AGRICULTURAL. SMALL FARMS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 170, 11 May 1871, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL. 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 ones — 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 farms than on small farms, though the rule is not without exceptions. I only insist that there are 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 regard 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 peara, 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 a vigilance which can seldom or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large

farms. Should large farms be,.generally absorbed into larger, our frui£culture^^ would then thenceforth steadily decline. 2. The same is even 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 angle 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 unfortunate disastei-, blasted the sanguine expectijns of the experimenter, and transmitted his gold into dross. Yet, I judge thei'e is no industry more capable to indefinite extension, under judicious management, with fair returns, than fowl-bi*eeding on a modern 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 are habitually take all they can get, and look aronnd 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 neighbourhood 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 neighbours, and who can incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious henhouse, may almost certainly make the production of eggs and fowls a. source of continuous profit. If she can obtain cheaply the refuse of a slaughterhouse for feed, giving with it m> al or grain in moderate quantities, and according that constant personal intelligent supervision, without which fowl-breeding rarely prospers, she may reasonably expect it to pay, while affording her an occupation not subject to the caprice of an employer, and not requiring her to spend her days from home.

A Cure for Pleuro-pneumonia.— The following is the course to be pursued when the disease appears in the herd :—": — " First of all you isolate or remove the animal affected. Secondly, should the poison have been imbibed wP* one or more from the animal in which the disease has first appeared, the great thing is to confine it to them, and this is the leading idea of the scheme, and it is accomplished by, thirdly, tying up the animal in a house. In my case the feeding-troughs are placed round the cow-house, and the animals face the wall ; on this wall is fixed in front of each beast a square piece of coarse sacking, the cloth is saturated three times a-clay with a solution of carbolic acid, prepared tjs noted below. As the poison is eliminated from the system it is destroyed by the carbolic acid, which experience lias proved to be the best disinfectant. Fourthly, in this way the infection cannot reach an animal free from it when the herd is tied up. The herd on which I first operated was gradually melting away befoie I commenced this experiment ; only one fresh case has manifested itself, and that animal has recovered. As to the curative action of carbolic acid, I shall not say much, having no desire to intrude into the region of medical science. It is enough for me to say tbat the most eminent men now cause human patients j suffering from certain forms of lung disease to imbibe carbolic acid — this mode of treatment has been most successful, and from the post mortem, appearance of the lungs in pleuropneumonia we should expect the imbibation of this acid would be equally efficacious in arresting the progress of the disease. To dissolve the carbolic acid of commerce ie must be mixed with an alkaline substance. I use for the purpose lime, as it is the cheapest and most easily obtained, but potash or soda , would be better. The strength of the solution I employ is one part of carbolic acid to 50 of water. — T. Baldwin. No farmer should attempt to farm without sheep. A flock, larger or smalei*, should be in possession of every owner of a homestead. Wool, unlike tobacco, the cereals, oleaginous seeds, and the vegetable textiles including cotton, can, so far as is known, be produced and exported indefinitely without creating exhaustion of the soil, and, even more than that, sheep, through the peculiar nutritiousness of their manura and the facility with which it is distributed, are found to be the most economical and certain means of solving the highest problem in agriculture, that of constantly renewing the pi'oductiveness of the land. Their manure is more valuable than that of cattle because they digest" better ; they cut thier food finer, and chew it better. They void less vegetable fibre, and and their excrements are more converted^in geine. One thousand sheep folded oi^ an acre of ground one day would manure it sufficient to feed 1,001 sheepj so by this process land which the first year can feed only 1,000 sheep may the next year, as a resplt of their owii droppings, fee 4 1,36$