The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-07-31 00:00:00

HIGH FARMING IN ESSEX.

A large number of gentlemen engaged in or inter-
ested in agriculture visited on Saturday the farms, ex-
tending over 1,700 acres, in the occupation of Mr.
Collinson Hall, in the neighbourhood of Brentwood.
After luncheon Mr. Hall gave some interesting parti-
culars respecting his farm, and in the course of his
speech said that the next move was that landlords
must go halves with the tenants in building good home-
steads ; they 'Must find all necessary drain pipes, they
must allow them to stub up hedges, small fields to be
thrown into larger ones, and all unnecessary old pollard
trees to be felled, suggestions which Mr. Mechi had
made thirty years ago. To attain the result he had
achieved he had bought a large amount of foreign oats,
maize, millet, oil cake, and even sugar, which from
its cheapness had last year been of great benefit
to agriculturists. As a consequence the manure
on his farm had been of very different value to what
it would have been if he had tried to feed stocks on
the worthless hay of last year's crop. He was now in
a position to compete in the production of meat 'and
milk with the foreigners. He preferred buying foreign
corn to artificial manure, for knowing what he fed
with hp was always sure of the quality of the result-
ing manure, though he was ready to admit the value
of artificial manure at certain seasons. Early rye,
winter barley, and tares were grown and fed to the
stalled cows, and he proposed to go in for market
gardening and strawberry growing.
Mr. Mechi complimented Mr. Hall on being
well in the van of agricultural progress. Referring to
the panic about the overwhelming supplies we were
to receive from America, he said he did not partici-
pate in that panic. He recollected under the old
system mutton elling at Gd., for which they now ob-
tained is. per lb. They had suffered from a
succession of bad seasons which could not be
controlled, but there were many things they
could and ',must control if they were successfully to
meet the competition they would encounter from
abroad. They must improve their ways, and one of
the serious difficulties in that respect was to give up
prejudices and attachment to old customs. There
must be co-operation on the part of landlord and
tenant such as that existing between Mr. Hall and
his landlord, for unless they pulled together nothing
could be done. There was plenty of the pic-
turesque but no profit in the farming of that
part of Essex until they had got upon Mr. Hall's
farms, where the landlord had been persuaded to
cut down trees and grow corn instead of wood.
Taken as a whole, the agriculture of England was
inconsistent with the best management and the real-
isation of the highest profit from the land. Gentlemen
there that day from Northumberland and Scotland
had looked with amazement at the wretched little
fields and multiplied hedge-rows, after their own en-
closures of 150 acres in extent, and had said to him,
with perfect truth, that they could not farm at all as
the Essex men were trying to do about there. Land-
lords and tenants must give up old prejudices, throw
small fields into large ones, and do in agriculture as
was done in manufactures—make the ornamental and
unprofitable give place to the profitable. For.ty years
ago he had illustrated his principles by sweeping away
every tree and fence except the outside
.one, and
now space was devoted to profitable production which
before had been devoted to hedge-rows and woods.
Mr. Hall's case was a good example that would have
to be generally followed if British farmers. were to
make a satisfactory profit in face of the exist'ng and
the coming competition. For these reforms, of course,
'the co-operation of the landlord was necessary. Cor-
dially endorsing all Mr. Hall had said in favour of
steam cultivation and stall feeding, and compliment-
ing him on his neat production and splendid crops,
Mr. Mechi concluded by saying that his test
of good farming was the production of meat
per ucre, because just in proportion was the
production of manure on which the character of
the crops depended. General improvement in the
agriculture of the country was hopeless till men gave
up the customs of their grandfathers and adapted
hemselves to new conditions. His views had been
Jefore the country now for forty years. He had never
altered them, and though he had made many farmers
angry, he was happy to know that he had also made
many change their ideas, and in the few years that
were left to him he should continue in his old course.

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