TREES FOR FARMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 October 1941, Page 7

TREES FOR FARMS

DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA. PROVISION FOR SHELTERBELTS. Ottawa. In the past 40 years, the Dominion forestry stations at Indian Head and Sutherland, Saskatchewan, have distributed a total of 180,000,000 broad leaf trees and 3,600,000 < evergreen trees free to farmers, and shelterbelts have been planted on 65,000 -farms .in the three Prairie provinces, stated Norman Ross, Chief of the Tree Planting Division of the Dominion Department of Agriculture, recently. The' development of the Government Prairie treeplanting policy dates from 1899 when the encouragement of tree planting as an aid to farming on the prairies was urged on the Dominion Government. In 1900 a total of 58,800 trees were purchased and distributed to applicants in the North West territories and in Manitoba. After this distribution, ground was set apart at the Indian Head and Brandon experimental farms ,to sow seed of maple, ash and elm, and to plant several thousand cuttings of willow and poplar in order to assist in the next distribution in 1902. The Indian Head Forestry Nursery Station now occupies 480 acres. Owing to the increasing demand for trees a half section of land was purchased for a nursery station at Sutherland in 1917. For several years past, the tree planting organisation has been part of the Dominion Experimental Farms Service. In order not to compete with regular commercial nursery enterprises, distribution of trees through the Dominion Forestry Branch is limited to the establishment of shelterbelts on farms, and no trees are supplied within the limits of any town or village where the trees would be used for ornamental purposes only.