Rural England

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 12, 13 January 1948, Page 5

Rural England

Farming Methods Far Behind N.Z. Standards Agricultural England is divided into two types, Northern England, very backward and Southern England, conservatively modern. That is the view taken by Mr J. Ensor, a New Zealander with an agricultural background who has just returned from a year’s sojourn in England.

Northerns are poor types of farmers in his opinion. Their herds are very small, usually from 14 to 25 cows, and milked by hand, thus necessitating the use of two or more dairy hands.

Due to the rugged winter experienced in this area, cows are stalled for eight or nine months of the year and are fed on dairy rations, stored roots and hay, exercising only on mild days® Bulls are also kept in special pens and are in this confined area all the year round, except for certain periods during the spring. All stock are hand-served in England. Pigs are run there purely for fattening and not for breeding and are kept in a wooden-floored pen all their lives, even when they born. Apart from the raising of cows and pigs, the main crops are sugarbeets for sale to the extraction factory, turnips and animal root crops as well as potatoes for home consumption. South More Progressive The Counties of Devon, Dorset and Norfolk are the home of mod- ; ern and progressive, English agriculture. The farm out-buildings are of concrete and are of large airy design. Milking machines are now finding their way into sheds thus replacing the old hand-milking system. Due to Britain’s financial position,

however, these machines are very hard to obtain, as the largest percentage of those manufactured are exported to the continent. Nearly every farm in this district is equipped with a tractor, the approximate cost of which is £3OO sterling complete with specially designed implements to speed up inter-changing. This area of England is intensively cultivated, and the use of artificial and natural manures is a necessity. Lime, phosphates and cover crops are the main sources of fertiliser as well as the ploughing in of the mulched straw from cow barn and pig sty. Rye grasses, Timothy and Montgomery Red clover are the predominant grasses on this rolling country. “The spring floods hit the English farmer -very badly indeed,” added Mr Ensor. “Sheep losses alone amounted to over one million, besides the loss of the spring crops. It will be a few years yet before all the damage done then, can be repaired.” Poor Housing

The farm worker’s houses in rural England are of very poor type, having no bathrooms and no water laid on, this latter having to be obtained from the village pump. Electric stoves or even coal ranges are very rare, the usual cooking arrangement consisting of an open fire over which some ir®n bars are placed to provide rests for the pots and pans. “The English farmer has a long way to go to reach a par with New Zealand standards of agriculture and farming generally,” Mr Ensor concluded.