COUNTRY LIFE
HERE and'tfiere is to be seen a field which was cut, cleared and ploughed before the first day of August. There do exist records of harvests which began in June—I have the details of one such in Hertfordshire—but in some regards the harvest of this year is the earliest in the 'records if the whole process is taken into consideration. In other words it is the earliest harvest since full mechanisation was achieved. It is in fact now possible to cut dean out the old period of stubbleto mow, thresh and plough all at the same time. Such possibilities are tempting some planners to urge the enlargement of farms and the conversion of fields into prairie by the grubbing of hedges. Speed, of course, is of great value and the saving of the total of labour ; but after all there is no question that mixed farming is essential and monoculture fatal. Where any animals are kept both the hedge and the human touch.keep their old virtue. The arialogy between the farm and the factory has been overworked of late, in the wake of the harvester-thresher and the news of yet more complete instruments. Farming must remain a way of life in this little island of paddocks. The word, of course, in England means a smallish homely field. In Australia it may mean a wire-enclosed area of a square mile or so.
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