THE USE OF METHOD ARRENGEMENT, AND OBSERVATION IN THE MANAGEMENT OF A FARM.

Waikato Times, Volume I, Issue 59, 14 September 1872, Page 2

THE USE OF METHOD ARRENGEMENT, AND OBSERVATION IN THE MANAGEMENT OF A FARM.

(From the Gaiu'-unku's Chronicle.) METHOD. With re?peet. to the method which ft man will pursue in farming, lie will probably to fi certain extent be bound by his len.sc ; and his lease, to u certain extent:, may be u safe guide, breausc it is generally drawn from experience of the tilage moat suitable to that locality. Still, 1 think, after a time landlords will grow lr.-s siringent in their leases, and, in fact, now tho covenants are seldom kept strictly, except in tlio Ift.st two rears, if a man is bound down not. to sell hay, si raw, or roots oil' a farm, he cannot hurt it much ; if he is bound to much stock per acre, he cannot hurt a farm ifM-h. Sometimes their are. covenants in a leas.' which arc very injurious to tho tenant, wit hunt, helping the landlord. In sonic leases in my neighbourhood the covenant is* inserted never to have two white straw crops in succession. Tliat is now changed for this greatly improved clause —"Not to grow (wo white straw crops in succession, unless after two root crops just preceding." Ours is a heavy wheat country. If wheat is followed by a root crop, fed off with sheep, and barley put in afterwards, the barley goes to straw, "and exhausts tho ground, without producing a good sample; whereas, barley sown on a wheat st übble is often much more productive, and id ways of a better quality. Then, with a breeding flock, we are obliged to keep back our roots till March, April, and tho first ten days of May, in order to support our lambs till the grass is ready. This land so fed olf, is ofien, if put; in with corn, in bad tilth, and too late to expect any yield ; whereas, by ploughing up the late-fed swedes, and putting in rape, or mustard, or vetches, or some other eat ellcrop, for slice]) to be fed oil' in the autumn, the cultural ion suits the season, and then it comes well, twice folded, for wheat in October and November, and that wheat followed by barley or oats. This greater latitude in tlio leases is now being introduced in deference to common sense. As a general rule, I think a man coming to a new country cannot do better than follow the system of that; country, at all events, at first lot; him look over the hedge, mid see what his neighbours are doing, and try to improve upon thai; ; but still, let him take the fanning of the district as his basis. Look how different is the cult ivation of Hampshire chalks to heavy land in Essex, for instance. In Essex, all your tackle is made to fit; a ro-turn ridge, so that "your horses may always walk in the furrow; in Hampshire no furrows, and the more your horses tread the ground the better; in fact, for wheat, avc often drive flocks of sheep over the newlysown corn to get the ground firm, and follow the plough with a pressor. It is a bad compliment to any locality for a new man coming from another country to imagine the people who have lived there all their lives know nothing about fanning, yet many a now-comer proclaims this when Tie sets at nought, all the old views of tillage, implements, and cattle. I did this to a cci-tain extent myself, and therefore I see the folly of it. I thought 1 could introduce long-woollcd" sheep, instead of the Hampshire Down ; but I soon found that the improved Hampshire Down ■was the sheep of the district and the sheep for the district. They work hard for their food, and well, and from an even distribution of lean in a fat sheep, arc always saleable. In fact , the camel is not more peculiarly fitted to be the ship of the desert, than the Hampshire Down sheep for its own locality. In the same way I tried hoeing wheat on the strong land, but the hoe flies off tho stone, and eats out the wheat quite as much as it would cut the weeds. Again, look at the Hampshire way of making the sainfoin ricks in the fields close to the roots, and then cutting out the hay and feeding the sheep in cages made of the common ash-poles of the hedge-rows. It seems to a stranger a very antiquated and wasteful way. But it is not. The stock ewe kept hungry to follow the fatting sheep is the best cleaver 1 ever saw. I knew a farmer who came from a dist ant country, who with a new-born zeal set to work to carry all his hay home, cut it into chaff, bagged it up, brought it back, and gave it to the sheep in oxen troughs. They did not eat any cleaner, because they wasted none before. ARRANGEMENT. Now, when I say a few words on arrangement in matters of detail, I speak again, I am aware, of those minutiae which, though seemingly beneath the dignify of essayists, may contribute a great deal to the successful and pleasant working of a farm. I believe very much in the " power of titles," in agricultural as well as in other things, and that the education of the fanner can not be too practical, cannot too much embrace the early stages of learning, the lower departments of knowledge—what will correspond to the catechism and primers of literary education. Let me illustrate by a very small matter. It was with us a very wet and catchy time at harvest; one man seeing Iris men stopped from cutting corn by a shower, set all hands to work to throw off the dry straw to catch the descending moisture, afterwards to draw the straw ready for thatching. The next day sets in hot, and a wheat rick was made in the afternoon, and next day thatched and safe. Another man tells his men to stand still ; that makes them dissatisfied at losing half a day. "When after a while he throws out his straw for thatching and water has to be fetched in a water-cart some distance from a pond. When his wheat ricks are finished a delay occurs in the thatching, no straw being drawn. Here are three points lost at a very important time, and a wet wheat rick as a final result, all from what might by good management have been avoided. Take another case : one man has his turnip and swede crop in half-a-dozen different fields ; another man has managed to throw his four or five course shift pretty much together. Look at the difference in the moving tackle from field to field, and after that in shifting hurdles, cages, etc., when the sheep are folding off the the roots. I pass on to the third and last head to be considered, viz :— OBSERVATION. The observant man I take to be one who thoroughly enjoys his farm, as the gardener enjoys his vinery or his greenhouse—one who spends his time on it, watching it and the plants that grow on it at all times of the day and in all seasons. We all know (and some of us in this room have heard) those admirable statistics which Mr. John Bennett Lawe3 has drawn from the experimental observations in various plots of ground, stimulated and fed with different manures. Now, what he has so well done for the public, is what each man ought, however unconsciously, to be working out evermore for himself. And that he can do without expense ; only let him, as he walks about, keep his eyes open and his mind at work. How much will accidents do to inform him ? It was but last summer I noticed a square piece in the middle of a wheat field, where the corn was a few inches shorter than the rest of the field. As the piece was about the size of a sheepfold, and the line of demarcation ran as regularly as the hurdles would, I went to the shepherd, and said, " I see such a piece looks as if the sheep had broken out from their fold when the mustard was penned for wheat last autumn." He said, " Yes, one night I suppose a strange dog must have run by the fold— for they did break out of that particular fold, and lay under a hedge in another field—and it could not have been long after I left them in the fold at sunset, for in the morning I found they liad scarcely eaten up their bait."

