Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / Oct. 24, 1912, edition 1 / Page 2
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wm Page Two THE CAROLINA UNION FARMER [Thursday, October 24, 1912- saw a splendid field of tomatoes, and when we remarked on it, Mr. Berry told ns how he got 800 bushels from an acre last year. He plowed very early, and then he plowed under very deeply thirty tons of manure to the acre. Then he harrowed in 1,000 pounds of a fertilizer containing about five per cent of nitrogen, ten per cent of phosphorus and four per cent of potassium. We noted a few acres of cabbage, which, as Mr. Ber ry said, illustrated the advantage of living near a city of 7,000,000 peo ple. London dealers had come down and offered him $100 an acre for the privilege of cutting the cabbage. Along the roadside was an English walnut tree from which Mr. Berry claims to have harvested $25 worth of nuts. All in all, there are about 1,000 acres in the Berry farm. Sixty men are continuously employed, at a wage of $6 a week. Wages are rather high er than in the rest of England, but even at that, $6 a week without board is very low. The Berry house and grounds are more beautiful than those of the average English farm. The stone house is covered with vines and surrounded with many kinds of fiowers, shrubs, trees, etc. To one side is an open lawn marked out for a grass tennis court. Everywhere the edges are kept neatly trimmed, and not a sign of trash or disorder is anywhere to be seen. To one side the lawn overlooks hop field after hop field across the river to the far side; here we were served with our customary refreshments. As we drove back along the splen did English road to Canterbury, we felt we had spent a good day. We had seen what a good English farm er can do if he wants to. Mr. Berry is one of ten or twelve children brought up on a farm of fifty acres. He didn’t know much about farming when he started in, but all the time he was looking for some one to teach him. When the agricultural experi ment station was started in Kent, he was the first to as fkor help, and he was the first to ask for help, prac tical experiments. He started with practically nothing, and now must be very wealthy. The son will no doubt, follow his father in the man agement of the big farm. Already he has graduated from the agricul tural college, and now is managing a large part of the farm. The Berrys run part of the farm, and part they rent. I asked Mr. Berry which he preferred as a money-making propo sition, a small farm or a large one. He replied that the large farm prop erly cultivated would make the most money. He thought the farm should be at least sixty acres in size. Leaving Canterbury, we soon found ourselves among the cliffs of Dover, waiting for the boat to take us the twenty-one miles to France. Alto gether we spent two weeks in Eng land, and a large part of that time we were in cities and not on farms. Nevertheless, I think we have a gen eral idea of English farm conditions. We know that English farms are far more neatly kept than American farms. There are flowers in the windows and around the dooryards, vines over the houses, hedges always neat and trim. No weeds are along the roadside. We know that the English farmer gets almost twice as much from each acre as the Iowa farmer. For Instance, during the last ten years the average acre of wheat in England has produced thir ty-three bushels, as against about sixteen bushels in Iowa. The aver age potato yield is seventy-seven bushels In Iowa and 200 bushels in Great Britain. Good English pas ture keeps one cow to the acre from May to November. To keep an Iowa cow takes nearly two acres of Iowa pasture. But though the English far mer gets nearly twice as much from every acre, he does not get all of this increased yield as profit I don’t know the exact figures, but I supose that he uses $100 worth of fertilizer for every dollar’s worth used in Iowa. He buys phosphate, potash salts and nitrate, and he saves the manure. As a rough estimate, I would say that the English farmer puts more than twice as much work on every acre. But though farm hands get about half as much as ours, the expense of labor is much the same. The Englishman has better stock, and he feeds it ^better. He knows how to breed stock because he and his father before him have been in the business all their lives, and they have learned to understand animals. He is a good feeder because he has fine pasture, because he can raise turnips, and mangels for winter feed ing, because he can buy cottonseed cake, oil cake, and other rich feeds cheaply from America and China, and because he has been so long in the game that he knows just how to play it. England, Scotland and Wales, together, have almost exactly the same amount of land in farms as in Iowa, but there are two and a half times as many farmers. There are 156 acres in the average Iowa farm, but only sixty in the average farm of Great Britain. The average British farm carries about the same number of beef cattle and dairy cows, one- half as many horses, ten times as many sheep, and one-sixth as many hogs as the average Iowa farm. A fourth of the average Iowa farm is in pasture; nearly a half of the British farm is in pasture. We had little chance to talk with the smaller farm er, but got the impression that farm ing in England was not Very profit able, but during the last ten years things are getting better. Forty years ago there was nearly half again as much cultivated land in England as there is to-day. Then the Ameri can farmer began sending his wheat and corn over to England. We grow grain without fertilizer on cheap land with machinery, while the English man used high-priced land, much fertilizer, and hand labor. So it came to pass that the English farm ers grow grain only on their very best land, and the rest is seeded to grass. During the last ten years our land has become higher inj)rice and lower in fertility. We h$:re had to use more hand labor, and have had to charge more for our grain. For this reason English farmers are be coming more prosperous. They can beat us at the game of producing big yields on small areas. It looks as if it was time we asked the English farmer how it is that he makes two blades of grass grow where we have but one. In Iowa every other farmer you meet owns his own farm. In Great Britain six out of every seven farmers are tenants. Some men think tenancy a bad thing, but the English farmers don’t think so. They claim that they can make more mon ey as tenants than as owners. But being a tenant in England is different from being a tenant in Iowa. Eng lish tenants stay on the same farm for fifteen or twenty years, and in many cases from generation to gen eration. Many families have rented the same farm for hundreds of years. When a tenant does move in Eng land, he must leave the land in as good condition as when he first came on, and if he can leave it in better condition, the landlord pays him for the difference, if he puts up build ings or lays a tile drainage system, or spreads manure, he gets paid for that. A special board of men is elected in every locality to see that both tenant and the landlord are sat isfied. Good roads and neatness are really the best things English farm ers have to be proud of. Perhaps both the roads and the time given to keep things in good shape pay, but even if they do not, they are well ON TRIAL FREE FOR Pick out stove from the 400 in the Kalamazoo Stove Book—test it FREE for 30 days—return it if not all — we claim. That’s our offer. We pay freight both ways—give you 360 days’ approval test—$100,000 Bank Bond Guaran tee and all on latest im proved stoves — glass We Ship Stove the Day Your .Order, Ar- oven doors, etc. Cash or Credit^ I rives Mail a Postal for Reduced Fac- tory Prices Write today for the stove book with 400 stoves and our complete offer. Learn how to save from $5 to $40 on • your stove. We make furnaces \ too—install it yourself if you wish —complete instructions. A«lc snenial cataloe. Over i Ask for special catalog. 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The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Oct. 24, 1912, edition 1
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