The Opelousas courier., 1890-11-22
ANTIPODEAN FARM LIFE.
| coMFoRTABLE EXISTENCE OF THE
NEW ZEALAND SETTLER.
The Bush Farmers a Race of Giants
Purchasing Land on Easy

Purchasing Land ON Easy
Terms-Snug Farmhouses.
For solid comfort and quiet enjoy
ment of life, there could hardly be a
more enviable lot than that OF a bush
farmer in New Zealand. The climate is
truly temperate. The greatest summer
heat never exceeds eighty degrees, and
there is SO little frost in winter that ten
der plants-like geraniums and hello
-tropes-remain cut and actually blossom
all the year round. Yet it is not at all
an e~nervating climate. The bush-farm-
ers are a race of giants, and all domestic
animals grow to a great size, n are OF
prime quality.
The bush-farmer usually buys his lane
from the Government, on deferred pay
ments, or else gets a perpetual lease.
That means that he pays a very low
rent for it until he has saved enough
money to make it his own, when ne
paws from SIS to SO an acre for it, and
| gets a title guaranteed from the Govern
| ment. which cannot afterward be ques-
| toned by anybody. He can buy from
twenty acres to $50. Most Of the bush
farms are about $50 to 200 acres, and
| that makes a very nice little property IN
deed.
The land, when bought, is covered
with what is called "virgin bush"-tsat
is, primeval forest, cypress and yeW
trees. 100 feet or $50 feet high, with a
dense underground of smaller vegetation,
tangled and matted together by canes and
wild vines and creeping brambles. 1t is
all very lovely to look at, but it has to
be got rid of before the land can be used,
| and unless there is a sawmlll handy,
| where the timber can be sold, the only
| thing to do with it Is to fell it and burn
it. This takes two years beforei it is thor
| oughly done, but by that time the land
which is exceedingly rich-is covered
with a magnificent crop of grass, and the
farmer is already in a position to start
his dairy and to rear young stock for
market.
The bush farmer builds his own house
of totara slabs, with the rugged. brown
bark left on, and a good roof of thatch,
made of the rushes which abound on the
edge of tie bush. Timber costs nothing,
30 he need not stint himself for space.
He generally begins with four good-sized
rooms, besides a loft overhead, and a
cooks hut outside. He makes his WI
furniture, too, unless he has some house
hold goods which he brings with him in
a bullock dray. Many of til farmhouses
in the bush are extremely mug inside,
with every domestic convenience, and all
! sorts of little comforts and refine
ments. In the rougher ones, the furni-
ture is limited to plain tables and
benches of sawn timber, with hunks
against the wall to sleep in, and the
cooking utensils are only two in number
"a frying-pan and a chilly or tin pot,
for boiling or stewing. But even such
primitive habitations as these are by no
means to be despised. They are warm
and wholesome, and when kept clean are
really very comfortable. Outside, the
bush-farmer usually plants some scarlet
geraniums, h~oneysuckles and climbing
roses, which soon spread all over the
house and convert its rough slabs and
thatch into a bower of beauty.
Food abounds on bush-farms, and the
universal rule there is for men, women
and children to eat three square meat
meals a day. The bush is full of wild
cattle, wild pigs, wild goats and wild
birds, SO that there is no butcSesss bill
to pay, and the larder is always supplied
with plenty of the pest at the cost of a
charge of powder and shot. Then every
creek swarms with eels-which are a
~favorite article of diet-and an excellent
vegetable, called Maori cabbage, grows
all around. All that the farmer has to
buy is flour, sugar and tea, and these are
10 be got cheaply enough at the nearest
village store and carried up to the farm
on a pack-horse, or on the farmers own
back. The sturdy folks there think
kpothing of carrying a "swag," weighing
100 or $50 pounds, for tifteen or twenty
miles in a day. The farmhouse is US
uallys well stocked with hams, bacon,
smoked beef or mutton, and all descrip-
ton of stores; and if any number of Wis
itors arrive. they are heartily welcomed,
and pressed to cat and drink as much as
they like.
When once the bush is cleared and the
land paast for, the profits OF the farm are
considerable, and the bankers say some OF
the snuggest accounts they nave are those
&c Al, h,,,I, farn,orc Qnce.1- Week.