Wo know l,h« value of bringing a owe flock in full oh" clover ley* and folding them thick between hurdles, in well an any one, hut, it, was never hront;ht home lo me mo clearly' us by that accident. Those sheep hud been one hour in thai- fold, and 12 hours on the next; j and il will to be seen, by dill'crence, in straw and j corn, exactly ("s in Mi-. Lawcs' plots) what was 1.1 m; I value of shcepfold for com ; wherein, othcrwi.-e,- ; would have been only known n a geu<-rn.l way. II I j hud hud a funning pupil with me, 1 think that would J have taught him more thiin volumes on the name ; Hubjcct. Again, suppo.-e one of our nl.ock farmers to j divide bin lamb* find fold them in thermic field ; the ewe lambs boing for stock, w<: do not want to feed : ; I,he wether bimbs we do. I did this three years ago, nml penned them over root* Hide by side. The ewe lambs had only buy; the wethers, with only a hurd'e between, went down the same Held in parallel lines, nnd I allowed them about four Hacks per acre of oats in addition to the hay. I put Mint field in with outs in the spring, and, as near as I could reckon, there were four aucks m acre inorc on the part where the wether lambs were fed, ho that I exactly got back my four .sacks given in \'oc<\. 11' I had I'vd the whole field uilh sheep" eating outs, I should not have been able |.o Hiiy whelher the corn given had improved the crop or m>l,. It u'lis the accident which helped inc. Supposing a farmer to be, trying any top-dressing, it is id ways well to try some on a crop of which a ridge here and then; is left immanurcd : otherwise what is attributed to the manure may perhaps be due to I he season, or to the tilth with which the crop was put in. It i.s our custom to drill all our root crops, Hwedes, turnips, and mangels, with ashes and superphosphate. My custom, as my land is heavy, is to drill never lens than 100 bn.-thels of sifted ashes and three cwt. of dissolved bones. J lind by getting the dissolved bone either from Mr. Lewes or Messrs. 11. mid 'I'. I'roelor, lam never disappointed in a crop. The expense of the hone and iiblics is about 30 .an iicre. It very often happens, owing to the ashes being damp, that 'the manure drills get stopped for a few p,rds while the wed barrel delivers the seed. The iurnipsor swede* get hoed in these patches where the manure has not run the same as the rest of the field. Jii the autumn the exact value of the manure is easily estimated by taking a dozen roots from the manured and iinmaniired drills, and estimating their weight. J am inclined to think the crops would nliiml,on an average, us 15 tons per acre on the manured drills and live tons on the unrnaiuired. The average weight, of roots with manure would be as (!lb. to 21b., the hone and ashes making a seed-bed, and giving the plant a great, start in the early season of its growth. I may add I hid. I prefer oid ashes which have been exposed to a winter's wet and cold, because they are damp, which new ashes are not; and in our dry soils the damp of the, seed-hed often brings up a plant, which with dry ashes would not start till a rain. If this calculation, which is open to your criticism, be correct, as I believe it is, the cost", of the extra ten tons per acre is to be achieved at the rate of 3s. a ton. Suppose a man to have a shepherd who has tended sheep on your farm for 20 or !{() years, how much may be learned from him, or from your carter or drilhnan's experience and observation in times past? "To pick the brains and inherit the experience of such as these is the practical wnv to learn of the past and inquire of the days that are gone." Thus it is that accident often tries experiments for us, which we have not the energy to set about for ourselves. But if we observe thorn when they do occur, what matter? T have another one in my mind at this time. There is half-an-aere. of ground in the corner of one of my fields which was let as an allotment garden with some cottages for several years, and cultivated with spade husbandry with Llie rest of the field under the plough. But I can sec the boundary line to an inch—in every crop now after six years —which I suppose we should attribute partly to deep cultivation of the spade, partly to the manure, but ehielly to its having had cut ire rest for many years from cereal crop. I( land • rets (as the saving is) clover-sick by sowing clover oflener than once in eight years, does not land get •wheat-sick and barley-sick which has had a whitesi raw crop, on a low estimate, 30 times in 50 years? One can see the result ten years afterwards of where n dung-heap has stood, but I never could get any one tii tell my why it is that where a hay-rick or strawnek has stood the crop shows tho place years afterwards. Admitted that small particles of vegetable matter may fall through ; but even Avhere there has been a bottom of faggots, and everything has been cleared up, still tho elleet is evident. And it almost seems as if Ihe exclusion of air and light had the contrary ed'eet to that which we usually attribute to it. Out of this close observation arises a sort of mental arithmetic, by which conclusions may be quickly formed. And nothing is more valuable— some such habit as this in the management of a farm. The mind of the experienced men in this way is like the table of a ready-reckoner. The ot'ier day a per son said to me, " I have got a chance to supply f stable with straw. Had I better change the straw for tho manure made by that straw, even ; or ha:l ] better sell the straw at £3 per ton. and buy back the manure at 1 Is. a waggon load; I don't suppose there is much diHeveuee, it will come to much the same thing." 1 said you had belter weigh out a ton o: straw, use it in your own stable, and then load the proceeds, as rotten manure, into a waggon, nnd yon will see there is a very great dillerenee —I believe considerably more than half, which would be ■£}. 10s out of £3. 1 believe more than that even, and that

