and they practise It is safe to say that they do not go to an agricultural or horticultural college in search of an easy time; hours are long and work is strenuous, tho demands require response from head as well as hands, and some of tho tasks to bo undertaken in farm land are of a kind from which the sensitive will shrink.

Studloy, in Warwickshire, is the most attractive institution of the kind that 1 have met. Tho college occupies Studloy Castlo, a picturesque pile, standing in so mo 300 acres of rather difficult land. In times past the tenants must have been cither owners or breeders of racehorses or hunters, for tho stable accommodation is on the extravagant side; but it has piow been adapted to more useful ends. This adaptation serves a good purpose, for it toadies tho students to make tho best of whatever conditions may bo found where they aro employed, and for most of us improvisation is a necessity in farm land. Model farms are few; they are tho luxuries of tho rich.

In all, about 250 acres aro fainted at Studloy College, about forty are given to garden and pleasure grounds, and the two or three years’ course leads to tho diplomas of tha Royal Horticultural Society, tho National Dairying Association, and similar bodies that demand a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. Mr Squoors, though frequently wrong, was sometimes right in his views of education. After accepting a boy’s statement that w-i-n d-o-r spelt window, tho boy was sent to clean one. At Studby tho farm pupils tend to reverse this excellent procedure—practice precedes theory They work throughout tho morning and attend lectures in tho afternoon; only tho gardeners start tho day with a lecture on horticulture or botany or chemistry, and then go forth to their labors under the sun, if any. Tho milkers aro out at 6.39 a.m. in tho summer, and only half an hour later in tho winter, ami sometimes Iho last lecture ends at 7 o’clock.

On the agricultural side the handling of pasture and arable, crop rotation, stock breeding and rearing, management of horses, estate management, marketing, and bookkeeping are among tho subjects (audit. Tho gardeners learn to grow, grade, pack, and sell fruit, flowers, and vegetables, much produce being won and marketed from a largo, range of greenhouses. In tho dairy soft and hard cheeses are made; they are quits in tho first class. Tho poultry-keeping is on thoroughly sound linos, and is both of the intensive and open-air kind, and in addition tho students len.ni hoc-keeping, such carpentry as will enable them to carry out simple repairs, practical mechanics (including electric lighting, ths use of steam and motor power, and the repairs associated with them). The bottling and canning of fniit and vegetables are included in tho full course. Two significant facts struck mo at Studley. First and foremost, the inner man—or inner woman, to bo accurate—is carefully catered for. Breakfast is at 7.30 a.m , lunch at 10.30 a.in., dinner at 1 p.m., tea at 4.30 p.m., supper at 7 p.m., and as tho food is derived in barge part from farm and gardens, it is fresh as well as plentiful Tho other outstanding fact was that there is leisure for amusement.. Cricket, tennis, dancing; there appeared to bo time for all, Tho farm stock is in excellent condition, and tho animals have tho friendly nature ono associates with those that women care for. An invitation to talk to the students about tho agricultural outlook took me to Studley. Doubtless there are other institutions of equal merit elsewhere, and the object of this article is not so much to discuss this agricultural and horticultural college, though tho mind dwells pleasantly on its many excellences, as to consider the effect of such teaching as it affords upon the future of food production in this country. There are over fifty students here, drawn largely from the towns, qualifying to take posts and eagerly sought after. Tho warden is frequently unable to do more for applicants than put them on a waiting list. One and all are becoming the pioneers of the most modern methods; they will have certain practical knowledge that no untrained country woman, though she bo a born dairy hand, hen-wife, or bee mistress, can hope to possess. Wherever these students go their methods will attract first attention and thou imitation, and those who marry agriculturists or horticulturists will have such a dowry ns helps to bring success to tho work of the farm or garden. Somebody has said that Nature can only bo subdued by obedience to her laws, and tho older wo grow in tho practice of fanning tho more wo realise that this is the truth. Again, confidence is the keynote of success, if wo know our acts of husbandry are right wc eliminate the element, of worry. We have done what wo should, and for the rest “Man is ono and the Fates are three.” Talking to the senior students, it is possible to sense this confidence—this feeling that there are farms to til! and gardens to make, and that, given a fair chance, the results will justify the effort. A few are training for the dominions, and there precise knowledge has a special value, because in some of them land is so plentiful that there is a tendency to run it out and go on to the next stretch of virgin soil, a system that could only bo justified if there were no known limits to the cultivable area. Given tho necessary training, women should hold their own against men on the farm and in tho garden. Tho bad days of hard manual labor are well-nigh at an end. on every holding that can support modern machinery. The tractor, cultivator, self-binder, and a dozen other mar

chines that need no enumeration have reduced the claim on muscle to a minimum. The old-time ploughman’s task is done; the hardest labors of hay-time and harvest have been vanquished; woman Ims no handicap based on mere physical inferiority. On the other hand, the woman is more efficient than the man in the dairy, the stock yard, the poultry runs, and the apiary; she is at least his equal in the garden. 1 think hers is a closer observation, a larger sympathy; she has kinder hands; certainly she is prepared to work with closer interest and devotion to duty than the average man. This is an opinion formed after employing both men and women on farm and in garden. If wo will look a long way ahead we may discern a possibility at least that in another generation farming wall bo very largely in the hands of women. They are content as a class to work with greater perseverance and with smaller results than men; they have more gift for detail, and can run an establishment at less expense. On a small scale, partnerships between women who have training aro often very successful; there is great economy of labor where ono looks after the house and the poultry, another has charge of garden and bees, while a third attends to stock and market.

It may bo said that men get a training that is quite as good as women’s, hut the trained man is not often content to start where a woman starts or to work up with like patience from small beginnings. I have long thought that the rivalry between men and women on the land, though friendly, is serious. A visit to Studley College confirms the belief.—S.L.B. in the ‘New Statesman. -