570 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
December  17,  1903. 
who  wants  a  few  acres  freehold,  that  he  may  improve  and  pass 
oii  to  his  heirs.  Ho  is  the  man  that  suffers.  To  begin  with,  the 
small  parcel  of  laud  he  requires  is  always  sold  at  a  price  far 
beyond  its  actual  value.  Yes,  we  know  all  about  that  :  that 
price  is  a  criterion  of  value.  It  is  not!  Tliero  is  such  a  thing 
as  inflated  value.  There  are  so  few  small  lots  in  the  market, 
that  the  competition  is  keen,  too  keen,  to  be  justifiable.  The 
small  man  gets  his  little  plot.  It  will  take  him  all  his  time  to 
make  it  earn  anything  like  a  fair  percentage,  but  that  is  not  all. 
Before  he  becomes  the  actual  possessor  there  are  fees  to  the 
lawyer.s  acting  for  vendor,  as  well  as  the  fee  his  own  representa¬ 
tive  will  require,  and  ice  think  the  exjien’ie  is  far  out  of  pro- 
nortion  to  the  work  done.  We  know,  of  course,  that  there  has 
been  an  improvement  in  the  transfer  of  land,  but  still  there  is 
room  for  far  more  improvement. 
It  is  well  known  that  a  man  will  work  better  for  himself  than 
for  a  master,  and  naturally  he  will  strive  to  improve  his  own 
property  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  and  by  thus  doing  adds  to  the 
health  of  the  comiminitii .  There  is  another  point  we  are  very 
anxious  about  just  at  present.  Some  say  we  are  on  the  eve  of  a 
general  election,  others  pooh,  pooh,  the  idea  altogether.  It  may 
come  upon  us  as  suddenly  as  did  the  last,  and  where  shall  we, 
as  farmers,  be  in  Case  the  party  in  i)ower  will  not  renew  the 
relief  that  has  of  late  been  afforded  in  respect  to  the  rales  laid 
on  agricultural  laud  ?  Most  of  us  will  think  that  if  anything,  we 
shall  want  rather  more  relief.  What  if  we  lose  that  which  we 
have  already  obtained  ?  We  see  to-day  one  generous  landlord 
has  remitted  the  whole  of  the  half  year’s  rent.  Many  may  be 
willing  to  help  their  tenants,  but  very  few  can  afford,  in  justice 
to  their  own  families,  to  do  so.  No  doubt  there  will  be  some 
handsome  returns,  but  we  think  that  we  cannot  fairly  look  to 
landlords  to  do  much  more  than  tliey  have  been  doing,  and  it 
will  very  ill  fit  with  present  times  if  we  are  to  go  back  to  our 
old  and  heavy  ratings. 
^  ^  # 
Now  to  another  subject.  Here  we  are  short-handed.  There 
is  wmrk  to  do,  and  very  fevv  men  that  can  be  found  to  do  it. 
This  district  is  not  peculiar  in  this.  Look  through  any  agricul¬ 
tural  paper,  and  complaints  as  to  the  scarcity  of  men  will  be 
found  to  be  most  general.  Wages  are  good  ;  houses  are  cheap; 
hours  are  short.  Farmers  don’t  do  much  work  by  candle  power. 
This  is  how  we  are  fixed.  Now  turn  to  another  aspect  of  affairs. 
On  Friday,  December  4th,  a  labour  bureau  was  opened  for  the 
unemployed  in  a  large  city  in  the  N.  of  England.  Before  5  p.m., 
1,171  men  had  entered  their  names  as  desirous  of  a  job.  If  the 
Corporation  can  make  work  they  will,  for  good  men,  provide 
employment  for  three  days  in  the  week,  and  pay  11s.  3d., 
preference  being  given  to  married  men  with  families.  Of  course 
we  know  it  is  the  old  story — Impossibility  of  getting  master  and 
man  in  touch  ;  but  surely  this  should  not  be  so  in  these  days  of 
easy  transport.  Why  do  the  men  flock  to  the  towns  ?  Certainly 
not  in  this  case  to  better  themselves.  Of  course  it  will  be  urged 
that  many  of  these  unemployed  would  be  of  no  use  on  the  land. 
