FARM WASTE

Colonist, Volume V, Issue 470, 25 April 1862, Page 4

FARM WASTE

It is not the first time we have felt it our duty to draw atteutiou to the singularly uuacoountable waste thai meets the eye of the observer on our colonial farms, and what is more singular stil), or. many of the largest and generally acknowledged best kept farms, this total absence of ai!3 l l,\-\* like rural economy continues to prevail. One would have thought that men professing to be practical agriculturists, able to read books, and possessing the advantage of living in an age vrhen the most useful practical works on agriculture can be purchased, hired, or borrowed in almost every town or in the country, would have availed thepjsolves of the wholesome advice laid down in the numerous agricultural publications of the present day ; but it would appear that iv nine cases out of ten, the valuabfe" information to be Required from these works, is either disregarded or misapplied. Many meu who have forsaken (he counter, the bench, ami the desk, to become agriculturists, do place implicit faith in these grand guides to prosperity; but they, unfortunately, wanting that practical experience which can alone make them understand the proper application of the rules laid clown for their guidance, fail to apply them advantageously. For such persons sympathy may be expressed and felt, —but for men of any practical experience, there is no room for the expression of a similar feeling. They work on in obstiuacy,—the others in ignorance. A farm is too often looked upon as a place for growing grain only, with occasionally perhaps a few potatoes. The occupier considers that when he ploughs his ground, reaps his crops, ami sells his produce, he has dove all that, as an agriculturist, is required of him ; Ms straw is burned out of the way or left in a heap to bo rotten by the rain, or blown away by the wind. The refuse giain may by chance lie picked up by fowls, if any be kept, but the iJea of keeping pigs or cows to consume the straw and waste stuff of the fatm, is not for a moment entertained. If ore euquires why these animals furm no part of the farm stock, he is told that it won't pay to grow food for them, whilst most likely the farmor has a'lowed as much sli'fivt to be destroyed, as with otJier food, would have kept up several gocd milkers, and as much waste from his garden and stubbles has perhaps taken place as would have fattened several pigs.

Nothing can bo more prr-pnaterons than to argue that any attention or lime bestowed on the most frivolous savings on a farm, can be misapplied. A farm is a p'oco on which everything that is unsalable, without exception, should be saved for the manure heap ; indeed wo quesliou that even if straw Wire selling at a fair price, it would not be better and more profitable to the farmer to let it pass in the ordinary way through his stables and cow-houses to his dung heap, to Belling it for ready cash. The agriculturist who knows his business, will not for one moment hear of time being misspent in the collection of the rcost trifling rubbish ; not a bone nor a rag, nor a weed, leaf, or straw, will be allowed to go to waste, everything must be gathered together, either to be burned for ashes, or to be cast on the general dunghill. There may be some exceptions to what we feel inclined to lay down as a genera! rule, that is, that in this country farming will not prove remunerative un'es3 cows, pigs and poultry form part of the stock. In the more elevated districts along the dividing coast rangts and on richlaud, the production of fjnuu irmy prove a }iu\ing occupation, without the adjuncts we have mimed, but even there we contend that the profits would be much increased by the contributions from the dairy, the piggery, and the hen roost. We have heard it said that neither butter nor cheese can be made here equal to that produced in Britain. This is totally untrue ; there is no country on the globe ■where better butter has been made, and no country where better cheese might be made, than in this little colony of ours. Let the farmer be possessed of a few good well-bred cows of the dairy kind, feed them on the proper proportions of sweet hay and cuten straw, sugar cane, and mangold or beat, give them plenty of water and keep tlem clean, and no artificial food that ever was grown will produce richer milk or make finer butter or cheese. The Sorghum and the Imphee which are available for about five mouths in the year as green fodder will jroduce a most wonderful effect on the quantity and quality of the lacteal secretions. The reason why a cheese tqual to our best English h not met with here, is. traceable to other causes than want of mi lie fit for its manufacture, and may be easily remedied : — but the art of dairying is not the subject we have in hand, and we must limit our remarks to the duty of economy in the dairy and the- milking yard, as well as on the farm generally. The economy we spfak of is that tigid frugality that takes care that nothing is lost or wasted ; that everything produced on the farm is converted to some profitable use. Economy in wages not unfr<?qui?ntly proves to be simple extrav; ganoe, for what will it advantage an emploper if to save j;5 of wages per annum, he hire 3 a servant, who from carelessness or neglect causes him a loss of £10 or £15. The economy of wages then con-ists in securing prudent, thrifty, and careful smarts on whom you can depend, without attaching too much consideration to the question of a round or two per annum over or under the iuling rales. The refuse of the dairy forms no unimportant item in the profile of a fum ; no food makes more delicate pork, nor affords better nourishment to fowls than milk in any state, and it is wonderful to see the wanton waste displayed in the manner of n'acing this food before the animals, even on those estab'ishments where it is used as food. Instead of being placed in vessels from which it can be swallowed cleanly, it is more often the case that the pig 3 and fowls get into the troughs bodily, and waste half as much as they eat, if not more, whereas a very trifling outlay would prevent this.

