Farmers’ Column.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 17, 20 May 1871, Page 9

Farmers’ Column.

PROGRESS OF AND SHEEP FARMING. In bygone days the imperative need of some other plan of farming than simple grain or hay-growing year after year, was a never failing topic for agricultural writers. They have now the satisfaction (or the reverse if they please) of witnessing results that may justly be attributed to their efforts, but also, and perhaps in greater part, to the teachings of experience. Very little credit indeed, can our farmers lay claim to for the change that has of late years come over their system of treating the soil. The majority continued to plough, sow, and reap the principal cereals until the process could no longer be continued with profit. In the older cultivated districts large areas were then laid down into English grasses, or permitted to fall back into such pasturage as nature provided ; in some cases the aid of sheep was invoked to further the restorative process; in other and the greater number, a commencement was made of dairy farming, butter for a long time being the staple product, a comparatively small number of farmers also turning their attention to cheese. The change that has occurred sincelhe period referred to may be gauged by reference to the reports of our harvest correspondents. From these it now appears that dairying is being extensively carried on in almost every district where the climate and soil present favorable conditions. And to so great an extent is this industry pursued, that we read of large stocks of cheese being held for better prices, and of tons of salted butter still remaining in localities whence a considerable bulk has already been exported. For many months past the price of really good cheese has been declining in the wholesale markets ; it is, therefore, not surprising that those who can afford to hold have in many cases elected to do so. As the season advances, cheese-mak-ing will be discontinued by large numbers who adopt the English system of arranging that as many as possible of their cows shall calve together in the spring, and permit them to go dry at the approach of winter. By this course, the cost of handfeeding and stalling throughout the winter is avoided. As a rule, in this colony, dairy cattle are neither housed nor fed during the winter months ; there are some few exceptions, but wherever they are found, butter, which at'that season realises a high figure, is the object. Although the price during October, and as long as grass continues abundant, often ranges down to 4d per lb (it will be remembered that it has done so for several years past) as soon as mid-winter arrives, really fresh, i.e. newly-made butter, is scarcely procurable for less than half-a-crown per lb. This affords the most conclusive evidence of the prevalence of the rule above referred to. Perhaps the notice now directed to this not very creditable fact may induce more attention to the business of supplying the winter demand for fresh butter; as grass is likely to be more abundant than usual, the coming season promises to offer peculiar facilities for initiating the desirable change. It is expedient to inquire whether such increase of winter dairying, should it take place, is likely to affect the yield of butter during the summer months, the special point being whether the yield at the latter season is likely to be lessened. Seeing that the number of cows used for dairying is yearly augmenting, we shall assume that at all seasons of the year our butter supplies will materially increase, and that our farmers must now think seriously of making butter for export. Then, with regard to cheese, the same point must be reached in a year or two if we have not already reached there. By the month of August, if not earlier, it will be seen whether the colonial supply exceeds the demand ; if, as we anticipate, it be found to do so, then steps must be taken for testing markets beyond the boundaries of the colony. Then will be experienced the vast importance of making cheese of uniform character; then will be learnt the advantages afforded by the factory system of manufacture. At present cheeses are made of all shapes, sizes, and qualities. With such a heterogeneous lot of produce, merchants would find it impossible to deal in such a manner as would yield satisfactory results to the makers. For sale in the English or any foreign market, a product, be its nature what it may, requires to be of uniform and reliable character. Happily, the majority of those who lately commenced cheese making have adopted the Cheddar system and shape ; in the United States of America, also, this form has been extensively patronised ru jj o f? c fc° r i es - With the public the Cheddar is a deoided favorite, the grocer readily accepts it because his customers as readily buy it; it is, therefore, extremely probable that this form will at no distant date be characteristic of the bulk of Australian cheese. And if “ colonial Cheddar be well made, as it must be equally or home use as for exportation, it will arrive m England as sound and good as English cheese arrives here. With butter, however, the case is different; many dairytoaids who win prizes for potted butter,

