Timber on Farms

Forest and Bird, Issue 59, 1 February 1941, Page 7

Timber on Farms

(By Rakau.)

The New Zealand farm is too often a bare, unattractive place with barbed-wire everywhere instead of the hedges that would give shelter to animals and enhance the value of the property by increasing its look of comfort and of care for the stock. Even on the largest estates the usual way has been to destroy every scrap of timber. Now, when fencing posts are required, the owner is put to great expense; his ignorance brings its retribution in the place where he feels it most— pocket. England can teach the colonial much in that particular of country life. New Zealand, after getting rid of its native woodlands, so admirably designed to shelter and nourish the land, has not yet realised that trees are necessary for existence. The old-settled parts of the Waikato and the Canterbury Plains are tolerably well planted with shelter trees, and the tall groves and thick evergreen hedgerows give such expanses of level and gently undulating country an aspect of beauty and of intelligent farming. Grass is not everything; a farm should provide its own firewood and the small timber needful in so many ways. Shelter from wind, frost and sun is as essential as food is for stock.