JACK LONDON AS A FARMER.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 625, 6 December 1913, Page 6

JACK LONDON AS A FARMER.

A SENSIBLE TALK. The noted author and story writer, Jack London, evidently hag very close-fitting ideas about good farming. In a recent interview he said: — "When I bought 150 acres near Glen Ellen nine years ago, I knew nothing of farming. I bought the place mostly for its beauty, as a place io live- and write. About forty acres of (he ranch was cleared, and i tried to hay for my horses, but soon 1 found I could scarcely get the seed bom;. The soil had been worn out: it hnd been farmed for years by old-fashioned methods of taking everything" oil and putting nothing back. "The region was a back-water district. The ranchers were poor and honeless; no one could make any money ranching there, they all told me. They had worked the land out and their only hope was to move on somewhere else and start in to work new land out and destroy its value. "1 began to str.y the problem, wondering why the fertility of tins land had been destroyed in forty or lifty years, while land in China has been tilled for thousands of years, and is still fertile. "My neighbours were typified by the man who said :'You ocn't teach me anything about farming: I've worked I three farms out.' Which is as wise as the remark of the woman who said she knew all about bringing tip children, for she had had five to nie. "I adopted the policy of taking nothing oft the place, i raised stuff and fed it to the stock. I got the first manure spreader ever seen up there, and to put the fertiliser back on the land before its strength was leached out. I began to get registered stock, and now I sell a blooded cow at nine months for £B, and an old-jashioned rancher comes along and wonders why ha has to feed a scrub cow for two years and sell her for less than AS. "An old-fashioned farmer has thirty milk cows and works eighteen hours a day taking care of them and milking them, and can make no money. An up-to-date man comes along, buys the place, pays £2 for a Babcock tester', and buys milk scales. Right avisy he gets rid of the cows as non-productive, and he makes more at two-thirds of the work Later he weeds out five more, and still gets larger returns for the feed he gives them, with half the work. The farmer who gets good stock and who conserves and builds up his soil is assured of success. The other sort of chap isn't."