ENGLISH FARMING

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1933, Page 11

ENGLISH FARMING

SOME NOTABLE CHANGES. Hodge is no more. The historic English farm hand, with dirty smock, red handkerchief round his neck, a squashed soft hat like a colander on his head, corduroy trousers tucked into clumsy boots, and with a straw between his hearty lips, is no more. His place has been taken bj r a coun-try-bred but town-dressed yokel, who cannot be distinguished from the average Cockney, save that he is silent, says the Sydney “Daily Telegraph.” With him has arrived the groom in all his glory, short, tight-fitting sporting jacket, tighter fitting waistcoat, riding pants, flared and ballooned at the knees, and then puttees or leggings, the whole surmounted bj r a rakish, peaked cap, and the sparrow legs conveying the impression of an animated shadow. There are grooms

for the horses, grooms for the cows, grooms for the pigs, and grooms for the poultry. The Bath and West and Southern Counties Society Show on Wimbledon Common was like a huge circus spread over a spacious field. There were a vast variety of milking machines, guaranteed to strip every udder scientifically. The milking maiden has been mechanised into the background. But there is still work for her sturdy arms, for here are hand churns of simplest design, procurable at £4/2/6, the wheel so exquisitely balanced that only trifling strength is required to turn it.

Riding in England differs considerably from that in Australia. The foxhunting squire has a. very long stirrup, sits erect like a postillion, sways backwards as he comes at. a jump, and always has his feet thrust well through the stirrups as if determined that they shall never part company. There are a confusingly large number of robot appliances which plough, harrow, sow, reap, which will put in 2000 plants an hou,r, or dexterously pull out 2000 weed’s which thought they had hidden themselves. A fifty-acre farm, with its many pocket handkerchief paddocks, does not call for a lajrge family or for much hired labour. But it is well to remember that a noble plough horse costs £4O, and a good milker £2O. The show suggests that the time is not far distant when man may be entirely expelled from the fields, and in his place substituted the strange contraptions with practically human inteligence that are fashioned in factories.

One turns to an egg display, where a most ingenious circular table, with ten little receptacles,, divided by tiny wire walls, sorts out. new-laid eggs. Eggs, already X-rayed to find the

duds, which go to cake shops, weigh 2Joz, 2oz, and if the hens are below quality less than this. The mechanism drops each egg, as it comes to the foot of the escalator, on to the table, into the section where other eggs of similar weight have previously fallen. In other words, it grades eggs, and the society, which supplies retailers throughout England, sells its eggs at prices proportionate to theii- weight. This appliance costs just less than £lOO.