206 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ September 1, 1892, 
or other ; for if you, with a market at hand for all your best pro¬ 
duce, cannot make farming answer, who can ? 
It is clearly understood that the class of farms we write for 
are kept in hand specially for the production of an ample supply 
of all that a well managed farm affords for the requirements of 
the hall, mansion, or castle, as the case may be, only surplus 
produce being sold, a fair market value being placed upon 
everything sent to the house for home consumption, also to the 
hunting and carriage stables. Whether such supplies are large 
or small it matters not, provided sufficient land and other means 
are available to produce them. Then comes the question if it 
is worth while adding sufficient land to the farm to obtain enough 
surplus produce for sale to cover expenses. Certainly it is ; only 
remember that such produce must be of the best quality of a 
kind always in demand, for which there is a prompt and profit¬ 
able sale. 
“Profitable sale ! ” says the corn farmer. “ Is such a thing pos¬ 
sible for anything we have to dispose of ? ” Well may he say so, 
for his foolish persistence in devoting most of his holding to corn¬ 
growing is leading him to ruin as certainly as a thing can do which 
cost3 twenty shillings to produce and for which fifteen shillings only 
can be had in our best markets. In the third week of August an 
East Anglian farmer at Bury St. Edmunds Corn Market sold the 
produce of 16 acres of Wheat for exactly the same money as he 
obtained for that of 6 acres a year ago. This farmer is well 
known to us as a member of a farmers’ club, where an address which 
we gave on the advantages of dairy farming over corn-growing 
was met by an assertion that East Anglia was not a dairy farming 
district. That address was given some four years ago. Corn¬ 
growing has gone steadily on ; there has always been some profit 
on a good malting sample of Barley, but the struggle has become 
more and more severe, the depression deepens in intensity, and 
it really appears that the ehange in farming which is bound 
to come must spring from the ruin of many more men of the old 
school yet. 
We have always held that a home farm should be so well 
managed as to be the model farm of the estate, where the tenants 
might see the beff methods of culture and the best results. It 
should be something more than this. It should afford examples 
of what is possible in the way of advantageous change, having, 
on large estates at any rate, its butter factory supplied with milk 
from the home farm and from any of the tenants who can be 
induced to send milk, and we can hardly conceive of a tenant 
farmer who would not gladly avail himself of such a ready market 
for his produce. Some few landlords have tried it to the mutual 
advantage of themselves and their tenants ; we would urge others 
either to do so too, or better still, to set going a co-operative 
factory, taking up many or most of the shares at first, then gradu¬ 
ally alloting them to the tenants as they applied for them. There 
must in the future be something more than passive acquiescence 
in the situation, there must be positive effort to amend it. The 
interests of landlord and tenant are so involved that combined 
action is most desirable. 
Another important adjunct to such home farms is a fruit 
evaporator. Lord Sudeley has shown at Toddington what wonders 
can be done in fruit growing and jam making. Of far greater 
general importance is the planting of free bearing sorts of Apples 
and the introduction of fruit driers or evaporators on all model 
home farms. Fruit farming and fruit evaporation have a great 
future in this country ; let us do all that is possible to promote 
fruit farming without placing too much stress upon what has been 
done, or upon difficulties in the way. We are bound to break up 
the foreigners’ monopoly of the dried fruit trade which has 
assumed such gigantic proportions, because every pound of dried 
Apples imported might just as well have been prepared from home¬ 
grown fruit in our own evaporators. As yet farmers generally are 
ignorant of fruit production in a systematic manner, to say nothing 
of fruit grading, of the paring, drying, and packing of Apples, which 
affords employment to tens of thousands of labourers in winter in 
the United States of America, whence all our supplies of dried 
Apples come. 
If the home farm can be enlarged sufficiently to lead the way 
to better things, to become practically a school of modern agricul¬ 
ture, showing by actual demonstration how to change, and what is 
worth changing for, it would indeed prove a boon to the tenants. 
A tenant farmer of limited—probably straitened—means cannot 
afford to indulge in speculative novelties which may lead to a heavy 
loss. That is why we so strongly advocate co-operation, in land¬ 
lords leading the way, and so indirectly helping themselves. 
WORK ON THE HOME FARM. 
