m 
Journal  or  horticulture  anb  cottage  gardener. 
February  25,  18§7. 
seasons  and  low  prices.  Now  the  seasons  we  cannot  alter,  all  we 
can  do  ia  to  make  the  best  of  whatever  weather  comes,  and  strive 
by  extra  labour  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  case — take  advantage 
of  any  temporary  change,  and  never  waste  a  minute. 
As  to  prices,  well  this  is  a  wide  subject,  and  many  “  savants  ” 
shake  their  heads,  but  we  are  of  opinion  there  is  a  little  hope  of 
better  things,  much  rests  with  ourselves.  Can  we  lessen  the  cost 
of  production  ?  The  easiest  way  to  do  that  is  to  have  a  clever 
capable  man  on  a  large  holding,  with  a  well  equipped  complement 
of  labour-saving  appliances. 
A  mixed  occupation  seems  to  afford  a  partial  solution,  and  on 
that  class  and  on  tillage  farms  more  stock  can  be  raised  than  on 
the  very  best  purely  grass  farms,  and  stock  is  now  our  sheet  anchor. 
A  large  occupier  has  the  best  means  of  attracting  the  best  class  of 
labourers — a  good  wage,  comfortable  house  and  garden,  and  in 
most  cases  labour  is  an  inheritance.  We  hear  of  little  change,  men 
are  kept  on  from  year  to  year,  the  masters  know  the  value  of 
faithful  service,  and  the  men  the  value  of  regular  well-paid  labour, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  kindly  feeling  existing  between  the  big  house 
and  the  small  cottage.  We  have  men  in  our  employ  whose  term 
of  service  exceeds  twenty  years,  and  we  hope  we  are  far  from  the 
end  yet.  Men  of  this  class  are  great  factors  in  making  a  farm 
profitable. 
Now  another  item.  Stock  must  be  well  fed,  and  the  “  menu  ” 
is  a  long  one.  An  engine  for  grinding,  pulping,  chaff-cutting, 
water  pumping,  soon  pays  for  itself.  On  some  farms  a  portable 
threshing  engine  is  hired  ;  with  it  should  be  used  a  chaff-cutter, 
and  as  the  straw  is  threshed  it  should  be  cut  and  stored.  Two 
extra  hands  will  do  this  well,  and  save  much  time  and  further 
expenditure. 
As  long  as  cereals  are  cheap  we  are  greatly  in  favour  of 
grinding  home  produce.  Straw,  too,  may  largely  take  the  place 
of  hay  ;  but  to  obtain  the  greatest  nutritive  value  this  straw 
should  be  cut  before  being  dead  ripe  ;  and  as  peat  moss  is  so 
generally  used  as  litter,  and  with,  as  our  cow  man  says,  the  best 
results,  there  should  be  plenty  of  straw  for  stock.  The  large 
farmer,  too,  has  a  great  pull  over  the  small  one  in  another  respect 
i  e  ,  the  closer  supervision  of  labour.  It  pays  to  have  good  fore¬ 
men  ;  a  master  cannot  be  everywhere,  and  working  hours  are 
short. 
The  large  farmer  still  needs  much  in  the  way  of  better  protec¬ 
tion  for  hi*  stock,  but  this  is  being  remedied  daily.  Take  a  *mall 
holder.  His  capital  does  not  allow  him  to  purchase  the  desirable 
amount*  of  feeding  stuffs  and  tillages,  and  often,  poor  fellow, 
through  very  ignorance  he  gets  robbed  buying  the  cheaper  article, 
which  a  little  education  would  tell  him  was  fearfully  dear  in  the 
long  run.  He  knows  nothing  of  buying  on  analysis,  and  he  is  a 
ready  prey  to  the  first  unscrupulous  “muck”  merchant  he  meets. 
As  to  labour,  not  wanting  it  all  the  year  round,  he  has  to  take 
men  who  delight  in  “catch  work,”  and  are  not  very  fond  of  that. 
He  has  no  labour-saving  appliances  ;  he  works  day  and  night  to 
achieve  what  his  richer  neighbour  can  accomplish  in  half  the  time  ; 
hi*  head  of  stock,  too,  is  small,  and  a  loss  among  it  is  severely  felt. 