Ashes form an almost indispensable article to the farmer for many purposes, such oe for preparing beds for certain seeds, and for mixing with other seeds when these are to be sown. An ash-pit should therefore be an institution on every steading. To this spot all weeds, cleanings of ditcbe?, hedge cUppings, turf, rags, chips, bark, and everything combustible, that will not moke better manure in the dun-' pit or dunghill, should bo brought and con/umed hero, and the ashes carefully collected ai;d slowed away for use.

Dung-pits or diing-heaps do not receive that, share of attention they dest-rve, ;;o regulnv method of making the best niauure ar.d of preserving the ammonia beiug adopted. The dung-pits are decidedly preferubie to the beap3 or hills, as in the latter the manure can bo more readily trodden down, and there is less ohanco

of the volatile gases escaping. In connection with these manure heaps or pits, there should be a tank or tanks—no matter how roughly formed, —'into which the draiuings from the cowhouses, the stables, arid the milking yard should be led. This liquid will be of great value, not only for the purpose of being used as a liquid manure, but also for drenching the dung-heap or pit occasionally during the dry weather. The grand socret of improving arable laud economically, is to return to that land in the shape of manure, something equivalent to the crop out from it. The course of abstraction and addition should progress regularly every year, and tho nourishment returned should be at least equal to that abstracted by the previous crop,—but it must rest with the practical and industiious farmer to augment the supply of that nourishment to its greatest limit. To do so, Waste in the minutest of matters, is a work that must be struck out of the Agricultural vocabulary.— Melbourne Agricultural Gazette.

An Irish mile is 2240 yards ; a Scotch milo is 1984 yards; an English or statute mile 1700 yards; German 1806; Turkish 1826. Au acre is 4840 square yards, or 69 yards 1 foot 8^ inches each way. A square mile, 1763 yards each way, contains G4O acres. The human body consists of 256 bones, 9 kinds of articulations or joinings, 100 cartilages or ligaments, 400 muscles or tendons, and 100 nerves, besides blood, arteries, veins, &c.

Spurgeon on Reporters.—The Tabernacle Lecturer now begins to lose his temper, and we have received a report of one of his lectures which seeras to show that the bubblo has completely burst, and that he now defies that storm of general ridicule and indignatiou which has succeeded to his popularity. Tho lecture was on Dogs; and iv tho course of it, speaking of jackals, the reverend gentleman remarked, calling the attention of the audience to two respectabie reporters who were present,—" I dare say you often see one or two of those jackals —for jackals are not the lion's providers, but live ou the lion's scraps—men evidently out for a day or two's holiday, dressed in cloths just taken out of pawn, often emerging from a public-house with the proceeds of an obusive article written after one of my lectures —men you seldom see, and won't sco again till you see them following tup. Well,' continued the lectuier, ' I am content to be the lion, and long may I provide for the gratification, of those gentry of the press.' A man must be going to the dogs in more senses than one, who ventures upon this sort of language. Whether the jackals, who write articles about this lion of the New Cut, pawn their cloths and frequent public houses, it is noL for us to say ; but as regards reporters in general, whom Mr. Spurgeon thought it right to afuout in this way, we may say that we have some experience of even penny-a-liners, and we know them to be, generally speaking, honest, hard-working, painstaking, incorruptible men, who, though poor, have generally received the benefits both of education and of travel, and who, alike in manners and feeling, are move than the equals of Spurgeon—except, perhaps in the circumstance of Bishops not corresponding with them.— Saturday Review.