of straw at present price would come back in about a waagon and a cart, as well-rotted compost. .1 have tried it, and I have had the experience of others who have tried it, and I believe those whom I have asked put it at oven a greater difference than I do. In the same way one may think to keep mangel or carrots till the spring, and get 3s. or 4s. a ton more for them, and the inexperienced man may fancy lie has done. But take the expense of clamping, the risk of decay, and eliietly the loss in weiglit, we should admit, the earliest, sale made on the ground in the autumn, even if it was 25 per cent, less would be the most profitable. It is tune now in a lew more lines to bring this paper to a conclusion. What I have ol'.'ered has been written for plain practical men, and. as I said in the beginning, falls rather below the dignity of a club like this, which contains many men of high posit ion and great knowledge. In fact, this club is, to a certain extent, a sort of agricult urtil House of Commons, and would come within the meaning of Tennyson's expression in •' Locksley Hall." " In the Parliament of men —tlie federation of tlie world." I have endeavoured to show that, no education of colleges or of books, excellent as they are, can supercede continual habits of observation, method, and arrangement. And herein exists the answer to the often-asked question, how is it that gentlemen former's don't make money? Because they never began to learn at the bottom of the question. They are in the hands of other people; and how large a margin exists between the balance of a man who buys and sells well and one who does not- ? The book-educated man would not. hare picked out the cow offered at dairy price in Devizes market, and yet I should like to have for a fortune the money that one animal produced when Mr. Stratton's observant eye fixed upon her as the basis of a long line of illustrious shorthorns. A practical man can tell more about how sheep are doing by looking into the wool over a hurdle, than an unpractical man would by handling every sheep.