fail completely when they attempt to tub butter that shall stand good through our warm summer months, or through a voyage to Eusope. It is worth consideration whether the work of making and preparing butter for export could not be most successfully done under the factory system, which has proved so well adapted for the production of good cheese.—“ Australasian.” SMALL FARMS. The impression widely current that money cannot be made on a small farm — that in farming the great fish eat up the little one—is, says Horace Greely in the “ New York Tribune,” deduced from very imperfect data. I have admitted that grain and beef can usually be produced at less cost on great than on small farms, though the rule is not without exceptions. I only insist that there is room and hope for the small farmer also, and that large farming can never absorb nor enable us to dispense with small farms. 1. And first with regards to fruit. Some tree fruits, as well as grapes, are grown on a large scale in California—it is said with profit. But nearly all our pears, apples, cherries, plums, &c., are grown by small farmers or gardeners, and are not likely to be grown otherwise. All of them need at particular seasons a personal attention and vigilance which can seldom or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large farms. Should small farms be generally absorbed into larger, our fruit culture would thenceforth steadily decline. 2. The same is even more true of the production of eggs and the rearing of fowls I have had knowledge of several attempts at producing eggs and fowls on a large scale in this country, but I have no trustworthy account of a single decided success in such an enterprise. On the contrary, many attempts to multiply fowls by thousands have broken down just when their success seemed secure. Some contagious disease, some unforseen disaster, blasted the sanguine expectations of the experimenter, and transmuted his gold into dross. Yet, I judge there is no industry more capable of indefinite extension, under judicious management, with fair returns, than fowl breeding on a moderate scale. Eggs and chickens are in universal demand. They are luxuries, appreciated alike by rich and poor ; and they might be doubled in quantity without materially depressing the market. Our thronged and fashionable watering places are never adequately supplied with them ; our cities habitually take all they can get, and look around for more. I believe that twice the largest number of chickens ever yet produced in one year might be reared in 1871, with profit to the breeders. Even if others should fail, the home market found in each family would prove signally elastic of reception. This industry should especially_ commend itself to poor widows struggling to retain and rear their children in frugal independence. A widow who, in the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing village can rent a cottage with half an acre of southward sloping, sunny land, which she may fence so tightly as to confine her hens within, whenever their roaming abroad would injure or annoy her neighbors, and who can incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious hen house, may almost certainly make the production of eggs and fowls a source of continuous profit. If she can obtain cheaply the refuse of a slaughter house for feed, giving with it meal or gram in moderate quantities, and according that constant personal intelligent supervision, without which fowl breeding rarely prospers, she may reasonably except it to pay, while affording her an occupation not subject to the caprice of an employer, and not requiring her to spend her days away from home. THE FARM AND THE MAN. It may be important to consider which is first and most important, the man or his farm. It is certain that the farm, as land and water, rocks and wood existed before he did; but it may not have been a farm till he made it so. If he is the maker of the farm, he is evidently the most important —for the thing made cannot well be superior to its maker. The maker must hold the first rank. But it strikes us that there is a mutual relationship between the man and his farm which should be recognised, and which makes each party dependent upon and partly the maker of the other. If the man makes his farm as it ought to be made, it will do much in return to make him—that is, if he cultivates it intelligently, thinks, reasons, and experiments as becomes a rational being; improves bis soils, his stock, his grain, his fruit; learns the nature and habits of the thing be cultivates ; know why he does everything—such attention to his farm will remodel the man and cultivate him as much as he does the farm.

When a man studies law and practises it intelligently, the profession will give strength, culture, force, and power of will to the man—that is his profession will make him —make him a man of larger stamp than he would have been without the study and energy put into it. The

study and practise of medicine makes the physician. Divinity makes the divine. In each of the professions men are made by them, because they each require study in their acquirement and intelligence in their practice. ,Our great men are chiefly from the learned professions as they are called—ana it is so simply because they are learned professions. They, require a gre&t deal of mental labor and research ; they exercise the mind ; they stretch the muscles; they harden the sinews ; they solidify the bones. The professions do much towards making the great men that are found in them.