Thunder showers have brought on late-sown Swedes with a rush, so 
that singling has had to be pushed on as men could be spared from the 
harvest fields. There has been very little difficulty about this, as much 
of the corn in southern counties has been carted. So far there is no 
sprouted grain ; better still, the Wheat is so hard and dry that home¬ 
grown samples will closely approach the best imported samples in 
quality. Holders of old Wheat are likely to suffer from this : reports 
of last week’s markets show that they are already doing so, the old crop 
beiDg much neglected and disparaged by buyers. The imperial average 
price on sales returned for the week shows a decline of Id., which may 
in part be accounted for by the increasing quantity of old Wheat 
crowded upon the market. 
Self-binder3 stand pre-eminent this harvest, with corn so erect that the 
work ha3 gone on briskly without hindrance of any sort. As usual the 
gloriously fine hot weather has made some men over-confident, and on 
our long journeys by rail we have at dusk seen acres of Wheat cut and 
tied, but the sheaves have not been set up in shocks. This is wrong, for 
our fickle climate cannot be trusted, and it is a serious matter to have 
the sheaves saturated by a heavy thunder shower. Barley is bright in 
colour, with full plump grain, and good malting samples will be so 
plentiful that prices will probably have a downward tendency. The 
crop is a fine one, which will help many a struggling farmer to pull 
through one more Michaelmas. 
Push on autumn tillage, every hour of fine weather now is a golden 
opportunity to be turned to the best account. Work double tides now ; 
get the land clean, throw it up for winter, and rest when days are short 
and weather broken. Far better to do so than to spin out the ploughing 
throughout the winter—aye, till seed time is upon us in spring, as is so 
frequently done. When the corn is once in the stack leave it alone till 
autumn tillage is over ; do not fritter away fine weather in premature 
corn thrashing, but turn to the land and keep to it till the farm is in 
thoroughly trim condition for the coming winter. 
The time for sowing winter corn is upon us. Do not forget that early 
sowing means early reaping, a crop saved, land cleared in good time for 
autumn tillage. Do not sow an acre of winter corn in soil at all 
deficient in fertility without some manure. For land in fair heart 4 cwt. 
of superphosphate or basic slag per acre is sufficient now ; if it is very 
poor add 1 cwt. of sulphate of ammonia. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Camden Square, London. 
Lat. 51° 32' 40" N.; Long. 0° 8' 0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
Date. 
9 A.M. 
In the Day. 
Rain. 
1892. 
August. 
*■4 rrt _ 1 
Sag 
S “ c 
a o 
O -N 
<# 
■S 
a a cc 
Hygrometer. 
Direc¬ 
tion of 
Wind. 
Temp, 
of soil 
at 
1 foot. 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
Sun. 
On 
Grass. 
Inchs. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
Inchs. 
Sunday .. 21 
30-243 
68-4 
58-9 
S. 
60-8 
76-0 
49-7 
114-0 
46-8 
— 
Monday .. 22 
30-062 
63-1 
58-8 
S.E. 
60-8 
79-2 
49-0 
117-0 
43 2 
_ 
Tuesday .. 23 
29-840 
67-3 
61-9 
E. 
60-6 
78-9 
53-6 
112-3 
48-9 
0-056 
Wednesday 24 
29-783 
65-9 
62-8 
W. 
Gl-5 
76-3 
60-2 
117-3 
56-1 
0-020 
Thursday.. 25 
29-724 
60.5 
58-6 
s.w. 
62-1 
72'6 
58-3 
115-6 
57-3 
0-010 
Friday .. 26 
30-029 
61-8 
58-7 
w. 
61-4 
71-9 
54-2 
120-1 
49-7 
_ 
Saturday .. 27 
29-880 
63-3 
57-9 
s.w. 
60-9 
66-6 
52-7 
90-5 
48-7 
1-710 
29-937 
64-3 
59-4 
61-2 
74-5 
54-0 
112-4 
501 
1 796 
REMARKS. 
21st.—Cloudless early ; more or less haze during the day. 
22nd.—Sunny morning ; liaze and cloud in afternoon. 
23rd.-Warm sunny morning ; cloudy after 3 p.m. ; rain from 6.30 to 7 P.M. 
24th.—Overcast early ; generally sunny after 10 A.M. 
25th.—A little rain early ; occasional sunshine from 11 A.M. to 2 P.M.; slight showers- 
in afternoon, fine evening. 
26th.—Overcast early; sunny after 11 A.M. 
27tli. Occasional sunshine early ; showery after 11 A.M , and continuous heavy rain 
from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., and from 4.30 A.M. till after 9 A.M. on 28tli. 
A warm and fairly fine week, finishing with an exceptionally heavy rain.—G. J, 
Symons. 
