For Farm Boys

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 3, 23 October 1931, Page 3

For Farm Boys

The home project club movement is making rapid progress in South Australia. The members of the clubs are being taught, through lectures and demonstrations, how to carry on profitably the sidelines and work of their parents on the land.

The members of the clubs are schoolchildren in towns throughout South Australia. Some are well established and are working under the guidance of both teachers and club officials. In the older settled districts the clubs have been grouped together into associations, governed by an executive committee. This body comprises teachers of the combined schools and one representative drawn from the project leaders of each club, and they meet once a year and outline the programme of lectures and demonstrations to be given to project workers. There are five associations and others are projected and

will be formed when everything is ready.

The clubs are not only educative along practical lines, but bring a financial profit. The project workers are all volunteers and as a result are all triers. The project leaders are also voluntary and consequently enthusiastic in their efforts to help the children. The members earn while they learn, and in doing so become deeply interested in rural occupations and in many cases acquire vested interests in the home farm and in the business of their fathers. The fathers are finding it easier to keep the boys interested at home on the land, and the movement will do much to stop the drift of the best students to the city.

The principal projects worked are : Vegetable growing for the home. This has proved valuable in cases of unemployment of the parent. Flower growing has also been remunerative and fruit growing has engaged many boys and girlsi who have made good profit. Domestic arts, such as jam, jelly, sauce and pickle making, have proved both useful and profitable and many girls have taken on the bottling of fruits and vegetables, and sweet making. The rearing of lambs and the studying of sheep and wool have occupied the attention of many thoughtful boys and the rearing of a heifer calf has proved beneficial to others. Some children have purchased a cow from their parents and have made the care and study of it their hobby.

The Jersey cow seems to flourish even in the somewhat rigorous winter climate of Southland. A pedigree Jersey heifer there, Crofton Emma, commencing her Government semiofficial test at the very tender age of one year produced 5361bs of butterfat, a record for her age for the province. She is the property of Mr. A. Crowe, Makarewa. A deal for the purchase of over 200 head of purebred beef Shorthorns in Scotland was recently completed by agents of the Soviet Government of Russia, who purchased also about an equal number of Herefords from English breeders. The Shorthorn bulls are destined for immediate use in the village herds of Northern Russia.