Country Life
REVIVED HARVESTS.
It has been a liberal education to walk about the farms, not least the small holdings of West Lancashire, these first sunny days of harvest. By some miracle the grain crops are erect, have been cut and carried quickly and will certainly yield well. If you commiserate with the farmers on the price they say the same thing : " We do not grow to sell." A very large proportion of the grain is grown for home con- sumption. It is regarded as fodder, not food, and as a source of straw for the stock to tread into manure. The crops grown alongside the grain, chiefly potato and cabbage, are for sale, and unlike the grain have been selling at good and paying price. We are always hearing of arable land going down to grass. The best potato crops I saw, in a district where all were good, were grown in wide acreage on land that had been grass for generations and was now, for the first time, being farmed intensively. Though most farmers hate to be accused of success it is well that such exceptions to the general depression should be reported. The West Lancashire philosophy of grain-growing is as near as may be identical with the Danish and Swedish ; and " what Lan- cashire —."
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