A GRAIN FARM

Matamata Record, Volume XIX, Issue 1693, 6 January 1936, Page 5

A GRAIN FARM

PUTARURU EXPERIMENT Cereal-producing Country The possibilities of the Matamata county for the growing of grain as a-side-line, at least, are well exemplified in the property of Mr! George McDonald, on the' Putaruru-Licbfield back road, where more than half a farm is devoted to cereals. The land, which is undulating and hilly co.untry, is the. only area within a radius of many miles which has been cropped for grain and more than usual interest attends Mr. McDonald’s experiment.

. Mr. McDonald" was well-known throughout the district when he took over the land, comprising two areas of 166 and 102 acres respectively, two and a-half years ago, and he immediately set out to bring into the realm of practice a long-held belief that cereals could be raised profit•ably in the Putaruru district. The larger area was in ragwort and permanent pasture; and the smaller carried ragwort and fern when they were first taken over, and by sheer hard work Mr. McDonald has worked a remarkable transformation and. taken three crops from them. To•day 152 acres of the total is in grain, 45 acres are ploughed or in turnips, 26 acres in grass, and the remainder is waste land. ■ :

Two fundamental ’ reasons ' lie be- • hind the excursion into, grains The first,is the owner’s deep and genuine dislike <qf cows. “ I would not milk them myself if they squirted gold,” he said. And .the second is that he maintains that it is the only way to "eradicate ragwort and make it pay during the ‘ course of treatment. By the constant ploughing which cereal land receives the weed only flowers and Mr. McDonald believes that the ragwort will be exhausted by this destruction of large strikes in about five years. The grain, although a good commercial proposition, is therefore only a temporary measure, and it is the intention eventually to keen about one-fourth of the ploughable land in grain and the remainder in grass. "One ten acre paddock will serve as ?, practical example of what Mr. McDonald’s methods have produced.

The paddock had been used for 13 broken years for hay, and when BfWhe entered it was ploughed and bar■jT ley sown. Eighty bushels were taken it and'for the next year the stub- - - ®le was"'ploughed in'ahd Garfon oats sown. A remarkable crop resulted, the stalks ranging in height from . - five to- eight feet, and . four ;days : were occupied. ’ in. cutting the- teri - acres. This year the area is in ..wheat standing five feet high, and next season oats will again be sown. It is this rotational system which .Mr. McDonald considers is the' answer to critics in this district who maintain that cereals take too much out of the land. There is no reason, he contends, why croppings should not be carried on indefinitely if made in rotation and farmed in a reasonable way. The various grains are used in a paddock in different years, with an occasional crop of turnips. Algerian oats ran to about 55 bushels to the acre, comparing very favourably with an extremely good jtotal of 112 in the South Island, and Garton oats to about 60 bushels, .which stands well against southern yields where 80 is regarded as a yery satisfactory crop. In Mr. McDonald’s first season he took 100 bushels of barley and he has harvested 66 bushels, in the bag, over 20 acres. This total excluded a large amount of waste. Wheat has not threshed very heavily, running between 30 and 40 bushels, and in Mr. McDonald’s opinion the country is not as suitable for this grain as for oats and barley. The district is ideal barley land, and he cannot see any reason why every farmer should not have from six to 10 acres for his pigs, provided that there was a threshing mill in the district. Oats was also very suitable. There is not the demand for hard feed for horses that the past knew, but there is a fairly ready sale for wheat straw for bedding and packing, and oat straw for fodder.

Another crop which the farm produces every year is linseed. Mr. McDonald saw linseed growing wild in every grass paddock and roadside in the district, and realised what its commercial possibilities were if cultivated and manured. He broadcast the seed over the surface for the past two seasons, but this year followed the drilling method advocated in the south, finding that he gained only half the usual strike, which he considers due to the fact

that the drill sows the seeds too deep for them to fight to the sur- * face. The farm has yielded about i eight hundredweight to half a ton . of dressed seed to the acre, and there

is a ready market for it at its price. New Zealand imports about 4000 tons annually from the world’s markets, and the local product has to compete with it without protection. During his residence Mr. McDonald has not disced for grain crops, his method being to plough, harrow, drill, and, a most important consideration, to invariably roll the land. Two and . a-half to three cwt of fertiliser is the average application to the acre.. He has found that oats and wheat always do better if sown I in the autumn, but he does not find this an essential for barley. Many district farmers are watching Mr. McDonald’s property with interest. Mr. McDonald has no precedent to follow on his type of country, and he has had to experiment in manure,quantity of seed and best time of the year to sow. One significant result has been already apparent: Local seeds will crop heavier than bought seeds of the same class, a fact which is remarkably evident with the linseed crop.