A FAMOUS FARMER.
All who are interested in the fortune of the land will share the grief of his many friends at the death of Mr. Richard Tanner, author of a pioneer farm of which I have several times written here and in a pamphlet. Some years ago Mr. Strauss took over a large half-derelict acreage by Kingston Bagpuze and put it into Mr. Tanner's hands. He intensified almost the whole area with singular success and with real imagination ; created almost the first hop-garden known in Berkshire ; and it flourished peculiarly even when compared with the produce of Kent and Worcester. He grew crops of grain and sugar-beet of scarcely credible yield ; and, more than this, devoted a number of acres to the more intensive crops, to strawberries, asparagus, fruit grown on cordons, and market garden stuff. The animal husbandry was as good as the vegetable ; and the Jersey herd was in the way to become famous. He was a pioneer in the sale of farm produce by the roadside, taking many hundred pounds a year by such direct sale. Those acres must be producing several hundred more per cent. than in the old days and .all the costings were worked out with precise thoroughness; the farm served both as a model and an inspiration. I doubt whether any farm in England was better worth a pilgrimage, as many pilgrims to the house of Mr. and Mrs. Tanner came to believe.
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