MILK FROM THE PLOUGH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1942, Page 4

MILK FROM THE PLOUGH

SAVES TONNAGE FOR BRITAIN'S WAR SUPPLIES. In producing 870 gallons of milk a month from only 47 acres of ploughing and grassland, a tiny farm below the Sussex Downs has shown how British agriculture can adapt itself to the war effort. Before the war Mr J. Cranfield ploughed only eight of the 47 acres of Wooltons Farm, East Chiltington, near Lewes. His 18 head of livestock included only eight cows in milk and two working horses, and he had to buy each year 10 tons of feeding stuffs and 4 tons of fertilisers. For labour he had two men and a boy. By the winter of 1941 he had increased his cattle to 30 head, with 18 milking cows, and his milk production had risen from 450 to 870 gallons monthly. At the same time purchases of feeding stuffs were reduced to 6 tons. All this without adding a single acre of land to the farm. The job was done by ploughing up another 16 acres, making the farm just half arable and half grass. Production amounted to 40 tons of silage (great reliance lias been placed on the aftermath cut) 25 tons first-class hay, 75 tons mangolds; 60 tons kale, 15 tons of pea haulm, 100 sacks of peas and oats and 30 tons potatoes. Purchased concentrates could have been still further reduced had the peas not been sold for seed. In producing three to four times as much as in pre-war years from his little farm, 65-year-old Mr Cranfield has the assistance of a son under military age and another 23 years old, temporarily released from military service, who spent four years at the East Sussex County Institute Farm. Schoolboys were called in to help plant 'the three acres of potatoes, and members of the Women’s Land Army for lifting the potatoes, and threshing the corn. A boy apprentice obtained under the Government’s scheme is now in regular employment.