Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/217



HIS is only farming in a common sense fashion, or rather, using your own sense and reason when putting in crops, studying the soil, its capabilities, properties and suitability for certain crops. When a practical farmer buys land for farming purposes he first examines it thoroughly, drains it if necessary, and manures the impoverished portions. The rotation of crops is very little understood by many farmers who live away from large centres of civilization. Too often in these colonies a man simply buys land and becomes a farmer because he thinks he would like the life, or because he has several sons who would be able to help him. In many instances he knows nothing beyond the fact that if he plants a single grain of corn it will grow, and by-and-bye produce a few cobs of corn, or that if he plants a crop of oats, when it grows he can make a fine stack of hay by drying it in the sun. The ignorance of some so called farmers is most comical, and, unhappily for themselves, these are the men who so often come to ruin after a few years. Just as they are beginning to know a little from experience they go under through not having enough money to carry on. It is for this reason I have in another part of this work advised the young farmer from the old country to take service with an experienced man in the first instance, and until he begins to understand the country and know the seasons.

The rotation of crops means—taking a surface crop, such as wheat, oats, maize, &c., off the land, and then ploughing and planting a root crop, say turnips, potatoes, &c., &c. One of the best ways to manure a field impoverished by successive cropping without rest or manure is by sowing broadcast some such crop as peas, vetches, turnips, or any quick growing tender leaf plant, and when it is a few weeks old, or when the plants have leafed out well, plough it under and leave the field fallow till the following