KELSO.

Otago Witness, Issue 1843, 18 March 1887, Page 16

KELSO.

March 14.—The past few weeks have been busy ones ie this district, and a considerable , amount of work in the reaping line has been done in an incredibly short space of time. The rattle of the self-binder has now ceased for the year and farmers all round are busy securing their crops in the stack or in other cases threshing from the stook. A number of new binders were this season imported into the district, and it was no unusual sight to see two, three, and even five binders at work in a field. The large 'number, of new machines bear the names of M'Cormick, Wood, Deering, and Osborne. A new machine manufactured by the first-named make almost entirely of steel was this year worked on the Greenvale station, and it is reported to be ahead of anything yet tried in the district. From the crop that has already been threshed it is evident that the yield per acre will not be nearly so good as what was anticipated, and many have already been disappointed with the result of the threshing. In many cases, notwithstanding an early harvest, rust and smut have been plentiful, and these have damaged not only the sample but also the yield of oats. Several truck loads of oats from Greenvale have already been sold in Dunedin, and more are leaving for town daily. Probably there never were more oats grown in the dietrict than is the case this season —one result of the cropping system. On the' Greenvale station alone close upon 100,000 bushels of oats have been grown, almost entirely under the cropping system, the owners of the land receiving one-fourth of the produce.