We  were  very  sorry  for  one  of  the*e  small  men  the  other  day, 
who  told  us  all  his  corn  had  been  spoilt  by  the  wet  harvest  (he 
was  on  a  Carr  farm — good  land,  but  backward),  half  his  lambs 
had  died,  in  a  great  measure  from  eating  unnutritious  grassy  foodt 
and  his  stock  losses  mounted  up  to  £30  for  about  four  months. 
I  his  was  a  man  who  had  been  a  capital  foreman — father  before 
him,  so  valued  by  his  late  master  that  he  had  let  him  his  little 
holding  for  life  on  most  advantageous  terms. 
vVhere  a  small  holding  is  most  profitable  it  must  be  within 
easy  reach  of  a  good  market,  and  the  wife  must  be  even  a  better 
manager  in  her  department  and  cleverer  than  her  husband  ;  but  at 
best,  under  most  favourable  conditions,  the  work  i*  arduous,  the 
pay  poor,  and  with  all  the  good  will  in  the  world  the  best  is  not 
made  of  the  land. 
WORK  ON  THE  HOME  FARM. 
The  weather  has  become  mild  and  spring-like,  the  blackbirds  are 
singing,  and  rooks  are  banging  around  their  old  quarters  in  a  way  sugges¬ 
tive  of  nest-building  at  an  early  date.  To  farmers  short  of  winter  keep, 
which  list  practically  includes  a  very  great  majority  all  over  the  country, 
the  prospect  of  a  mild  and  forward  spring  is  most  welcome.  All  that  is 
now  wanted  is  a  cessation  of  the  wet  weather.  Wheats  have  been  almost 
living  in  water  ever  since  they  were  sown.  Such  conditions  are  never 
favourable  to  the  production  of  a  robust  plant,  and  on  wet  lands  the 
plants  look  very  wiry.  On  medium  and  dry  soils,  however,  Wheat  is 
looking  well,  and  quite  forward  enough  for  the  time  of  year.  As  soon 
as  the  land  is  dry  enough  it  should  be  rolled,  and  as  soon  as  the  least 
sign  of  weeds  is  noticed  a  light  harrowing  must  be  given.  Weeds  are 
easily  killed  when  small,  but  if  they  once  get  well  established  nothing 
but  a  hoe  will  really  eradicate  them.  This  is  especially  the  case  with 
the  Poppy,  a  great  pest  on  sandy  soils,  but  easily  killed  before  it  attains 
its  third  leaf. 
We  see  a  few  lambs  about,  but  lambing  is  not  general  enough  to 
give  a  report  upon.  Sheep  have  done  fairly  well  on  Turnips  consider¬ 
ing  the  very  wet  lair  they  have  had.  Many  hoggs  (hoggets)  are  being 
marketed  now  in  the  wool,  which,  if  Turnips  had  been  more  plentiful, 
would  have  been  clipped  in  April.  Will  this  have  much  effect  on  the 
trade  later  on  ?  It  would  twenty  years  ago  ;  but  now,  we  suppose,  the 
foreigner  will  level  up  the  supply. 
A  few  more  fine  days  and  drilling  of  spring  corn  will  become  general 
on  all  but  the  lightest  soils.  Oats  will  soon  go  in  well  enough,  but  a 
warm  and  good  seed  bed  is  necessary  for  Barley  if  it  is  to  do  well.  We 
should  advise  getting  Oats  in  first,  and  letting  the  Barley  wait  for  March 
winds  and  a  more  powerful  sunshine.  “  A  peck  of  March  dust  is  worth 
a  king’s  ransom,”  is  an  old  saying  among  northern  farmers ;  and  it  is 
no  great  exaggeration  if  the  value  of  a  dry  seed  bed  for  Barley  »§  fully 
taken  into  account. 
Work  at  the  fences  must  be  completed  now  as  rapidly  as  possible,  for 
the  sap  will  soon  begin  to  flow,  and  hedges  cut  too  late  are  much 
weakened  by  undue  bleeding. 
We  are  killing  our  last  pigs  for  curing.  The  first  week  in  March  is 
the  latest  date  at  which  it  is  safe  to  cure  anything  but  very  small 
weights.  _ 
OUR  LETTER  BOX. 
