RURAL TALKS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15920, 4 May 1912, Page 5

RURAL TALKS.

(By RUSTICUS.)

"J.H.8.," TrVaddington, asks:— " Would you kindly give through the columns of the "Canterbury Times" your way of pickling oats and wheat for sowing?" Therß are many ways of doing this work, but the job as carried out by myself is performed as follows:—The grain is tipped out on to a good gran tryfloor or a tarpaulin. About three o" four sacks can be treated at a tii<.>>. The bluestone is prepared by it in water at the rate of from th-ee-parts of an ounce to an ounce per bushel of the grain to be dressed. Tho h! ..••>- stone can be melted by grinding it up and putting hot water on it. As the water takes up all the bluestone it can conveniently hold, it is poured off. a:id some more hot water is poured on tho bluestone, which is kept stirred and pounded up: At length the whole of the bluestone will bo dissolved. Tho liquid is then measured in cupfuls. This may be dono by dipping it out from one bucket with a cup and pouring it into another bucket. The number of cupfuls per sack is then found, and it is then further mixed as required with water at the rate of about a couple of gallons of water to a sack of wheat. This is then poured on the wheat or oats, and the heap is turned several times with buckets and shovels and bagged up. if stirred well from the bottom, each particle of grain will get a wetting. The dressed wheat is then bagged up in half-bags, and after a few hours is ready for drilling. This method is a fairly quick one, and does not oversteep tho seed. I hare bluestoned my grain for years this way, and have never had any smut in my wheat. In the oats a few heads appear at times, but smut in oats seems to be difficult to prevent. This season many crops or oats were affected with smut jba~my locality, although -the seed had'been carefully dressed. Some of my neighbours have tried formalin dressing with very good results. The grain germinated well and ripened earlier than the crops grown from bluestone seed.

Anothor good method of steeping wheat is to immerse it in the liquid prepared at the rate of about a gallon of water or a little less. The mixture is placed in a concrete tank or in a wooden tub, and the grain is placed in half-bags, loosely tied, and then dipped into the Milestone solution. It is claimed that by this method every grain is properly damped, and there is no chanpc of the smut spores escaping. The most thorough method is to tip the loose seed into the bath, ■ and then stir it up so that all air bubbles on the grain may be destroyed, allowing every particle of the grain to be pickled. It is claimed that the air' bubbles one sees on immersed wheat may contain smut spores that will escape unless these bubbles are broken Another good point about this method is that if the grains are allowed to remain in the water for a short time all diseased and light grains and other rubbish will rise to tho surface, leaving the good grains by themselves in the bottom of the bath. The refuse may then be skimmed off, and nothing but ' good, sound, clean seed will remain. If formalin is used it should contain at least 40 per cent of the gas and ! should be used at the rate of one J pound of formalin to forty gallons of water. No one should sow grain with- ; out thoroughly dressing it. Change of ! seed, though excellent for many i reasons, will not do away with the necessity of pickling the grain. And it seems foolish to run the risk of damage by smut when the remedy is so easily applied, and is almost infallible. It is not, perhaps, quite a certainty, though very nearly so. I have known grain that has been dressed contract smut, but the cases are rather rare as far as my knowledge of them goes, and may perhaps have been the result of over-carelessness in dressing the seed. Tho time for mating the general flocks of the ewes has arrived. The period of gestation may be roughly reckoned at 150 days,_ or five months. As a rule one ram serves fifty* owes, although on good level country, with small paddocks, one ram may serve sixty, seventy or eighty ewes, according _to his age and vitality. It is not advisable to leave the rams run with I the ewes for more than six weeks, or ! at most a couple of months. If the rams are taken out in about six weeks' time after they are put in the lambing will not be unduly extended. On some farms it lasts for the big end of three ' months; at any rate an odd lamb comes long after tho general lambing has finished. It is as well to get lambs within a month of each other if possible. They are then more uniform in size, the big ones do not knock the little ones about, and the tail at tho end of tho season is not so large as when p. number, of late lambs make their appearance. The rams must be in good, hard condition, not too fat, or they may not be as vigorous as they should be. The ewes come into season in about four months aftor they have lambed, and weaning should then be done, if not carried out | before that. They will return in sea- j son about every seventeen days until I conception takes place, and the period I during which they remain in heat varies from a day to a day and a half. It is thought by, many that there will be a considerable shortage in the supply of lamb this season. Certainly . there have not been so many lambs j go to the works this season as there i were last year at this time, but the con- . ditions aro quite different this season. There is plenty of fe*>d, and consequently there "is no immediate necessity to get the lambs away. They appear to Be growing into money each day. The carcase is getting heavier and the fleece is getting more valuable. Uiose who

consider that there will be quite a considerable shortage this season base their calculations on the fact that fully a hundred thousand ewes have been brought into the South Island from the north, during this autumn. This means that the breeding stock was considerably short last spring. A good many ewe lambs will be retained for breeding purposes, and we shall have to forego this season, a proportion of the revenua that has come in so well during tha last few years from the lamb export trade. However, conditions are now such that, with anything like decent luck, we should be able to make up the leeway before next year at this time. There are often many little things on a farm that suffer through inattention. This carelessness in small things often means a loss to the farmer, but he is so engrossed over the big things thafc he does not notice the gradual leakage that takes place in some directions, a leakage that could oftentimes be very easily prevented. Take sheepskins, for instance. How often are they allowed to hang on a post or a fence- until they; are worth, only about half what they would have brought had they been properly attended to Mention of posts reminds me that sheepskins should never be hung over a stake or a post. They get out of shape in a very short time under such treatment. In taking off a skin great care must be taken not to cut it. The blood should be kept away from it as much as possible, as it makes the wool look untidy and detracts from the value of the s"kin. The pelt, after being carefully removed, should be hung on a level rail under cover, so that it may dry gradually and escape the rain. The trotters should be left on the skin. They serve to stretch the skin when it is hung on a rail, and give it th'e'fall shape favoured by skin buskers. In hanging the skin out to dry, the fleshy side of the skin should be turned upwards, tho wool being underneath. The skin is tho better for being hung lengthways, that is, with the head and tail resting on the rail. One skin should not be placed on the top of another till everything is perfectly dry. In summer damp skins placed close together will become flyblown, and a good deal of damage may -' caused through the maggots. A :i properly dried should have a plea: . rattle. when handled, and the pelt should be bright in colour. If a skin buyer visits the farm to pick up your skius he will advise you how to keep the skins in the best order, if you are not too proud to ask or to take his advice.