RURAL LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18635, 29 April 1924, Page 9

RURAL LIFE.

THE ART OF FARMING. SCOPE FOR PIONEERING. [by our special commissioner.] No. IV, There are tribulations in rural life; the engine driving the electric light for the homestead had broken (Sown, and the house was lit with candles; but candles &nd firelight go well together; they stimulate conversation as brilliant electric arcs cannot do. I believe incandescent mantles and powerful electric globes are accountable for turning the modern family to the magazine and the novel. There would need to be a, very strong incentive to put in a long evening reading by candle-light. After several months of almost semitropical summer the crisp coolness of the Upper Waikato, with its high inland altitude, was invigorating; there was a snap and a tang in the morning air, and as soon as the sun went down one's thoughts turned to blazing logs and a cosy chair. In the daytime the air was deliciously warm, and one naturally shed collar and coat to walk about the farm; and there was always .something to do. That oil engine had to be cleaned up, and set going. I was amused at the method of setting it going. The motor-car was backed against it, tho back wheels jacked up, a tyre taken off, and a belt clipped on between wheel and engine, then the motor war. started, and the engine revolved until it warmed into action. The water-wheel, which pumps supplies from the creek 'to different paddocks for the stock, had been put out of action by the heavy floods, and an obstruction had to be cleared under feet of rushiag swirling water: then something went wrong with the milking machine, and that had to be fixed up, but these are mere details in rural life,

Providing lor the Stock. The real work on a farm is the handling of stock and crops, and I include grass among the crops, for it is. the mainstay of most Auckland farms. To provide food for hundreds or for thousands of animals; to see that the feed is put to the best account, and the stock gain the best results from it, is the art of successful farming. In this particular district where I am red clover and cowgrass grow so amazingly well that they dominate all other pasture plants, but there can be too much of a good thing. It would be almost as difficult to keep growing children well on a diet of plum pudding as to keep stock healthy on rank clover. The solution of the clover difficulty is either to sow very little of it; to sow white clover instead of the larger kinds, and to graze it so systematically that it never grows rank. Cowgrass, like paspalum, is an excellent servant, but a had master. I like walking across the farm and seeing its wonderful life, and hearing men talk farming. To be out in the open air, where one can see the sunlight and the ever-changing sky, and the widespreading landscape, makes one realise that, after all, we humans are very much tied to mother earth, and in New Zealand she is a very kindly and beautiful and bountiful mother.

A Hopeful Beginner. A young man comes into the family circle. He has a farm of 1500 acres, some 10 miles away, which ■he is breaking in largely by his own exertions. lie lives quite alone some distance from any neighbours, a bachelor in a small house which I belieje he keeps neat and orderly. He is still in the throes of pioneering when the land seems to swallow up labour and capital, and to give very little in return, but my young friend seems quite satisfied with his prospects and can see success, ahead. He has three or four hundred acres under surface-sown pasture and plenty of rough feed outside the improved area. He was telling me that he had bought forty cows in the winter for 30s apiece, and expected to sell them quite soon at £7 or £8; he also has 70 good dairy heifers in calf; they cost 25s to 30s each, and he expects to sell them at the beginning of the milking season nt about £7. There are 80 steers thriving well, and other stock, and he intends to pick up a few hundred sheep. Evidently he has got • over the hardish times and there is talk of a new house; the site has been chosen, I believe, commanding a noble view. It is on the edge of a beautiful clear creek, capable of giving water. supply and power, but ho is scornful of pumps and rams, for he happens to possess a line spring on the hill above th& house which would supply high pressure by gravitation. Need for Capital.

What infinite scope there is in this particular district for new farms and new farmers. Not one quarter of the countryside is occupied, and that which is occupied is only partly improved. Most of the settlers have too much land arid too little capital. It docs net take much use of a microscope to find that the chief lack arid the great neiid .of all partly settled or newly-settled districts is capi tal. If the State could see its way to advance money for the first breaking-iD of virgin land and for the necessary improvements needed- to bring the holding to its living wage production stage, it ■would solve the question of settling oUi virgin lands. It is all very well to talk of spoon-feeding new settlers and of the i dangers of advancing money without sub' stantial security, but I am convinced thai providing the men were well selected for their energy and probity there would be very little loss; a failure here and there perhaps, but the successes would far outbalance the failures, and rural life _ would spread into districts which are yielding nothing now but rabbits and a few other pests. # ■ # *. It is probable that on reading this someone may say: "Look what we did for the returned soldier, and look what a mess many of them have made of their affairs." 'There is a very obvious reply to this: the fact, that the revaluation • commissioners are recommending the - Government to reduce the value of the returned soldiers' farms by several million pounds shows that the State sold them land at too high a figure, and then before these men got fairly started that terrible slump in. the vtilue of farm products —and moreover, the advances made for improvements in most cases were far too small, and there was no question of selection or of organised advice and help; it was a case of root-hog or starve, and there was little to root for at the worst time.