Report on tlie Farm-Prize Competition, 1870. 
2G 
thistles and weeds are carefully taken out. The wheat is cut by 
scythe, and is tied and shock(?d by the day, and the whole cost of 
wheat and barley harvest ranges from 12s, to 14a\ per acre. 
Beans follow wheat, farmyard dung being applied on the 
wheat stubbles. Both spring and winter beans are grown, and 
rape or white turnips are generally sown between the rows, when 
the hoeing is finished. In favourable seasons a great deal of 
sheep feed is produced in this way. 
Barley or oats are sown after beans without any manure. 
A dairy of 40 shorthorn cows is kept, and the produce is made 
into butter. There are now also on the farm 10 in-calf heifers to 
■calve about Michaelmas, 10 two-year old heifers, 12 yearlings, 
10 calves, and 10 feeding cows, making a total of 92 head of 
cattle, which is the usual summer and winter stock. These are 
summered on the pastures, and in winter have roots, hay, and 
chaff, and a small allowance of linseed cake. 
Two hundred Oxford Down ewes are kept ; they generally 
produce about 250 Iambs; about 70 theaves are put into the 
ilock every year, and the remainder are all made off fat at twelve 
months. 
Six breeding sows are kept, and all the produce fed off on milk 
and flour. 
Ten horses and two colts are worked, two are sold every year 
and two foals are bought. The pastures are useful dairy land, 
but with the exception of the low meadows not first class. 
They have rather an impoverished look, and it appears as if the 
large herd of dairy cows, and the young cattle, and the flock of 
ewes and lambs were gradually impoverishing them. 1 think 
that Mr. Stilgoe will soon find it necessary to alter his system of 
farming in this respect, and he should do so either by using a 
larger quantity of artificial food for his stock, or by resorting to 
bone manure upon the grass land. 
The arable land is extremely well cultivated, and the whole of 
Mr, Stilgoe's farming operations are carried on in a most metho- 
dical and business-like manner, but he has somewhat lost sight 
of the fact that pastures pay as well as, or even better than, 
ploughed land for high farming. 
Mr. Zachariah Sti/f/oe^s Farm. — Mr. Zacliarlah Stilgoe's farm 
is also situated at Adderbury, near Banbury, The soil may be 
described as a kind light red loam resting generally on a rubbly 
stone subsoil, free working, and easy to farm ; in short, an excellent 
turnip and barley soil. The extent is 340 acres, of which 125 
are pasture, leaving 215 acres of arable. 
It is farmed upon a six-course rotation, as follows : — 
1st. Roots ; 2nd. Barley ; 3rd. Seeds ; 4th. Wheat ; 5th. 
Beans or Peas ; 6 th, Barley or oats. 
VOL, VI. — S. S, U 
