A DERELICT LAND REVIVED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 51, 2 March 1939, Page 10

A DERELICT LAND REVIVED

A Use for Weeds

SCIENCE has been married to the ancient wisdom at the little Lincolnshire village of Surfleet, near Spalding, to convert a derelict barn into one of the most fertile spots in Britain. It has been done by Captain K. G. I M. Wilson, who began his career in the | Royal Engineers, went into business in I the city for two years, eschewing that j life and took on this farm in 1932. i When he began the heart had been 1 farmed out of the Surflcct land, coverI ing 325 acres, and only four hands ! were finding permanent employment ( upon it. Now it shows a rich, fine tilth, parts of it are yielding horticultural produce worth £6OO an acre, and 70 persons are permanently employed on it. How did he do it? First of all he started restoring fertility by the or- . thodox method of livestock and the | plough. 1 But now that the land is in better j heart he is depending more and more j upon using compost of rotted green stuff, such as cabbage stalks and leaves, grass, potato haulms, even the less fibrous weeds. He hopes to dispense with all artificial manures in time, and for the last two years no artificials at all liax e been used on the horticultural part of the farm, known as the ‘‘lceni Nurseries.’’ In this he is a follower of and believer in Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian mystic, who died soon after the war and left behind his teachings )n many things, including agriculture. Steiner’s agricultural teachings were based on the commonsense view that, since the earth is a living thing (or low else could it produce life?), it acedS living organisms to maintain its fertility. Chemicals are dead things, and although for a time they will produce striking results, eventually they will ( bring about unbalanced conditions of i the soil and rob the things it grows of ■ their beneficial qualities. I Steiner warned us that the first signs ' of this would be an increase in animal I diseases, which, of course, is happening, and that eventuality we who feed I directly or indirectly on the earth’s ■ produce would suffer in like manner i (says the News Chronicle). He taught that the right way to restore the elements to the soil was through compost from decayed vege- ! table matter. That is, by organic inj stead of by inorganic manuring. I Captain Wilson is using these compost heaps, but up to the present has flane more with the nt st hod.

This was rediscovered by Sir Albert Howard in Central India, when he wag director of the Institute of Plant Industry at Indore. For long he could not think why the natives got better results than he, with all his scientific equipment. Enlightenment came when he realised the basic difference between their methods and his. They could not afford “artificials,’* so put back as compost all unwanted vegetation that came from the land, consciously fulfilling a natural law. By this method ,used at Surfleet, weeds, cabbage leaves and stalks, anj kind of living ’‘rubbish, ’* are mixed with horse or cow manure in pits and turned every three weeks. The compost is made and ready for use in 12 weeks. Tremendous heat is generated in the pits—up to 160 deg. C.—which reduces everything to a fine texture. Surfleet itself is the best test of the efficacy of these methods. ]t would be difficult to imagine market garden crops that look healthier or with a better bloom on them. Thi flowers are of truer colours and last longer after they are cut; the vegetables have a richer flavour. Those accustomed to eating vegetables grown in this way not only say they taste different from other vegetables, but that they themselves do not feel so well if they have to live for a week or so on the vegetables one normally gets. At the show of spring vegetables in London this year the produce from the Iceni nurseries was in competition with that grown by the greatest experts in the country, but the nine entries took seven first prizes. But these manuring methods, which are realty centuries old would not alone have made the farm the financial success it is unless modern methods were linked with them. Motor power, of course, is used wherever possible for cultivation. A light railway runs round the market gardens, and the latest breeds of lettuce, etc., that Science has perfected are used. The extra fertility in the land la being used to make it crop to the utmost, with one crop following another in quick succession. The farm maintains two shops in London. The farm has its own social club, where employer and employed meet freely and naturally in the evenings over a glass of beer, and the staff boasts a darts team that has only once been defeated in Lincolnshire. No wonder labour presents no difficulties on this farm, where all seen members of a large happy