The Rev. Newman Hall.—The scene in Suirey Chapel on Monday evening was as gratifying as it was unusual. There were the working men thronging round a minister of the Gospel, eager to express their appreciation of his labors to benefit them in body, mind, and soul. The gift, a silver inkstand, with the inscription, ' Presented by the working men of London as a token of gratitude for bis efforts for their welfare,' which they tendered for his acceptance may not have been of great vnlue in the jeweller's shop, but oa Mr. Hall's table it will be past price. No man ha 3 worked more unweariedly to benefit the laboring poor among whom he liuds himself placed as a minister, —and lie has won them. He has found his way to t.heir hearts, he has put aside the repelling sacerdotalism ; he has thrown opeu his chapel for popular lectures that should be not only instructive but recreative - } he has refused to exhibit Christianity as a religion of Forbiddauce ; and ho has convinced them of his sincerity, in seeking not theirs but (hem. We are always hearing laments about the difficulty of getting at the working classes—-here is a pattern for the do-noihing grumblers.— Pamot,

The Solack of a Pipe.—The following is a Highland poaober's opinion of tobacco, while watching the bo;ly of a deer he had shot:— ' Moiiy a lonesome sentry hae I keepit owre the body o' a gude beast after I li u d wroght sair to get "him. Sac lang as their was only daylight, I wadnae be fit sac muckia as attempt to move him, no being unco wullin to tak the chance of the foresters getting a gliff at either him or me, and sac, a' I could do was just to drag him into the shelter o' some bealach, or in below some big staae, and then wear away the time wi' the pipe. Eh ! man ! the pipe's a gruun friend to puir fowk I'd far shuuuer be waunting the whiskey nor the tobacoo; but, deed, tho' I'm nae teetotaller, Fin nae that sair on the whiskey; for a gude drink o' milk 'i'U make a man wholesome nor any spirits—but, faith an' troth, I could nae carry onava' without the pipe ! —it 'ill put by the waut o' anything to eat, what its ablins no easy to be had—and, may be, only a siugle ac piece o' cake, or bannock, atweon yersel and the poordowg ! Aweel then, at sic nntriu times, I gics the bread meal to the wearit dumb animal, an then I sit and smoke a pondering owre v' the days and nichta I've passed in tracking sic shy, gleg-e'e animals as the aiu that lies cauld now beside me.'

Coffee. —It is not generally known that coffee which has been beaten, is better than that which has been ground. Such, however, is the fact; and in his brief article on the subject, Savarin gives what be considers the reasons for the difference. As be remarks, a mere decoctiou of green coffee is a most insipid drink, but carbonization developes tho aroma, and an oil, which is the peculiarity of the coffee we drink. He agrees with other writers that the Turks excel iv this. They employ no mills, hut beat the berry with wooden pestles in morters. When long used, the pestles become precious and bring great prices. He determined by actual experiment which of the two methods was tho best- lie burned carefully a pound of good Mocha, and separated it into two equal portions. The one was passed through the mill— the other beaten after tho Turkish fashion in the mortar. Ho made coffee of euch, and pouring on au equal weight of boiling water, he treated them both precisely alike. He tasted the coffee hiniayU', and caused other competent judges to do so. The unanimous opinion was, thai coffee beaten in the mortar was far better than that ground iv the mill.— English Paper. Some curious anecdotes have been preserved of Briudley's appearance as a witness on. Caual Bills before Parliament. When asked, on. one

occasion, to produce a drawing of an intended bridge, he replied that be had no plan of it on paper, but be would illustrate it by a model. He went out and bought a large cheese, which ha brought iuto the room and cut it into two equal parts, saying ' Here is my model.1 The two halves of the oheese represented the semicircular arches of his bridge ; and by laying over them some long rectangular object he could thus readily communicate to the committee the position of the river flowiug under* neath and the canal passing over it. On another occasion, when giving his evidence, he spoko so frequently about 'puddling,' describing its uses and advantages, that some of ihe members expressed a desire to know what this extraordinary mixture was that could bo applied to so many and important purposes. Preferring a practical illustration to a verbal description. Brindley caused a mass of day to be brought iuto tbe committee-room, and moulding it in its raw untempered state into the form of a trough, be poured into it some water, which speedily ran through an.) disappeared. He theu worked the clay up with water to imitate the process of puddling, and again formed it iuio a trough, filled it with water, which was now held in without a particle of leakage. ' Thus it is,' said Brindley, f that I form a watertight trunk to cany water over rivets ami valleys, wherever they cross the path of the oanal.' On another occasion, when Brindley was giving evidence before a committee of the House of Peera as to the lockage of his proposed canal, one of their lordships asked him, ' But what ia a lock ?' on which the engineer took a piece of chalk from bis pocket and proceeded to explain it by means of a diagram which he drew upon the floor, and made the matter clear at ouce.'