Liquid  Manure  for  Grass  Land  ( Subscribsr ). — The  drainings 
of  piggeries  and  cow  sheds  are  excellent  for  grass  land,  but  are  very 
variable  in  value,  as  sometimes  they  are  little  better  than  water  and  at 
other  times  almost  entirely  urine.  Of  course,  there  is  a  difference  in  the 
mode  of  collecting,  for  when  the  tank  c°.n  receive  nothing  bat  the  neat 
drainings  it  will  not  vary  so  much  as  when  washing  or  rain  water  also 
run  into  the  tank.  These  are  matters  upon  which  we  can  form  no 
opinion  ;  therefore  judgment  must  be  exerci»ed,  for  neat  drainings  will 
burn  the  grass  unless  put  on  when  the  ground  is  moist  and  during  the 
prevalence  of  showery  weather.  In  the  case  of  such  drainiDgs  and  in 
ordinary  weather  we  have  found  it  necessary  to  dilute  with  two  parts 
water  to  prevent  browning  the  gras*  in  summer  time.  In  the  winter 
time  we  used  it  neat,  applying  whenever  the  weather  was  mild,  for  it  ia 
no  use  putting  it  on  when  the  ground  is  frozen,  and  the  whole  ground 
given  a  dressing  in  due  course,  or  as  far  as  it  would  go  for  the  hay  crop 
or  grazing  purposes  before  April.  After  that  time  it  can  only  be  used 
on  grazing  land,  always  in  showery  weather,  or  with  an  early  prospect 
of  rain.  After  hay  cutting  we  have  used  it  with  considerable  advantage, 
"cows  always  preferring  sweet  to  sour  grass,  and  thrive  better  in  every 
way. 
METEOROLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS. 
Oamden  Square,  London. 
Lat.  51°  32' 40"  N. ;  Long.  0°  8/  0"  W.;  Altitude  111  feet. 
Date. 
9  A.M. 
In  the  Day. 
1897. 
|  Barometer 
at  32°,  and 
|  Sea  Level. 
Hygrometer. 
Direc¬ 
tion  of 
Temp, 
of  soil 
at 
1  foot. 
Shade  Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature 
5 
OS 
03 
February. 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Wind. 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
Sun. 
On 
Grass. 
Sunday  ...  14 
Inchs. 
29-992 
deg. 
47-5 
deg. 
46-1 
W. 
deg. 
417 
deg. 
53-3 
deg. 
40-8 
deg. 
78-6 
deg. 
41-4 
Inchs. 
Monday  ..  15 
30-307 
450 
44  6 
N. 
42-2 
46-1 
441 
481 
35-9 
0-023 
Tuesday  . .  16 
80-627 
39-3 
37-6 
N.E. 
41-1 
44-7 
36  9 
48-9 
28-6 
— 
Wednesday  17 
30*555 
35  7 
35-2 
N  W. 
39-8 
47-5 
32-1 
62-9 
26-9 
— 
Thursday..  18 
80-347 
393 
38-6 
S.W. 
38-1 
53-3 
29-4 
82-1 
23-2 
— 
Friday  . ,  19 
30-295 
46  4 
45-9 
S.W. 
39-8 
50-1 
39-3 
51-9 
33-3 
0-211 
Saturday  ..  20 
80-187 
47-2 
46'9 
S.W. 
42-0 
53-7 
46-2 
68-0 
44-3 
0-060 
30-330 
42-9 
422 
40-7 
49-8 
33-4 
62-9 
33  2 
0-294 
REMARKS. 
14th.— Overcast  early,  fine  and  generally  sunny  from  11  a.m.  to  3  P.M.,  and  cloudy 
after. 
15th.—  Overcast,  with  occasional  drizzle. 
16th.—  High  smoke  fog  all  morning,  clearing  about  noon;  fair  afternoon.  Lunar  halo 
at  night. 
17th.— Bright  sun  all  day,  but  slight  smoke  fog  till  about  11  A.M.;  fine  night. 
18th.— Bright  sunshine  throughout. 
19th. — Dull,  drizzly  and  rainy  all  day. 
20th.— Continuous  rain  or  drizzle  till  11  AM.;  sunny  in  afternoon.  Solar  halo  at 
3.30  p.m. 
A  fine  mild  week,  but  with  grass  frosts  on  three  mornings. — G.  J.  Symons. 
