DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



the year there is Half an acre at least bringing something in. No ground is wasted 

 growing anything except berries. The word " wasted " may seem a strange one to 

 use, but so long as berries are bringing their present prices $700 to $2,000 an 

 acre it obviously pays better for the berry-grower to buy his milk, butter, eggs, 

 etc. The principal thing is to make every yard of ground as it is cleared immediately 

 productive. This, of course, cannot be done in the case of a mixed farm, in which 

 case an entirely different system of clearing (as previously outlined) must therefore 

 be adopted. The system of grubbing everything out green as it is come to is, of 

 course, very much more expensive, but the cost of clearing is, comparatively speaking, 

 no object when the crop produced is so valuable. This kind of clearing, however, 

 would obviously only apply to lands within quite easy distance of a shipping point 

 (say three or four miles), and preferably a shipping-point on a through line of 

 railway giving access to the Prairie markets or to a fruit-cannery. 



Picking up logs and smaller stumps after grubbing with, donkey-engine at Development 

 Area No. 1, Merville, Vancouver Island. (Courtesy of Land Settlement Board.) 



HANDLING BIG LOGS. 



There will probably be found occasional large fir logs too rotten for cordwood, 

 but too sound to be broken up with a mattock. These logs often have layers of 

 sound pitchy wood in them, but not enough to pay to make cordwood. TJiey often 

 appear to be the most difficult part of the clearing, but they are in reality very 

 easily got rid of. They should be sawn up into 6-foot lengths (they were already 

 sawn into 12-foot lengths when the clearing wa.s branded up) and split into large 

 pieces about 10 or 12 inches thick (much larger than cordwood) and laid back on 

 each side of where the log was. When it is all split up, pile it back again in the 

 place where the log originally lay, in 6-foot sections, each section to butt close up 

 to the adjoining one; pile it carefully and as closely as possible, then start a fire 

 with dry cedar in any of the sections (depending upon the direction of the wind), 

 feed the fire with dry wood until it has caught well, and then let it go. The whole 

 of that log will burn up clean, no matter how wet it is and no matter how bad the 

 weather is. Of course, it is best to start the fire on a dry day, but rain or snowfall, 



