COW OR FIELD PEAS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 335, 19 January 1889, Page 4

COW OR FIELD PEAS.

TiiEßk is no doubt, says a Virginian farmer, about the effect of cow peas on the cow. They are a little bit the best pasturage I have ever tried. I have a notion that a man with poor land could nob improve it more cheaply than by sowing cow peas and grazing some and mowing the rest for hay. He can do it every year without rotating a bit until the land gets too rich for the best success with the peas, and then it will grow anything. H is always a good thing to have a field of peas to relieve the pastures in case of drought. Even after they are frosted and dry and brown, cows will leave rank clover to eat them. So I say if yovi have a piece of poor land which will nob grow good clover, sow it in peas and turn the cattle on it when the pods are mature. Next spring repeat the dose, and my word for it, you will find the crop increasing for several years, until the land is too good to devote to peas, and you can put it into permanent grass, or use it for other purposes. Cow peas are good for land, good for cows and tip-top for human food—much better than the black-eye pea. They make a very black soup, but if it is good I cannot see that black is any worse, than any other colour.

Intercolonial Freetrade. — Writing upon this subject the Australasian Ironmonger says :~" We cannot touch political questions from a political standpoint. But this is commercial, and wo may as well plainly declare that so far as our journal is concerned, aiming as it does to be strictlyintercolonial, intercolonial freebrade would bring it a big boom. Sooner or later the boom will come, but nothing short of a catastrophe will bring it within the range of practical politics for very many years. Hon, James Service said recently that the reciprocity troaty botween Tasmania and Victoria was wrecked by small knots of self-interested Victorians who would burn down the whole Imperial House to roasb their own little pig. When something comes along that will make every single Australasian think that the life of his own little pig is not worth a day's purchase, then we fancy, and not till then, will the said little pig be sacrificed to the good of Federal Australia." Sows Eating their Young.— The desire of sows to cab their pigs is prompted by a craving for food that contains more nitrogen and linio. Feed a breeding sow on skimmed or sour milk with crushed oats stirred into it. Tut lime-water into the drinking water occasionally, in the proportion of one to ten or twelve. It may be made by putting a lump of lime in 16 a bucket of water and draining it off after 24 hours. This is a very simple remedy and worthy of trial.