800 
The Farm Prize Competition of 1800. 
rooms, sitting-room, kitchen, and back kitchen each. A small 
garden is attached to each cottage, and in it the tenant grows 
some early crops of potatoes and other vegetables. 
One special feature of the management of this farm is 
the manufacture and treatment of cider, to which con- 
siderable personal attention is paid by Mr. Hill, and 
for which he is rewarded by the great demand for his 
production. The 23 orchards are most carefully attended to ; 
the trees regularly manured, and pruned, and all vacancies at 
once filled by young and healthy plants from a nursery on one 
part of the farm. Mr. Hill has for four years in succession 
won local prizes for the best-managed orchard. Great attention 
is paid to the selection of the sorts or varieties of apples, and so 
much is Mr. Hill's knowledge of the subject recognised and 
appreciated that he does no small trade in the supply of 
suitable fruit trees for various localities. One nurseryman 
alone is growing 2,400 trees for him from which to supply his 
needs. Just now he is making trials and notes of sundry table 
sorts with the view of entering upon their more extended 
growth. In addition to the produce of the farm, apples from 
neighbouring orchards are purchased, and converted into 
cider. 
Great care is taken in the selection of fruit for each grinding 
aud pounding, and in the special treatment of the product ac- 
cording to the varying degrees of ripeness in the apples. Sweet 
and sour fruits are mixed in careful proportions such as ex- 
perience has proved to be productive of the best cider, and care 
is taken to keep the first " falls " by themselves, as they produce 
only rough cider. The middle crop is most preferred, and the 
month of November, from the 10th onwards, is considered the 
best time for the pounding. After the juice has been extracted 
and put into casks the time comes when Mr. Hill's personal 
attention is most devoted to its manipulation. Each cask or 
hogshead is daily examined and tested, and if any special treat- 
ment is found to be necessary, he makes a note of it oh a card 
which is attached to the top of the cask. The man whose time 
is chiefly employed in the cider cellar during the autumn and 
spring goes round afterwards and carries out the written 
instructions. The result of this close and careful attention is 
the production of a superior article for which Mr. Hill has a 
sufficient demand from private customers to enable him to do 
without the middleman. He thus realises prices which are 
considerably above the ordinary run, and makes this branch of 
his farming a remunerative one. If other farmers in the county 
were to devote the same care and attention and business abilities 
