FARMING NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, 15 March 1922, Page 7

FARMING NOTES.

The new award relating to the Otago and Southland harvest hands, threshing-mill hands, and chaffcutters provides a wage of 19d per hour and found, with a bonus of 3d an hour. The Arbitration Court, in a memorandum, explains that is has settled the wages on the basis of the recent North Canterbury award. Mr J. B. Morrett, secretary of the New Zealand Poultry Association, told the delegates that he knew a girl in Christchurch who left school with a preference for poultry keeping. With this in mind, she borrowed £lOO from 'her father, bought some fowls, an.i at the end of a couple of /ears was making £3 a week clear. A Kumeroa farmer who dispensed with his dairy herd at the beginning of the season, cut about 30 acres of clover for hay. The crop averaged about 2f tons to the acre, and he has orders from different parts of the North Island for about 50 tons at :t good figure. The Westmere Co-operative Dairy Company is advised that its consignment of cheese shipped per Matakana has sold at 86s to 92s per cwt. for v/hite and 97s to 101 s for coloured. Based on an average all round of 94s this returns lOd per lb of cheese. Allowing 4d per lb for all costs ef manufacture, freight and London charges, reduced the return to 6d per lb of butter-fat on a yield of 2.64 lbs of cheese to one of butter fat. The Levin “Chronicle” says:— Owing to the falling milk supply, the output at the Kuku dairy factory has dropped from 47 cheeses daily to 27. Decently the grade points for this factory's produce touched 94 and the level has been maintained at nearly that point. The last shipment brought 100/. Speaking at the opening of the Normanby Show, Taranaki, Mr A. Lees referred to the fact that the country was now suffering from a slump as the aftermath of the land boom. During that boom land had soared up to very high values. Land was only worth what it would produce, and with dairy produce at Is 4d per lb. it was not worth within £6O or £7O per acre, as compared with when prices for dairy produce were high It would, however, take some time before they could get a readjustment of land values, and meanwhile it would be necessary to produce as much as possible out cf the land by smaller holdings and more intensive cultivation. In this direction he considered horticultural shows did a lot of good, as the competitions brought farmers together, and by comparing notes on the exhibits they could gain a lot of information-