STOCKING FERN COUNTRY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1258, 13 October 1911, Page 8

STOCKING FERN COUNTRY.

HOW TO KEEP THE GROWTH DOWN. After crossing the "Mangahao by tho new bridge, writes our travelling correspondent, the road ascends to a plateau overlooking the river. This bridge lias proved of great use to iho settler?, as on account of the usual swiftness of tho current at the ford, and.tho rapid rise of the water when' heavy rain has fallen in the high ranges not many miles away, it was often impossible to attempt the crossing without much danger. ... Biding up tho hill over tho range dividing this part from the ..Mangamaire side, the country is rolliii" sheep country. It seems a good deal inclined ta go back into fern, and it appears.as if sufficient cattle havo not been kept to cops: with the fern. Anropos of fern, I remember having a conversation with tho lalo-Mr. J. Peat, at Omnranui, his station nenr Maxwelltown'. 1 had just before :thatbeen at his 'run up'the-Waitotara River on the Makakaho .Road, and said to„him that' his new. country seemed, inclined-to run to fern: 'He said "that'was so, .but that it was mostly a question of propei;lyas.toclcing. .Ho said that' a certain .face .which he mentioned, had nothing but'heavy fern six feet high. Twelve months previously, and at the time x'saw it, it was.clear. Another'thing .he told mo'was that he had felt considerable alarm at tho way in which the fern took posvssion when the bush was down. He added that ho had been speaking to tho' late Mr. M'Hardy, of Blackhead Station, about it. This gentleman said: "Don't worry about it I used to think the same in the early days. When we were breaking 'n Blackhead, we thought the fern would be our ruin, and now I 'should-be glad,to have a few acres of that very fern back again for tho cattle' to nibble in tho winter." The usual practice is to .burn off the standing fern in early autumn or the arid of. summer, and fence.it off by temporary, bounds into as small .'areas as are convenient. In three or four weeks the young fern will be up quite, thick, then put on a big mob of strong -well-conditioned sheep for, say, two days. As there will b» nothing else,'they must eat the fern, every bit of it. Then take them off, and in a few weeks repeat the same process and so again next season. In two or three years the • fern will havo 'gone for ever.