A BETTER STYLE OF FARMING.

North Otago Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2081, 3 January 1879, Page 2 (Supplement)

A BETTER STYLE OF FARMING.

(" New Zealand Country Journal.") The following paper " On a Better Style of Farming," was read to the Courtenay Farmers' Club, by Mr T. H. Anson, on the3lstof July, 1878. Gentlemen,— The subject I have chosen to give you a paper upon is a very large and important one for a farming com munity, and aa farmers generally have ft diversity of ideas and opinions on the farming of their lands, it struck me as a •abject likely to cause a lively dwcu«sion amongst us, thereby tending to promote and diffuse a higher knowledge of the way to farm our properties to the best advantage, on some systematic principle, and not on the happy-go-lucky style which some of us have hitherto had recourse to, feeling satisfied in my own mind, that the time has arrived when we should recognize some proper rotation of crops. The value of land has so much increased, and our inability to obtain rural lands contiguous to our faims curtailing, to a aertain extent, the enlargement of our freeholds, it behoves those of us holding moderate-sized freeholds to follow out some better system, to make us get a larger return from a smaller area of ground, as •.veil ai the object of keeping our farms in good heart lor either growing grain or grass. . Depend upon it that the secret of good farming is to put as much into the ground -as is taken out. The system of taking two consecutive grain crops after grass should be avoided ; and once we get our farm* into a proper working system, we should have no occasion for this. Some rotation as the following, to my mind, would be suitable for those farms already cropped and sown down to grass : — Say, for txample, a man purchases 200 acres as grass land ; we will divide it into four fifties; probably occupying late 'in the autumn, he would plough up, the first year, No. 1 fifty acres, and put it into wheat ; No. 2 fifty acres would go into turnip. The second year, No. 2 fifty acres which was under turnip, would g.) into grain. No. 1 titty acres, which was i n grain the first jear, now will come into rape or any other good food -producer, or could be sown down, half for spring feed for sheep, and the other half in winter roots. The third year, No. I fifty acres comes again in for grain, but little impoverished, and in better heart to return to its owner a better value than if it had been consecutively cropped, thence to be sown down to permanent grass in the autumn or early spring ; and it then hecomes No. 2 fifty acres to no into green food, and so on until your No- 4 fifty acres comes round into ciopping, and No. 1 fifty acres is again required to follow out the rotation. This system gives 100 acres of pasture, oO acres of roots or green food and 50 acres in grain, annually. Every fourth year the land would come round in the rotation mentioned by me. There are some, perhaps, who would find it both in - convenient and difficult to work out such a system. The small area of 50 acres out of 200 annually in crop wtfbld be objectionable to those requiring a larger return than could be obtained off so small an acreage, but it must be added at a corresponding sacrifice of the fertility of their land ; or after having cropped their land to their own satisfaction, sow it down to grass, to lay for some years in an impoverished condition, growing only a small amount of herbage, to be again broken up and undergo the same ruinous process. In farming, I quite admit it is impossible to make a hard and fast rule, but I do maintain we should have, some recognised principle to work upon, though some of us may have a deficient metho'l of adopting that principle. The experiences of some farmers are quite at variance with that of others ; for instance, a farmer may skim up his grass lea in the summer, cross plough, and sow his wheat in the winter ; his neighbor in the adjoining paddock may •ow his wheat at the same time on the first furrow, the result, as has come under my own observation, in some seasons being in favor of the latter, the former being certainly the most reliable and less risky. No doubt the condition of the laud, atmospheric changes, extremes of dry and wet, all combine to have a certain influence beneficially or otherwise, when the circumstances are favorable to those conditions, produciug results opposite to what might .naturally be expected. Mr Muiphy, m a valuable paper which appeared in the March number of the " New ZeaUnd Country Journal," recommends the four field or Norfolk system, with modifications suitable to colonial requirements — halt the arable land under green crops, and the other half in corn ; for example, he states we have turnips, barley, clover and wheat ; the second year, barley, clover, wheat, and turnips, and so on alternating each year. The modifications of this system, he points out, that would be advantageous here is, that a portion of the farm be kept continually in pasture, and after a crop of turnips, grass and clover might be sown and allowed to remain down four years, thi remainder would be kept in cultivation, and two crops of grain taken in succession. Although I quite coincide with Mr Murphy's views as far as the advantages to be gained by the adoption of some system of rotation, such as the modified Norfolk, still I cannot hold that it is wise to take two successive grain crops running from grass land ; economy and expediency may allow it, but the laws of nature and science are averse to it. One of the disadvantages of a young country is the expense and difficulty of being able to procure manure to act as a fertiliser to our land, and until we can utilize a system of manuring our farms, comparatively speaking, inexpensively, we ought to make that most useful animal — the sheep— do tjje work by some such system, as has been enumerated by me ; which gives before each graiu crop, a green crop to be fed off by sheep. While on the subject of manure, some of us sadly neglect what ini^ht be made a moat valuable adjunct to our farms, viz., the conversion of our straw into manure. Many of us still have recourse to the bar- i barous system of burning our straw stacks, instead of placing them in a conveniently arranged stackyard, and with the aid of a few turnips or mangolds, fattening a few head of cattle, thereby converting what otherwise would be a waste into a valuable commodity. And, surely, if all the profit attached to the fattening, wintering, and conversion of the straw was only balanced by the manure thus made, we should find the profit in our next crop, whether of grain or roots. The time has now arrived when a better style of farming will take the place of the han.d-to-inouth and slovenly, and those who have watched the psogress of this province in agriculture, will have noticed the change for the better, by the more careful farming, the growing of winter *j»ots, -the aicely kept farms, -and.- .well .abeUered homesteads, standing out in cloßt

