FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 122, 21 June 1909, Page 4

FARM AND DAIRY.

COST OF A OAXADTAX FARM. An instance is being, largely quoted »s Uv Ule speed with which a new settler can start tanning operations in Canada on virgin soil. An enterprising Englishwoman. Jlrs. Hanlon, of Liverpool, .paid £151) for 320 acres On the Canadian Pacitic Irrigation Block near Calgary on the day after arrival in March. Xext day she ordered an eight-roomed house with verandah, which was completed and furnished in four weeks', costing .nii'J. 'Meanwhile the land was fenced for £45, 100 acres were 'broken and put into crop (spring oats) for £l2O, a well bored for Cl 4, a stable for six horses lniilL for £2O, with the result that when she settled in her house she had an improved farm in working order for about £7OO. The start seems ail light. A detailed report a 9 to income from the farm during the next I year or two would be interesting,

SPECIALISATION. The director of the Oregon experiment station says: —"This is an age of specialisation. Men are educated and animals are selected for special purposes'. The all-purpose horse and the dual-purpose cow are largely of the past, and have but littlt* standing in the expert judgment of modern agriculturists. It is just as easy for a man to serve two maulers as it is for a cow to please both the butcher and the dairyman. The function of meat-production and the function of uiilk-proiluctiOn are opposing The cow will cither cleave to I the one or yield to the other. There is positively no permanently lixed middle ground' between these two functions. | There may be a small percentage of individuals which suliiciently appear to pos- j s'ess this trait, but upon a close analysis they rarely have any pride of mecstrv or hope of posterity, or, in other words, they neither inherited nor were capable, of transmitting the milking traits which they simply chanced to possess. If Oregon's one hundred and seventy-live thousand cows were specialpurpose cows, we would hear less of 'dairying doesn't pay.' (leneral purpose is becoming an obsolete term in the nomenclature of farm live stock. It is the special draught horse, the special roadster, and the special dairy cow. Farm animals are produced for specific purposes, and the. dairy cow is by no means an exception to the rule."

REGULATION OF MEAT SUPPLIES. Questioned as to whether the operations of the Chicago Beef Trust were likely to affect the New Zealand trp.de in a detrimental way, Mr. C. A. Do Lautour, chairman of directors' of the Gisborne Sheepfarmers' Frozen Meat Company, stated that he did not sec how the Americans' object to keep up prices would be in any way injurious to the Dominion. ''A much more difficult question for us to consider," said Mr. De Lautour, "is that being agitated as to regulating the supplies from New Zealand. What'seems to ibe the position in regard to that is this 1 , that if we withhold our stuff from the Home market, foreign stuff would flow in to take its place. The only thing that will keep New Zealand to the front will be to adhere strictly to the quality of the meat that is sent Home', and to depend on that quality being better than what can be supplied from either Australia or the Argentine. We are quite willing to fall into line with any movement made in the Dominion on any lines that may .promise, even by way of experiment, to give fair results.'' Reverting to the subject of the American Trust, Mr. De Lautour said: "I do not think there is any likelihood of their coming into New Zealand. I do not see what thev could expect to gain from any trade that New Zealand woulit offer or that with the scattered localities of the different works there would be any opportunity to effectively concentrate the trade, so as to make it profitable for the Trust to step in. The effort to maintain prices would not injure us. The question as to whether any satisfactory means could be adopted to regulate the supplies from New Zealand without injuring the trade is of more concern to us just now."

ELECTRIFYTXfi, CHOPS, "Home Counties" describes in the "World's Work"' how electricity is being used to fuithev agriculture. Professor Lenistrom, noticing the development of plants in the Polar regions, referred it to the electrical currents which reveal themselves in the Aurora llorealisT Tests were instituted 011 a farm near Evesham, where Mr. Xcwnian iixed up his apparatus. The insulator poles are put in about one to the acre. The main wires between the poles are crossed by thinner wires which run ten yards apart. The current i* taken from the dynamo worked by an oil engine and in a shed transformed into high tension. The electricity leaves the shed at a potential of something like 100,000 volts. When there is 110 wind one can hear the ii/,7. of the charge coming oil' the wires, and in the dark there is a glow very much like that of a glow-worm. The result of the 'experiment with wheat was that in 11)00 the crop showed an increase of from 30 to 40 per cent, in yield.

The electrified wheat sold at 7'/. per cent, better priees, several millers"liuil'"ft '>. V baking tests thill it produced ;i better linking Hour. Similar tests in 11)117 showed an increase of 2!) per cent., a7id in 1(108 an increase of 21 per eent. Similarly with fruit and vegetables'. There was recorded 17 per eent. increase in cucumbers, 3() per eent. increase in strawberries, and .SO per cent, increase in oiiu,-ycar-o'td plants ni|d mure runners produced; an increase of .'ill per cent, with beet, and 5(1 per cent, with carrots. (Mi twenty-four acre, I lie .first cost, of ,i;idillltUbn fr .£3IW. and annual upkeep •ti>3. Taking (lie average return at CM per acre, and adding 33 1-3 per cent, increase, or £l2 per acre, and deu'uctiug the 113 1-3 per cent, as cost of picking and marketing, then £8 per acre is due to the electricity. That multiplied by twenty-four give's a total revenue of £1!I2, Subtracting £O3 for upkeep, the result is £l2O profit on an outlay of £311(1. Three hundred acres could be d(:::: (.1500, or £5 an acre.

''Anyone who lias seen much of British fiu'nis," writes the New .South Wales Agent-General in a ivport to tile Premier, "cannot escape the conviction that the British farmer and farm laborer have much to learn and unlearn before they can adapt themselves to Australian condition. While mixed farming is .so much more generally followed in Great Jirljiiiii than in Australia, agriculturists noik iii ;,i M'l groove. ami the standard of results is in mjujc respect* very much lower. Where in Australia one nian will nnriage a team of six horses in a mul-lipic-riii'niiigh plough, ill Kngland it ''s iMial to see one man holding the plough handles, another leading Ipirses, nii'l perhaps a third man in attendance. To these men time appears to be of no importance, and it needs no argument to show that it w'itl take even the most ca|iable of tlieni sonic time to get out of their dilatory methods and grasp the of Australian farm work and life."

Enquiry at the Mastert.oll stock office ''licit- the information that the sheep returns for the year ending 30th April, milll. for the North Wairarapa district have come in remarkably well, and show a decided increase over "the previous year's returns.

Nome idea of the prolific nature of Ihe 100)i-n dairy s<>a,S()n may he gained from the .fact that a farmer in the Hketajiiiiia district obtained a higher returu UOijj cow-; than he did from 00 In the previous 11, in tact, the money value of the m;jk of the 52 cows wus grcate r N>y £l7O than the milk from the same number of cows in the previous' season.