Farm and Garden.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 11 August 1904, Page 6

Farm and Garden.

ORIGINAL ARTICLES.

SUCCESSFUL FABMING.

districts and fWjffi) many new farms are usually developei bj raiping grain crops, and when the grain growing is fixed the farmer finds it exceedingly difficult to change to stock farming 5 and it is a fact that the change is rarely made until the natural lawa demand it. Even then the farmer's first effort is to dodge the i'dßue by resortisg to a more or lass carefally planned system of rotation and artificial fertilisers, or leaving exhausted the land he rjaits it, and travels on to other districts and repeats the same process, Bat thoße who give more diligent heed to the laws of nature, grow some leguminous crops acd eecuie pome ttock, in order tc profitably oonvert tbem into beef, pork, mntton or butter. There is no other way wheieby the land owner can successfully withstand the encroaching dangers of the impoverishment of the soil. If he will not heed the warning of waning fertility sooner or later he will pay the penalty, become a wanderer and eventually seek employment from one who has given more diligent heed to the laws of nature It is very eesential that the farmer thould know that it is not practicable to maintain fertility without live Btock. That is amply proved by the f &:£ that only in those districts where live stock is kept is the land as rich and productive as in former years. The use of commercial fertilisers, the growing of legumes and the taming under of green crops are helpful for a few years, but tacsa merely delay the inevitable loss of fertility in the fields in which they are used. If the farmer could be made to realise how much more steady the profit ia in meat and milk tban it iB in corn and wheat—how much batter corn pays in cattle, hogs and sheep than when sold to the grain buyer—a new and brighter time would come most spsedily, and with a promise of reward berond comparison. There are some people of advanced agricultural thought who recognise the value of stock and crop production, and the relation of live stock to the maintenance of fertility, combined with a rotation of crops.

The farmer will grow live stock, then, because Booser or later he will bo compalled to do so. It is essential to th« maintenance of soil fertility, a,vA therefore essential for profitable crop pro I action. The farmer will not so completely exhaust his land that it cannot be restored by leguminous crops and live steak, hut available fertility will is the ead reward only the Btock grower. There ars fc«v? successful men who are keeping up their farm through the production of beef, pork and mutton. They have learned that it ia vaßtly more profitable to return to their land the nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, by feeding their crops on the farm, tban to add to the vast amount which is anEually flawing away from them by the sa'e of corn, oats, wheat and other crops. The farmer who works in the line of meat production is not oaly improving his lands asd fitting it to grow larger crops in the future, hut also he has customers for the crops which he may grow—customers which, if handled with care and thought, will turn over to him not only the market price of his grain, but often a large profit in addition—and it is found that by devoting more time to the cow and less in the corn field will be very profitable. In the 01-Jer dairy ccmmuaities the lesson has boon learned. A record of farming operations in some dairy districts furnishes a strikisg object lesson of the value to agriculture of & wise system of farm management based on the threefold idea of maintaining soil fertility. Through tbe growing of euch crops, largely nitrogen storing legumes, as furnish the best ration for the dairy herd, the manure will maintain the fertility which, in a large measure, determines the yiold of crops in the future. The largest yield must be grown to iisure the greatest profit. The cost of producing fifty or sixty bushels of corn on rich soil is little more than the production of twenty bushels. There is no profit ia twenty bushels, but there is a good profit in sixty bushels. That suffices to emphasise the reisoa why the progressive dairy farmer in soma districts is increasing his capital by placing stock os his land and not by tbe land itself.