f>roximi'y to ench other on thin once desoatc plain. Every farmer should have n comfortably thatched shed for wintering stock. Inexpensive sheds erected in a stackyard, where most of the stacks ought to be placed, would well repay him for the trouble by the shelter afforded, especially in the case of fattening animals. Half the battle in lattenintr any kind of stock, is keeping them warm and well sheltered during winter. And why is it that by warmth an animal consumes less, and puts on more fleah ? because in proportion to the temperature which an animal has to keep up, or rather in proportion to the degree of" cold to which it is exposed, will be the loss of the materials consumed in keeping up the animal heat. Therefore warmth is equivalent to food, and it is of immense practical importance to our pockets, cither in fattening or wintering young stock, that we keep them warm and sheltered. A man to be a good farmer must also look to the quality ol the stock he possesses, whether it h horses, cattle, sheep orT>ig*, for quality is always to be preferred to quantity. A good crossbred sheep well kept, will clip us seven or eight pounds of wool, and is as easily kept as one that will only produce half the amount ; but let ua beware of the evils of over-stockin?, and keep only as many as can be well kept. The seeding down of our lands to permanent pasture U another most important subject, and I can only give you a few rough ideas of mv own. Hitherto, the most of our lands seem to have been sown down with more rye-grass than anything eUc, much to the detriment of our pastures, which, exceut in the spring, do not show the amonnt of feed expected of them, and in summer and autumn become burnt up, enjotised, and dangerous to keep stock on. Expeiience in this matter is already opening the eyes of man}' to the fact, that we have been sowing too much ryegrass, and not enough clovers. Ryegrass has lieen sown to tho exteut of two bushels to 3 bushels to the acre, and perhaps a few pounds of clover added to this, has been the usual practice. The very fact that ryegrabs requires the same constituent elements as the wheat plant, ought to make us tardy of sowing too largely, and pay more attention to the clovers; as a means of both giving us more pasture, as well as reproducing the wasted elements, taken out of our land by grain growing. In conclusion my object in the first portion of this paper have been realised, if it in any way leads and encourages us in the ndoption of some systematic principle in the farming of our lands. We shall then have no occasion to fear that when all the virgin soil in this vast province has yielded her first fruits, that New Zealand will not maintain her position as one of the most productive of the grain growing countries of the nations of the earth.