So it should be with the farming profession. The farm should make men—great men —as well as the bar and the desk ; and it will, if it is regarded and treated in the same way. Let our young farmers be intelligently prepared for their duties. Let them study their profession ; read the authors on scientific farming, on agricultural pursuits, on the earth, the soil, stock, fruits, grains, vegetables, and then on the practise of farming ; and when they are thus well prepared, let them continue their researches in all their practical operations, and the farm would soon turn out more great men than any other one place of human exertion. When as much intelligence is exercised on the farm as in the other professions, it will produce as many great men as the same intelligence will, exercised in any other way. The lawyer, doctor, and divine have each their library —where is the farmer’s P Those farmers who have good agricultural libraries are among our best men. Let the farmer make his farm in the light of the best intelligence that relates to the subject, and his farm will make him a man of the first stamp. REFLECTIONS ON BRITISH AGRICULTURE. What changes are coming slowly, but surely, over the agricultural mind ! The man who twenty years ago chaffed Mechi for recommending straw as food for cattle is now found chaffing his own straw for his own cattle; so that we have, in reality, a great increase of agricultural chaff. While the steam engine hum of our thrashing machine was in full play to-day, into the pulper wentcabbages, mangolds, with their tops ; kohi rabi, ditto; said I to my cattle feeder, “ hand power wouldn’t do for this,” “ No,” said he, “ nor horse power neither.” So that we came to the conclusion that every arable farm of 150 to 200 acres should, have a fixed steam engine, with its accompaniment of pulpers, crushers, chaffcutters, pumps, sack elevators, millstones, threshing machine, cake breaker*, and grinstone, a circular saw would be of no use to us, as our timber departed some twenty five years ago. How can agriculture progress without steam power? And yet its use is very partial and limited. When I began farming here, 27 years ago, guano was unknown, steam was a myth, iron sheep hurdles were condemned as an extravagance, and even to this day nine farmers out of ten do not deepen their cultivation by following the first plough by another drawn on the same tract. Deep draining in strong non-calcarious soils is the exception and not the rule, the argument being that there is a good surface fall for the water to pass away. Of course, they do not reflect that water will not run off the surface until the soil is super saturated, and they would condemn such a practice as folly in the case of their flower pots having a plug in them to stop the drainage. Altogether, Britain is not half manured nor half farmed ; our landowners and farmers conjointly must accept this as a true proposition, and conclud that there is an immense field open, and awaiting the joint action of increased intelligence to procure more abundantly and more profitably food for the British people. I know that I have in my time shocked many prejudices, and excited much anger; but has not every man done so who attacks antiquated customs, and advocates changes and improvements ? The supporters of the old spinning wheel, distaff, and flail, destroyed the newly invented cotton machinery and threshing machines. It was natural, through a mistake ; the conservative sentiment in favor of old institutions is an honest and desirable one up to a certain point, but it is the fight for progress and improvement which introduces us to a new state of things more suitable to our welfare.—J. J. Mechi, September, 1870. THE GRASSING OF LAND. “ Viator,” a correspondent of the “ Melbourne Age,” gives some valuable suggestions on the grassing of land. His remarks have reference to the grassing of a run of thirty thousand acres in New Zealand. The question, how natural pastures can best be improved, is one that concerns the farmer equally with the occupier of thousands of acres. The farmer who has just entered on three or four hundred acres likes to improve the pasturage of that portion which is not destined to come under the plough for several years, for, could he do so, the income derivable therefrom would form no inconsiderable portion of the total annual income from the farm. Good grass land moreover, is one thing

