FRESH FIELDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 June 1921, Page 9

FRESH FIELDS.

WOMAN RANCHER IN CALIFORNIA. DAIRYING METHODS. The prevailing opinion, that a farmer’s lot its not a happy one. is not shared by a lady member of a well-known Wairarapa pastoralist famliy, who returned to Wellington by the Marama on Wednesday, after a fifteen months’ sojourn in California, where she successfully ran a dairy farm, without any previous ex-

perience. Mpg. 8., who fears that the publication of her name may be associated with ideas of self-aggrandisement, told a representative of the Wellington Times that she left Wellington, and New Zealand a little over a year ago, and made for the rich Santa Clara Valley, in Southern California, sixty miles from San Francidco. She had been there a few years before, and knew at first hand the agricultural potentialities of the country between San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose. She took up the only dairying “ranch” in the district, a tract of GOO acres of irrigated country, and stocked it with a herd of 250 grade Holstein milkers. Here it must be explained, said Mrs. 8., that there are two classes of dairy ing parried on in California —grass dairying, in the “rainfall" area, and alfalfa dairying, in the irrigated country. Her "ranch” was in the latter. In the grass country, dairy farmers marketed their butterfat, the alfalfa dairymen did not produce any butterfat, but found it. more profitable to ship the whole of their milk to San Francisco.

Questioned as to the price of milk, costs of production, and the average earnings per milker, Mrs. B. said "it would be difficult for her to compare Californian dairying results with those of New Zealand, owing to the varying conditions, and to her inexperience as regards dairying in the Dominion. Alfalfa was the staple fodder in the irrigated lands; there were as many as six cuttings a year, like its prototype, lucerne, in Australia and New Zealand’ Good grade dairy cows could be had for 125 dollars, and they averaged 2J to 3 gallons of milk. Some of the cows on the Santa Clara “ranch” were giving as high as 5 gallons. The Beason just, past was a very good one, following four dry seasons. The effects of a dry year wore, however, not serious'y felt at, Mrs. B.’s “ranch”, where there was a water supply of 140,000 gallons a dav. Another feature of the equipment of the farm was a modern silo.

Mrs. B. met many Now Zt>aland?rs in San Francisco, and not infrequently in Southern California, where they are profitably engaged in fruit-growing. After a short holiday with her £plks, she intends to return to Santa Clara.