There  we  think  is  a  mistake.  The  towns  are  recruited  from  the 
country,  and  they  are  not  submerged  or  lost.  The  Irish  workers 
who  come  over  at  harf est  time,  manage  to  leave  their  wives  and 
families  behind  for  a  season,  and  surely  the  same  might  be  done 
if  these  townsmen  really  wanted  a  job  badly.  We  fancy  they 
have  not  much  stomach  for  dirty,  wet,  cold  field  work. 
We  have  scattered  throughout  the  country  many  experi¬ 
mental  farms ;  some  of  long  standing,  some  comparatively 
modern.  That  they  are  of  service  to  the  cause  of  agriculture, 
few  of  us  doubt ;  but  there  is  a  great  doubt  as  to  whether  they 
might  not  be  even  more  beueficial  than  they  are.  They  cannot 
extend  their  operations  if  short  of  funds,  and  there  is  a  general 
feeling  that  any  supplementary  funds  must  not  be  derived  from 
the  rates.  Here  is  a  great  danger  to  guard  against.  These 
experimental  farms  must  not  be  looked  upon  as  happy  hunting 
grounds  for  professors  with  fads,  who  want  to  work  out  little  pet 
theories.  We  sometimes  wonder  if  the  committees  of  manage¬ 
ment  are  quite  qualified  to  guide  the  professors,  or  whether 
their  management  exists  in  name  only.  We  don’t  want  to 
saddle  ourselves  with  old  meu  of  the  sea,  wdio  choose  the  tune 
while  w’e  pay  the  piper.  There  are  people  crazy  for  anything 
new  and  untried,  or  perhaps  comparatively  untried.  The  fact 
that  a  thing  is  new  is  quite  enough.  The  new  thing  before  the 
public  at  present  is  the  motor,  as  applied  to  field  work.  No 
doubt  it  is  one  of  the  most  useful  of  modern  inventions,  but  we 
are  not  disposed  to  part  with  all  our  shires  at  once  and  invest 
the  money  in  motors.  We  doubt  whether  the  money  would  go 
far  enough  !  However  much  work  a  motor  can  do,  or  however 
quickly,  there  is  one  certain  fact : — it  can’t  be  in  two  places  at 
once,  nor  can  it  be  occupied  on  two  jobs  at  one  and  the  same 
time.  It  may  be  used  to  supplement,  but  not  entirely  to  super¬ 
sede,  horse  power.  A  very  small  lad  can  be  trusted  out  with  a 
cart  and  horse,  to  fetch  a  load  of  Turnips,  but  we  doubt  if  many 
“  big  boys,” — that  is,  inexperienced  farm  men,  could  be  trusted 
Out  with  an  expensive  motor.  We  shall  have  to  have  a  race  of 
mechanical  labourers  trained  before  we  are  ready  for  motor 
power,  and  it  alone. 
Farmers’  sous  and  pupils  may  enjoy  the  management  of  the 
motor  now,  whilst  it  is  a  novelty ;  but  when  the  charm  of 
novelty  has  worn  off,  their  enthusiasm  will  have  paled.  We  have 
found  that  machinery  has  a  way  of  breaking  down  at  critical 
moments,  and  we  have  also  found  nothing  quite  so  bad  to  sell 
as  machinery  that  is  not  up-to-date.  We  doubt  if,  at  a  farm 
sale,  two  or  three  motors  would  make  anything  like  the  money 
they  cost  :  whereas  the  teams  of  draught  hor.ses  are  always  a 
very  convertible  asset.  Until  the  price  of  the  motor  gets  a 
little  lower  (L350),  we  scarcely  would  advise  the  farmer  of  a 
medium-sized  farm  (of  400  acres)  to  sell  his  light  horses  and 
invest  in  one. 
A  great  point  in  favour  of  the  motor  is  that,  on  strong 
tenacious  clays,  there  is  little  treading.  We  do  not  know  the 
exact  proportion  of  strong  v.  medium,  and  light  soils,  but  we 
still  hold  to  the  opinion  of  others,  wiser  than  ourselves,  that  the 
treading  of  these  soils  during  cultivation  by  horses,  is  a  decided 
advantage.  Wheat  must  have  a  solid  seed-bed,  and  to  be  kept 
free  from  the  ravage  of  wireworm,  hence  the  solidity  of  the  soil 
must  be  maintained. 
