FARM JOTTINGS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15308, 5 June 1922, Page 8

FARM JOTTINGS.

ITEMS OF INTEREST. Mr William Hamilton, who has been farming in the Whenuakiti district for many years has retired. He has gone to Auckland en route for Fiji, where he intends to commence business. Four of Mr Hamilton’s sons are taking over the property. The Levin Dairy Company is paying out Is 2d per lb for its April supply of butter-fat. « At a meeting of farmers at Tauranga it was decided to form a Jersey Breeders Club to be known as the Bay of Plenty Jersey Club. Mr W. T, London was elected president.

At a meeting of the Thames 'Valley Jersey Club held recently at Paeroa, the president, Mr W. J. Hall, being in the chair, it was decided to make representations at the annual meeting of the Jersey Cattle Breeders Association with the view of having more judges of Jersey cattle in the South Auckland district. “I know I worked for less last year than I worked for when I started, and that was 13s a week and my tucker,’- remarked a well known farmer at a county council meeting in the Waikato when the question of an increase in the wages of a youthful employee was being considered. The lamb season which has 1 just closed has been noteworthy for lack of quality, due primarily to excessive moisture in the grass. At first the quality was not so bad, but later the lambs were the worst on record, having no weight in them at all. —Wairarapa Age. A correspondent writes to the Manawatu Times: —Mr Poison and the few live men on the Farmers’ Union should welcome the diversion of the dairy farmers as a means of recharging their batteries. There is nothing so electrifying as a well-con-ducted row. A murderous squabble like that in Ireland merely nauseates the people. A pioneer farmer, now living in Palmerston North, speaking of the slump of 40 years'ago, says: “A very important difference in the present condition is that of inflated land values. Then, we soon got back to normal, by a natural adjustment of wages and prices. Land was valued at the actual work which had been put iinto it, and the labourer had no grudge against life which gave what he earned. Now I am unable to see a solution, because land ‘values,’ mortgages,' interest and labour malaria are all dead against progress, or a return to normal conditions.”

Regulations under the Land Transfer Act, 1915, have been gazetted, prescribing the payment, as from July 1 next, the following fees for checking plans to be deposited in the Land Registry Offices: —(a) For each £IOOO or part of £IOOO of the value of the land (including improvements) comprised in any plan of survey, ss; (b) for any plan not being a plan of survey, ss. EARLY LAMBS. A new record for (Palmerston North and surrounding districts has been created by the birth of five Romney stud lambs on Mr. S. R. Lancaster’s Whakaronga property. This is extraordinarily early in the season, and it is interesting ■tJo recall that last year the first lambs dropped in the district were reported from the farm of Mr. D. Collis, of Kairanga, who has frequently set the record in this connection. Mr. Collis said that this was the earliest time in the history of the district for lambs to appear. He himself expected to have some lambs on hand in less than a month’s time but this would be early and no criterion as to when the lambing season would set in. Indications were, he remarked, that this year it would not take place until about the middle of July.