Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/188

 he has many of these visitors, would find himself out of pocket, for white men cannot or will not live as Chinamen do. So I only make the suggestion to our young farmer, who will know whether he can afford it or not.

There are several ways of selling the wood, he can either cut and stack it in cords,—a cord of wood being eight feet long, four feet wide, and four feet high—and sell it on the ground by the cord; or he can make an arrangement with some wood seller to send his own cutters and carts and merely pay him so much for what he takes. Or, if he is very enterprising and has the money to spare for the outlay, he can buy a cart and horse, or a couple of horses, and cut billet wood and sell it in the town. His milk customers might take wood from him, or recommend others to him. This plan will need some outlay and possibly the engagement of an additional man if the work of clearing and getting the farm in order is to go on. He must weigh all these plans well in his own mind before going into them. The horses will be useful to him hereafter, in fact he will have to have a couple of horses very soon for hauling his fencing stuff, &c., but if he decides to sell firewood himself, that is retail it in the town, he will want more than two horses to do all the work, and his wood will only fetch from six to eight shillings per load. Of course, if he is close to the town and has two carts going he might sell four loads a day while his wood lasts, if he sells the wood on the ground he will have no trouble, unless he thinks it worth his while to keep a man to cut and do nothing else. The best arrangement I think for his future prospects is that by which he can just sell the wood he has cut down to some carter, who will send his own men to cut it into billets and take it away, paying him for the right to remove it. When he makes this arrangement he should insist that the cutters cut up and stack all the small stuff and branches, ready for burning when dry. Of course, if he has the money to lay out in carts and horses he will do well to sell his wood himself, as it is a very profitable industry selling wood. But then if my young farmer has sufficient money to spend on carts and horses he will be able to start his farming venture in a very different way to this. I am writing for and to an imaginary young farmer whose means are of the smallest. Many of my economies would be unnecessary to a man who has money to spend.

Clearing and stumping is the most tiresome work of all to be done on new ground, so if our man can manage to get land already cleared and stumped he will be wise to do so. He should look out for a selection that has been forfeited, there are often such to be got, many of them partially improved even to the extent of being fenced. But I am surmising that my young farmer has to go