We  can  afford  to  laugh  at  those  visionaries  who  would  have 
us  cut  corn  and  thresh  it  the  self-same  day,  because  the  seasons 
when  such  operations  would  be  successfully  carried  out  will 
only  come  once  or  twice  in  the  longest  lifetime.  The  writers 
who  suggest  such  things'  must  know  very  little  about  “  condi¬ 
tions.”  However  dry  corn  may  appear  when  led  and  stacked,  it 
invariably  gives  again,  and  there  is  nothing  that  puts  doubtful 
grain  into  such  good  “  fettle,”  as  being  in  a  well-made  stack. 
We  are  told,  too,  we  are  in  the  habit  of  cutting  all  our  corn  too 
green,  hence  the  inability  to  thresh  and  sell  at  once.  If  the 
corn  were  the  whole  and  sole  object,  we  could  afford  to  let  it 
stand  till  dead  ripe  :  in  that  case  the  valuable  straw  would  lose 
a  great  deal  of  its  nutritive  quality;  beside,  too,  a  gale  of  wind 
playing  upon  very  ripe  corn  in  a  few  hours  would  make  it  not 
worth  cutting  or  threshing. 
There  is  another  point,  too,  that  needs  consideration.  If  all 
farmers  threshed  at  once,  the  markets  would  be  flooded  with  in¬ 
different  samples  ;  for  certainly  on  no  farms  we  know,  is  the 
granary  accommodation  equal  to  the  proper  preservation  of  the 
entire  grain  crop :  and  as  one,  or  at  most,  two  days’  threshing, 
fills  the  barn  to  repletion  with  chaff,  a  great  quantity  of  valuable 
food  would  stand  much  chance  of  being  lost  or  wasted. 
Work  on  the  Home  Farm. 
Changes  from  frost  to ‘snow,  from  snow  to  rain,  and  back  again 
to  frost,  have  quite  put  an  end  to  all  ideas  of  finishing  off  the 
Wheat  sowing,  and  if  we  sow  any  more  it  must  be  put  in  early 
in  February.  We  are  able  to  continue  ploughing  lea  for  Potatoes, 
but  the  work  is  harder  for  the  horses  than  it  was.  We  have 
noticed  young  Wheat  showing  above  ground  in  one  or  two  fields. 
One  which  would  otherwise  have  looked  rather  promising  has  been 
cropped  off  by  rabbits  from  a  neighbouring  cover,  which  is  rather 
hard  on  the  tenant  in  these  times. 
On  any  but  the  driest  soils  sheep  are  having  a  bad  time  in 
the  Turnip  fold,  which  is  a  mass  of  batter.  It  seems  folly  to  keep 
sheep  on  Turnips  under  such  conditions,  but  recent  experience  has 
taught  farmers  that  it  is  wise  to  get  their  roots  eaten  off  and  their 
spring  corn  sown  in  good  time.  So  many  late-sown  crops  have  been 
ruined  by  wet  weather  that  everyone  now  is  making  a  special 
effort  to  sow  early.  We  fancy  there  are  not  so  many  spare  roots 
this  year  as  last,  as  Swedes  are  decidedly  on  the  small  side,  and 
as  there  is  plenty  of  grass  in  the  old  pastures,  we  should  prefer  to 
tako  our  sheep  on  to  sound  lair  and  risk  being  late  with  the 
spring  sowing. 
Everyone  is  busy  pig-killing.  Farmers  who  are  not  killing  for 
their  own  use  are  killing  the  pigs  which  form  part  of  the 
wages  of  the  yearly  labourers.  Food  has  been  plentiful,  and  pigs 
are  weighing  well.  A  few  words  on  bacon-curing  may  not  be  out 
of  place.  For  a  large  pig,  4oz  of  saltpetre  should  be  used,  and 
well  rubbed  into  the  meat  before  the  salt  is  put  on.  We  use  a 
large  6cl.  lump  of  salt,  which  is  first  well  crushed.  A  little  is  laid  at 
the  bottom  of  the  salting-tub,  then  the  hams,  after  liaving  been 
well  rubbed  with  saltpetre  and  then  with  salt,  are  laid  with  the  cut 
side  upwards  in  the  tub.  The  shoulders,  which  we  always  sever 
from  the  remainder  of  the  flitch,  are  served  the  .same  way,  the 
flitches  heinc  laid  on  the  top.  A  little  salt  is  laid  on  each  portion, 
but  more  on  the  hams  and  shoulders  than  on  the  flitches.  We 
have  begun  our  Xmas  markets,  but  the  beef  trade  is  disappointing. 
The  mutton  trade  is  good. 