needful to render farming profitable in this country, for it demands a comparatively small amount of annual expediture for labor, and is the hete noir of the farmer. It is advisable and proper to have a fair extent of good pasturage, and it may not be, and is not, always possible to lay down the whole of the grass land in the best possible manner. If, then, any plan can be adopted, whereby the grazing capabilities of a farm can be considerably increased without much loss of time, and with a comparitively small expenditure of money, it should surely be worthy of notice. In the letter referred, to, the writer intimates that the grass seeds are effectually covered by a double tine of the harrows, and in the case in question we can easily suppose it would be so. In the first place, the surface soil- was light composed as it would be in part of decayed ferns, and an addition was made to it by the ashes of the ferns, which were burnt to clear the land for the reception of grasses. Many farmers have adopted the idea that grasses will not succeed upon unbroken ground ; but as this is owing to the fact of their being destroyed in their infancy by stock, and not to any other cause, we take exception to the statement that they will not thus succeed. We have lmd occular proof that rye grass will succeed as well in that way as in any other,, provided time be given to take firm root. The finest lots of prairie grass we have met with have been self sown on roads and flats that have not been worked for years ; and almost the only failures of this last grass have occured on land deeply worked and specially prepared to receive it. Experience has shown that there is no greater error than sowing grasses on hollow land. If land has been worked for a previous crop, say for wheat or oats, last season, nothing more would be needed than to harrow the stubbles, sow the grasses, and roll the land firmly down. Further plouglungs will only do more harm than good.

Fkench Cheese. The “Agricultural Gazette” has the following:—The cheese manufactured in the old provinces of Bresse, now the department of Ain, is made by boiling the milk, adding a little saffron, taking off the fire, and putting it in the rennet immediately. The curd is then dried in a cloth, pressed for a few hours, put in a cellar, and salted five or six days after, this little operation being continued for a month. Auvergne or Cantal cheese is made without boiling the milk, but curdling it while fresh from the cow; the whey being then separated, a man with his legs bare up to the thighs, gets upon the table on which the curds have been put in a tub pierced with holes and kneads the paste thoroughly with his arms and legs ; an operation which lasts about an hour and a half. The uniform mass thus obtained is left to ferment for 48 hours, and then salted, put into moulds, and pressed for 24 hours; after which the cheeses are put in a cellar, frequently looked after and rubbed with a cloth dipped in fresh water. The celebrated Roquefort cheese, made in the village of that name in the Aveyron, is obtained with a mixture of sheeps’ and goat’s milk ; but even in the milking there is a secret, for when the udder appears to yield no more, the maid strikes it repeatedly with the back of her hand, whereby a little more milk is obtained, muoh richer in butter. This operation, which is utterly harmless, causes the udders to increase in size in course of time. The next reason assigned for the peculiar flavor of Roquefort cheese is, that when made into cakes it is kept in caverns hollowed out in a calcareous kind of rock which skirts the village ; the temperature of these recesses is kept low by various contrivances, and seldom rises above 5 deg. Cent. The cheese is made with the milk in the morning and of the evening before. The other manipulations present no peculiarity; but as for the veins, or persille, as they are called, they are obtained by mixed crumbs of mouldy bread with the curds. The quantity of this cheese annually supplied to the trade is 900,000 kilogrammes (of 21b each). Fromage de Brie, is chiefly manufactured in the departments of Seinc-et-Oise and Seineet Marne, to the amount of 2,500,000 kilogrammes per annum. Rennett is put into the milk while warm from the udder; the curds are made into cakes, and laid on wicker trays, so that the whey may ruu off. After 24 hours they are salted, and then turned and shifted from time to time for the space of a fortnight or three weeks,

A Hint on Boiling-Down.—The following extract from a late “ H.B. Herald” conveys information worthy the attention of everyone interested in sheep, as it shows (and we have no reason to doubt the correctness of the statement) what may be done even with old Merino ewes. The “ Herald” says :—“ Towards the end of last month about 870 small-framed old merino ewes were boiled down at the Boil-ing-Down Establishment at West Olive, and yielded a total of nine tons one cwfc. of tallow, making an average of 231bs per head. These sheep had been culled from Mr Johnston’s flock at the Ruataniwha, about a year ago, and had since been depasturing in his paddocks ab West Olive. As far as we remember this is the most satisfactory yield that we have heard of in the province, and as the tallow turned out at Hie Clive establishment fetches very high prices in the English markets, the net profit to the owner will probably be something above 6s on each , sheep.

Exhumation.—The “ Southland News’* learns that the bodies of three of Mr M‘Nab’a four children, who recently died with symptoms of dysentery, are to be exhumed for tho purpose of further analysis,