FARM, GARDEN AND ORCHARD NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 3469, 22 September 1894, Page 3

FARM, GARDEN AND ORCHARD NOTES.

Bacon Cueing : A Victokian Plan.— Mr Edward Baker, of Lancefleld, Victoria, in a lecture on swine recently, before the West Bourke Agricultural Society, in regard to the curing of bacon, stated that "the pig, when dressed, (should bo hung up until thoroughly cold. A large 3owt or 4cwt pig would tiike 48 hours before cold, If not cold it will not take the salt well, Cut the pig up, rub well with salt, let the brine ruu off; the following day well rub with the following mixture; 41b salt, lib dark sugar or treacle, and 2oz saltpetre. Turn the flitches every day; after rubbing them well put the top one at the bottom, adding nwre of the mixture as required; all brino must bo allowed to drain off. A pig of 150lb weight ought to bo cured Well in threa weeks, If bams are taken off, make sufficient brine to float an egg of the above mixture to cover them well. Take large hams out of pickle every day, and rub the same as bacon and . return them to the pickle; they will be cured in from four to five weeks. When flitches are cured, wash and dry them, hang them up to be smoked; the same with hams,"—Australasian. Is Dairying Profitable ?-' The question "Is Dairying Profitable ?" is" says the Australasian of a late date, t( frequently askod by. farmery and not without some sbow of reason, considering the low price ruling for milk. At this junoture farmers will do well to address themselves to the following questions Does your dairy herd pay you, and how much? What is your present system of dealing with the milk ? What is its cost in time, labour, and wear? What is its trying, burdensome, and objectionable features? Are you dairying for profit, and do you wish,to increase this profit ? With a view to increasing the profit,/ Mr Thomas Jeffrey, Broadford, carefully thought the matter out, and' purchased a ])e Laval Alpha B hand separator, and' states in a letter just to hand: " ,fn e Alpha B should be called the dairyman's frieud, as it is such a perfect skimmer, so easy to work, and so readily kept clean. It takes up a trifling space, aud is the most satisfactory way of dealing with the milk,- and it only takes six or seven quarts of milk to the pound of butter. The fkim milk is fed to the pigs and calves, and it being fresh and sweet they enjoy it and thrive wonderfully well." A Core for Milk Fuver.—A mach respected correspondent at Hurleyville sends,us the following cure for this distressing omplaint. /He says The following I have just discovered for the pre* yention : and cure fori milk fever,: and which will prove a great .benefit to dairymen along this coast, For seven years I bad a cow in my possession, subject after calving to milk fever, Having made a careful study to gain a cure, I ha?e found this year a remedy, for the above, which is of the simplest nature. To those who havecows and know them to be subject to milk fever, the following I have proved to be a definite cure. Three days prior to her calving dissolve from half to one pound of Epsom salts into about 5 pints pf warm water, constantly watbh her until she has calved. Immediately the calf is dropped take one aud a half pounds pf fine salt and sprinkle it on the calf at intervals, giving her time to consume each sprinkling. The cow at this time licks her.calf, by so doing takes the salt unnoticed. After this is accomplished, stand a vessel of water close by her (spring or well) that she may drink a portion, if not all the water at her leisure. Repeat the supply as often as possible—the more she drinks the less danger of the fever attacking her, Acting on these instructions the foregoing will,if attended to in time, prove successful in all such cases as the one referred to.— Exchange, A Too Plentiful Harvest,—The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph writes" It seems well-nigh incredible that a people who, two years ago, were in the throes of a famine, and publicly offered ,up prayers to heaven for an abundant harvest, should be now concerting measures for the purpose of counteracting the effects of the wishedfor abundance. But it is none the less true; and, stranger still, some organs of the press, in reply to the question, •'Should the corn be reaped ?■" have deliberately given it as their opinion that " for numerous districts it. would.be advisable to salve this problem in the negative," Nay, more, it now appears that many landowners refused last year to gather in the harvest-, and are determined not' to remove it this year either. One landlord, for instance, who owns a large estate near Odessa, and whose facilities for export are therefore exceptionally numerous, foreseeing the fall, of prices, purchased 1000 sheep and unhesitatingly turned them into his fields of wheat. He is said to be *0 satisfied with the result that he means to do likewise now that a further fall in prices is probable. The Odessa Novosti, a journal which is usually very, well informed upon agricultural questions, ha 3 published a series' of articles to show that to gather in the harvest this year would be tantamount to throw-

iug good money after bad, for it can only be done at a heavy loss to farmers. A ' pod (361b) of barley, for instance, when it reaches the port of Nikolaiff from the neighbouring Government of Poltava, posts the producer 36| copecks, whereas the market price is ac.present 3f copecks, and is bound to become less as soon as the abundance of this year's harvest is generally known," The Farmer in the Old World and iv the New.—Professor Long, in a very interesting articls in a recent number of the North British. Agriculturist, contrasts the life of the English farmer with that i bis Canadian confrere. ; The English farmer, the professor sap, cultivates • the wil in the land of his birth—a land with

