8 



UNIV. OF N. H. AGR. EXPERIMENT STATION [Bulletin 250 



Small size of business is associated with a large requirement of man hours 

 per acre. Farms having four acres of corn require about 80 man 

 hours an acre to raise and ensile. This time demand is reduced to 51 man 

 hours when 17 acres are raised. On hilly land the use of machinery is 

 limited, which is reflected in a 77-hour labor requirement for an acre of 

 corn compared to 57 hours on level land. On 45 per cent of the level 

 farms studied tractors are used, on 60 per cent harvesters, and on 40 per 

 cent two-row planters. 



Cutting and binding with a harvester accounts for a saving of 20 to 25 

 hours an acre. When a low loading rack is used in combination with 

 tractor preparation, machine planting, and harvesting, the labor require- 

 ment is 45 hours compared to 78 hours with horse preparation and hand 

 methods. 



When hay is raked with a dump rake, stirred out by hand, bunched, 

 loaded and pitched off by hand, the labor requirement is invariably high. 

 If pitched on the wagon by hand, about 12 per cent of the labor of harvest- 

 ing is saved by bunching with a dump rake. In mechanically equipped 

 barns, unloading by hoist from the center is 14 per cent more efficient than 

 unloading from either end. {Purnell Fund.) 



TIME STUDIES IN ORCHARDS 



Field work in a three-year study of orchard practices pursued on twelve 

 representative southern New Hampshire apple farms is now complete. 

 Each manager, a skilled man intimately acquainted with his job, reported 

 to H. C. Woodworth and G. F. Potter the hours spent each day on each 

 task. The orchard operations were classified under the following heads: 

 Pruning, spraying, brush removal, fertilizing, cultivating, mowing, mulch- 

 ing, thinning, propping, setting, protecting against rodents, and mis- 

 cellaneous. 



Over a third of the 19,000 apple trees on the farms are between 11 and 

 15 years of age, and very few are more than 20 years old. To place the 

 farms on a comparable basis the equivalent in mature trees was computed 

 for each farm, and the labor requirements for 1,000 such trees were ob- 

 tained. Figure 2 shows the average number of hours spent in each 

 operation and the percentage of total time required for 1,000 mature trees. 



Spraying proved the most important single operation, and the most ex- 



567.3 



Pruning Spraying Brush Fertilizer Cultivation Mowing Mulching Thinning Propping Setting Protection Misc. 

 Z5.67. 17.4% 7.7% 3.5% 7.9% 10.7% 13.1% 2.3% 3.1 7<> e.2% 2.2%. 4.3% 



Figure 2. — The average number of hours spent in each orchard operation and the 

 percentage of total time required for 1000 mature trees. 



