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by the smaller man, for the dual purpose of both meat 

 and milk. Systematic record-keeping would open the 

 eyes of the smaller farmers to the unprofitable nature 

 of many of the animals they continue to keep in the 

 herd. On this farm about half a dozen cows were 

 in milk, and the bull calves and such heifers as were 

 not wanted for the herd were grown on cheaply and 

 sold at two years old as stores ; for it was by no 

 means the kind of land upon which it would pay to 

 try to fatten animals for the butcher. Being some- 

 what remote from a station, the milk was not sold as 

 such, but was converted into butter and cheese, which, 

 with the chickens and the eggs that also formed an 

 important item of production, were sold weekly in 

 the not very distant market of Pontypool. Small 

 farmers must have some regular source of income 

 of this kind, and cannot well depend entirely upon 

 the sales of crops and of stock that only recur at 

 somewhat long intervals. It was this point of view 

 that reconciled the young farmer to the chickens ; 

 he did not like them about the place, but agreed that 

 they fitted in with the rest of the farming, and that 

 you had to regard a farm of this kind as a whole 

 with as many different articles as possible working in 

 together to produce the income. 



Farther south we visited a larger farm, extending 

 to two hundred acres, of which about thirty were 

 under the plough. The pastures, which stay down 

 for from five to seven years, carried excellent grass 

 with an abundance of white clover ; they had all been 

 dressed with basic slag once and some twice within 

 the seven years. The occupier was mainly a stock 

 farmer, breeding Herefords of good quality, and at 

 the same time rearing extra calves bought in from 

 the dairying districts. Some of the bull calves were 