an ancient (some people say jjlorions) history, Hoisamon? bis friends. The comforts of life urc within his renoh—at his very door. Labour is ehenp and plentiful. His lift) is a comparatively easy one, and if he has no sentimental views upon liberty and independence be ma) pass his days in comparative peace and quietness. The life of the Canadian farmer, on the other haud, is associated with labour and liberty, hardship and independence. The payment of rent and taxes, and the restrictions imposed by the landlord, are replaced by absolute ownership of the soil. We might well say the same of the New Zealand farmer, His life, too, is associated wWi labour and liberty, and his independence is often bought at the expense of a good deal of hardship. But that same feeling of independence is worth all the toil and hardship. Compared with the life of the New Zealand farmer who owns the soil he tills, the life of the average English farmer is that of a serf, fiven if freedom and independence are bought with much toil and travail of spirit, the price is not too great. The sasred word "home'' seems never so sacred as when we mortals feel that that home is our own, There are many small landowiers who would prefer to toil year in and year out on their own allotment to working for wages for an employer. The yeoman spirit can best be cultivated by the freehold farmer,

How Bimetallism Affects the Farmer.—Mr Everett, M.P., before the Royal Commission on bimetallism rp. cently, made out a good case for his side. He is himself a farmer, owning 374 acres of good mixed land in East Anglia, which has been owned by his family for about 150 years. Up till 1879 Mr Everett said he could make: 10 per cent, per annum off his farm, and could have let at £3 per acre. Now he could not get 30s per acre for it. The state of matters in Suffolk he characterised as frightful. Great numbers of farmers-honest, skilful, and careful iren, who had bought farms with the proceeds of long-continued toil—are ruined, and this deplorable state of affairs he attributes to the change in the value of money brought about by recent legislation in Europe and the United States. He traced the history of agriculture from 1492, when America was discovered, and the opening of the mines of Potosi in 1856, until 1879. Till the latter year the agriculture of Great Britain could look back on the longest period of uninterrupted prosperity of the century. This wasthe period following the repeal of the corn laws. But the evii days dawned in 1879, when the nations began a war of legislation against sijvar, which naturally led to the protection of gold. The precious metal thus increased in value, and the agricultural products kept exchanging for less and less of the precious money. Mr Everett contended that 66 sovereigns to-day would buy as many commodities as 100 sovereigns would have done from 20 to 25 years ago. The average value of one quarter each of oats, wheat, and barley added together for the 22 years up till 1819 was 158s 6d between that date and 1846 the same quantity was worth 112s 9d; from 1846 to 1879 they were worth Ills sd; but from 1879, the period in which gold has been protected at the expense of silver, the price of the quantity of grain before wa« only 76« 3d! The figures quoted' are sufficiently striking to show what a return to bimetallism, if some practicable means could be devised, would mean for the agricultural industry the world over.

Benefits -of Subsoiling.—Subsoiling is an immense advantage to land with a " hard pari" of retentive day just below the top soil., In conjunction with any system of underdrainage it has excellent effects, but without any draining whatever it relieves the surface more quickly of surplus rainwater and permits that surplus moisture to soak downward as a store for summer uae in place of having to be tardily evaporated, which process necessarily keeps the soil very cold and backward for growth,' I observe a query in one of the British firming papers in which a young farmer writes to ask the best way of breaking the hard "ploughpanwhich underlies his surface soil. I need scarcely explain that the ploughman referred to is the stiff and solid cake or layer of clay in stiff soils, caused by the treading of the horses, year after year, in ploughing the top soil, and partly also by the sliding along of the English plough sole plates when there is no wheel behind to carry the weight of the body of the plough. In soire soils this hard pan is as impervious to the penetration of moisture as a layer of cement, and in wet weather the top soil lying upon this pan is just like a batter-pudding. Then when dry it cakes and forms into adamant, so that heavy clay without draining or subsoiling requires weather made to order—not too wet nor too dry-in order to allow of its being tilled with any pleasure or profit. With reference to the British farmer's query as to the best way of breaking the plough pan, it is an absurd question, because it admits of only one answernamely, subsoiling, and a man who re-quires-to be told that should not write himself down a farmer. Of course a very deep ploughing would break up the pau, but then the sour clay thus turned up would prow little or no thing until it had lain a twelvemonth's fallow. When the digging ploughs first came in, a few years ago, I know that many farmers made a great mistake in turning up a deep furrow, thus bringing a lot of sour, cold clay to the top and burying the top. soil about Ift deep, where it was of no use. Such a proceeding may answer at the beginning of a very frosty winter, which would crumble down and sweeten the clay, but in any cass it is inadvisable to turn up more than an inch or two of new soil at once.