LADY FARMERS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 March 1914, Page 4

LADY FARMERS.

Sedgewick, a community in that district of the Western Canadian prairies, known as Central Alberta, is six thousand miles distant from Great Biitain, but it is the location of a colony of settlers from the Old Country who were attracted to the ready-made farms prepared here by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Most of the farmers under this scheme are married men, butOD one of the farms on this colonj' are two hechelor girls (they are too young to he referred to as spinsters). To this farm Mr EL A. Kennedy, a wellknown writer, recently paid a visit. "Two young ladies," he says, "are working in partnership. They frnd no difficult}' in the arrangement, though the average farmer out there assures you that partnerships are unworkable in such a business. Each member ia responsible for her own depai-trnent, but is always ready to help the other. 'Miss Wittrick looks after the dairy and the house,' said her partner, Miss Jack May, 'and she is a "beautiful butter maker and an excellent cook,' but she takes a hand in tho field work whenever there's need of extra help. Mif-s May was up on top of an oat stack when [ first saw her, but slid into a waggon alongside and greeted me iuost heai tilv.

"A little wowan dad for woik in a durk blun canvas j.-icket and serge liilina; breeds, I did not wonder 1 hat she had of:en Wen taken for a boy But unconventional as her attire may be, she commands the respect of her neighbours both for her sex and her enterprise, She does not play ni farm ing There is a distinctive and delicate design in her rustic garden fence. ai:d even in the construction of her pigstve but she is eminently practical, find up-to-date in her agricultural merhods.

•'Her hobby is livestock : her evjps are grown not to fcf.ll cvs raw' material, but to bo worked up into the iiuishod article and sll 'on the hoof' She has six horses, six cows, one pedigree Shorthorn bull, three yearling h,ei{eys, s\v ra}yps ( ft" Air PP, (|V3 of p%a. She has sold £60 worth of fattened pigs in 15 months, but she i-pjei-ts the tempt ation to sell her calves. 'People will sell,' she remarked, 'even when they can afford to keep., If '.[ pfi^cln't feed my cattle t)|rur,gll the winter I would lather not have them at all.' "She sends her cream, grading c\s }\i&}\ 0-P r)U per cent h^tta? %i, to."the tirearnery, and feeds the skim milk to tho pigs. She now intends to pickle and 'can' her own beef. 'Have yqn any other special line?' I. j^shac).' :-oi\r speoial line 'la worU.1 She worhs for others as well as for herself ; work of all sorts in all weathers ; haulinograin, hauling coal from the nearest Uline where it can "he got for 6s "& per ton. Bhe has been out in the bush cutting saplings until 10 o'clock at night. Work certainly agrees with her as it does with most people who give It ao honest trial and take reasonable oare of themselves. *1 have never been half a day in tho house siv.ee oonjng here,1 she told me, 'except one Sunday when there was a bit of a blizzard.' "■—From the Irish Hoiiieotead.,