"READY-MADE FARMS IN CANADA."

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 354, 22 April 1911, Page 5

"READY-MADE FARMS IN CANADA."

A LIBERAL SCHEME. Last year an agricultural holdings scheme, formulated by Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway, whereby "readymade" farms were provided for British emigrants, was inaugurated on a tract of land east of Calgary, Alberta. The general outline of the scheme was that the railway company offered farms to suitable men, on each of which 50 acres were broken up, fenced, and sown, and a house and stable built, so that when the emigrant arrived he found a crop ready to be harvested. The cost was about £SOO, and the repayments were spread over ten years. Mr Hal Carleton, who was one of the first to join the scheme, was recently in JUnglaruL and gave a description of the progress which has been made.

Mr Carleton said the first colony of ready-made farms had been established at a place about eleven miles from Strathmore. The emigrants numbered 25, and included a Cambridge tutor, a veterinary surgeon, an ex-Indian Civil servant, a poultry farmer, etc. They went out with their wives and families, took up their farms varying in area from SO to 150 acres and as the result of their first season's experience are thoroughly satisfied with the scheme.

Mr Carleton believes that the crops of four average seasons will enable each of the emigrants to pay off the whole of his instalments, and thus obtain the freehold of his farm. The season has been the driest one for fourteen years and the crop 3 accordingly suffered, the more so as the Canadian Pacific Railway had to postpone, till this autumn, the irrigation works which they intended to have completed before the emigrants' arrival. In consideration of this fact the company have postponed the beginning of the repayments for a year. The farmers, however have been able to make sufficient out of their holdings to keep themselves and to provide seeds for next season. The farms are intensively cultivated, and yield a mixed produce. The chief sources of income are dairying, poultry-keeping, market-gardening and hog-raising. For these there is a plentiful market, and the Canadian Pacific Railway were themselves among the emigrants' best customers. A council of all the farmers meets weekly, and the principe of cooperation, which it at once introduced, contributed so much to the small colony's prosperity that this feature will probably be imitated wherever Sir Thomas Shaughnessy's scheme extends. The council bought a gasolene traction engine, together with ploughs, a corn mill and a threshing machine for it to work: cattle, seeds, and various stores were obtained in wholesale quantities for the whole community, and the produce of the farms, instead of being marketed by each individual farmer, was collected and taken to market by each farmer in turn. All store 9 were bought collectively, and the council devised an ingenious scheme for interI changing men, horses, and agricultural implements. A man's services i for a day were valued at 2.25d015, a | team of horses at 2.25d015., a binder jat 1.00d015., a mowing machine at I 50c, and in the same way the use of i any piece of farm machinery could be } obtained at a fixed tariff. The result j was that machines were not dup- \ licated, and four farmers were able !to work with one complete set of : implements at a fourth of their cost. Three more areas of land are being • prepared by the Canadian-Pacific Kailway for occupation next summer, on which, there, will be- So farms. The company are so favourably impressed ' with the result of the first season's ■ experiment that they propose to develop a very large area of land on the same lines. The system has also proved very attractiave to British emigrants, and fully a thousand applications for the farms have been receive!.

I A. descriptive account of a visit 1 paid by our representative to the ! Mokau and Awakino districts will ; appear in our next issue.