SETTLERS FROM ULSTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 8

SETTLERS FROM ULSTER

FARMER’S LARGE FAMILY EXPERIENCES IN IRELAND. Au Ulster farmer, his wife, and eight children. —a .family of the settler type the country needs —arrived at Auckland, by the Remuera from Southampton on Sunday. They are Air and Airs A. T. Bell and family, of Ardcumber, Cooktown, County Tyrone. Ulster. Finding the cost of living high and prices for the products of their 42-acres mixed farm low, they decided to try their fortunes in New Zealand. After gaining experience on a farm at Waiuku, they hope to later again engage in farming on their own account. They will proceed to Waiuku to-day. Under the Empire Settlement Scheme the total cost of the family's passage was only £22. All of the children —four boys and four girls—whose ages range from live to nearly sixteen years—have been thoroughly accustomed to life on the land, with the rigours attendant upon it in a climate which is very cold in the winter and usually for part of the spring. When farming in Ireland the Bells supplied cream from their dairy herd, to factory and grew as si/le-lincs potatoes and linen flax, but they state that the returns were too low compared with the cost of living. Household butter, in fact, was selling at a shilling a pound. The flax market fluctuated greatly. For instance, two years ago the Bells’ five acres of flax realised 24s a stone, but last year the quotation was as low as 14s 6d. Its culture meant a considerable amount of labour, since it had to be sown each spring—about April —and the crop reaped in August, the method employed being to pull the plants out by the roots.