FIRST HARVESTS.
Harvest has actually and in fact begun. On light land crops ripened " almost in a night," as a farmer said. He did not remember so, surprising an acceleration. All the crops, like the hay crop, though less so, will be light ; and, alas ! we are witnessing a collapse of wheat farming that can scarcely be paralleled in history except at the date when " up horn, down corn " first became a popular doggerel ; and wool mattered supremely. While the - Ministry has a special new exhibit urging the wisdom of growing pure grains of particular sorts, the seed merchants find it more and more difficult, to sell any seed at all, at any rate of wheat. Even last year's bumper crop did not pay. What then of this year's light crop ? The grain should be of good quality, as hard almost as Manitoban ; at any rate in soils where Yeoman II. flourishes. But then the . British farmer, so unjust is fortune, gets little more for the best, quality than the worst.. Indeed, we have seen. thoroughly .. bad stuff sold for chicken food at a higher price than the best for human consumption. British wheat is deader than mummy
wheat ! Doubtless there are other crops ; but the habit of taking wheat as the very core of the farm is almost in- eradicable in Eastern England. One of the very best farmers I know 'said to me three years ago, " If I can't grow wheat I give up farming." His 400 acres of Wheat are now reduced to 'about fifty ; and no wheat will be sold off the farm. 'Happily he' continues farming, in spite of losses, without breaking the letter of his oath.
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