THE YEOMAN.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 22, 1 June 1867, Page 3

THE YEOMAN.

We owe an apology to our agricultural friends for having during the last few weeks apparently neglected them. Anxious to make the Mercury attractive to the widely different classes, taste, and capacities of 1 persons by whom it is perused, we have been prevented, by other important matter, to devote as much of it as we could desire to the home, the form, the garden, and the dairy. We have not, however, lost sight of any of these matters, and we intend, when an opportunity occurs, of devoting at least a column of our journal to their consideration. The general meeting relative to the establishment of an Agricultural Association will be held at Greytown on the 16th inst, and before that date we intend to bring before the public soma matters bearing on that question which may prove interesting to those who think such an Association is desirable. To-day we re-print some general remarks made by a correspondent of the “ Hawke’s Bay Herald ” and also an interesting article relative to hop-growing from a Nelson journal. The first discusses several subjects of as much importance to the people of Wairarapa as to those of Hawkes’ Bay, After referring to the necessity of establishing a market at Napier, the pecuuinary gain of which he estimates at a weekly sum exceeding £IOOO, he proceeds ;

Although writing this much, I will in a friendly way speak to cultivators, wishing they may accept what remarks are now made in a similar spirit to that actuating me in offering the same to them. Much of the scarcity and humbug described above, is quite remedial by yourselves; a little wholesome agitation would have set the vending portion of your vocation on a proper footing. Then there is, you will confess, a perfect lack of a spirit of enquiry—a stolid indifference to the lore of your profession as found in rich abundance in the Colonial, English, and American agricultural journals. Nought do you think of but the usual routine of drudgery of the station, farm, or garden. As for the benefits of co-operative societies, for owning implements—too costly for an individual, or too numerous—your jealousy of each other must be the stumblingblock preventing this. However, you have to adopt the plan or want them. It is wonderful why several very remunerative plants, adapted to the New Zealand climate, are not more objects of your culture. First, I will allude to the buckwheat. This grain thrives on the poorset and most wretched of soils, and on the richest, too. It is the best known food for poultry, and in moderation, for most of the smaller domestic animals. It affords an enormous amount of flower, of the best bee feed you can wisli for. One Acre, on an average will yield in a season (100) one hundred bushels of grain, at least, often a great deal more. For the instruction of any unacquainted with this plant, from experience I will state some particulars. It will not bear the least frost. The ground must be reduced to a fine mould for its reception. It has to be thickly sown, harrowed well in, rolled. Most carefully must it be mowed, and you should not delay cutting after the major part of the grain is ripe, as it would keep till frost came, flowering. Turn the staw &c, three or four times a day on the ground, thrash on the spot by all means so badly does it bear moving. You ought and may have a second good crop; serve that like the first. After this an after-math, which is often given to cows, pigs, &c., but which I prefer ploughing in for good manure. In any case the land is clear after this crop from weeds, &c.

For pigs, and particularly for fattening poultry, if the land be really rich, free and moist, most fabulous are the returns got from the sun flower. The seeds fattening oft’domestic fowls, and boiled roots, pigs, splendidly and quickly. A scrap of information I will give here from the poultry factory. That is, that the cleaned offal of slaughter yards, scalded by steam and then chopped up, is invaluable for feeding poultry. Raw, fresh or ordinarily boiled bones, ponndered up, increases their laying powers surprisingly. Owing to the supply afforded of phosnhate of lime, to form the egg shell, they swallow a proportion daily of this with avidity. A great oversight here, is the neglect of growing Lucerne, so valuable for all domestic animals, pigs not excepted. It stands great droughts. Dairy stock, in the dry summer

weather, would benefit enormously, and give a proportionate increased quantity of rich milk, by being allowed a portion of green maize stalks and all, daily. In New South Wales, the maize is sown broadcast, harrowed in and rolled, and cut green like grass, and fed as wanted without permiting it to dry. None here ever give any attention to raising cattle purakins, An acre ought to produce 40 tons. Often it will do more, and this will be found of the greatest service at times, for milking cows, pigs, &c.