160 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 Mar., 1902. 
house and the eave of the chimney lead into a wooden trough to prevent the 
rain entering the house. Two handy young fellows will build such a hut in 
less than a week, and they will not be long in running up a rough stockyard 
and building a shed for the cowbail. 
Now you are ready for a start, and may set to work at serub felling. In 
doing this, be careful as much as possible to fell the trees so that they lie in the 
same direction, not piled up higgedly-piggedly anyhow. ‘To effect this you must 
first go through the scrub and cut all the vines close to the ground, and also 
overhead; then cut down all undergrowth and saplings up to 3 inches in 
diameter. Now you have a clear space to swing your axe at the big timber. 
Some people half-cut through a dozen trees and then drop a bigger tree on them, 
which brings them all down. Do not do that. It appears to be a saving of 
labour ; but your half-cut trees are not clear of the stumps. They continue to 
draw nourishment from them, and hence will not dry quickly. Besides that, 
they do not lie flat on the ground, and this prevents a good burn off. Lop every 
tree, laying the branches as flat as possible. When you have about 5 acres 
felled in this manner, leave it to dry and tackle another portion, leaving a good 
width of standing timber between the old and the new fall. In about six or 
eight weeks, the first lot will be ready to burn. Do not wait till the leaves 
have dropped off, or there is sure to be a bad burn. Choose a night when a 
fair breeze—not a gale—is blowing, and fire the scrub at different points, 
because this causes a series of draughts which help to make a good burn-off. 
By good management and attention to all the details here given, the fire will 
make a clean sweep of everything but some of the biggest logs, which will, 
however, present no obstacle to planting operations, and which may be got rid 
of by and by. 
Now, suppose you have burnt off in August, you: can at once set to work 
and get in a crop of. maize. The soil is, of course, a solid mass of roots, but 
they are soft, and a No. 3 hoe will easily cut through them. Plant the maize, 
three seeds ina hole, at a distance of 5 feet or, better, 6 feet between the 
rows, and 8 feet between the plants. Drop in a few pumpkin seeds at intervals 
of about 30 feet. You have now two crops underway, and in the rich, deep, 
vegetable soil they will grow with marvellous rapidity, even in a dry season. 
You will have no weeds to trouble you with the first crop, so your whole time 
can now be devoted to getting ready for your dairy stock and to fencing in the 
piniee land. By the way, never fence scrub till you have cleared it, or the 
alling trees and fire will destroy the fence. The maize, as it grows, will throw 
out a number of suckers, which must be removed and used for fodder for the 
cows, which you may now buy according to your means, as you have a certain 
amount of feed for them as well as the grass in the paddock. 
Do not make the mistake of buying a lot of poor stock. Start with a few 
really good Jerseys or Ayrshires, and a good boar and a couple of sows—Berk- 
shires for preference. 
The arable land is, of course, a mass of stumps; so you cannot profitably 
grow lucerne, but you may scatter seeds of the Paspalum dilatatum, which will 
soon furnish you with abundance of excellent feed. If you-have time, you 
should get in at least an acre of potatoes. To do this break up the land with 
the hoe in rows 2 feet wide and 2 feet apart, cutting through all the roots and 
clearing them out. In less than four months you will have an additional 
supply of food for the pigs. 
That is about all you need in the way of instructions for starting a serub 
farm. In about three years the stumps may be taken out, for they will nearly 
all have rotted. Once this is done, you are ready to give up hard work and 
take to horses and implements. There is no doubt that commencing such a 
farm means a great deal of hard work from daylight to dark. But, if you mean 
to succeed, stick to it. Don’t run off to town at every opportunity; and 
although cricket and football are manly and useful games, don’t indulge too 
much in them, for every day off the farm is a dead loss to you. Young men 
starting farm life on their own account should be careful to avoid the public- 
