Sheep feed and bags of seed

Timothy grass

"Have you seen the timothy?"

A rather perplexed "No. What does he look like?" invariably followed this query.

Timothy, it transpired, was a grass which is very popular in much of the South Island and which is appearing more in our North Island pastures. The growing of this grass for seed where the climate is suitable has proved most lucrative.

Southland is a province that lends itself admirably to the harvesting of this seed. Much of Southland is flat, with heavy soil inclined to pug during the winter months: and the Southland farmer turns to grain and seed-growing for his supplementary income, in conjunction with his sheep.

Many purposes

Wheat, oats, barley, clover, rye and dogstail are only a few of the seeds that pass through the province’s grain stores.

Timothy is one that can be grown for multiple purposes as I learnt while working on header-harvesters in the Winton and Drummond districts on the outskirts of Invercargill.

The harvester was a large self-propelled machine, and after the strenuous work of the wheat fields, where we were knocking out 40 bags an hour, hand sewn too, it was a relief to get onto the small seeds.

The paddock had first been cut with a binder and the sheafs had been stooked for several days. The strings were cut, and we moved into the 22-acre paddock at 10:30am, after the dew had lifted.

We moved at walking pace, the small seeds coming through the drum and grader, finally to the sack.

Timothy seed was similar in size to birdseed and the time taken to fill a sack was just on an hour. I made myself a hammock by sewing two sacks together, end to end, and sewing it above the platform, fastening it to the safety rail.

Rewarded

My ingenuity was well rewarded, as a strong breeze came up just on dark and at four o’clock next morning we were still in the field.

From these 22 acres, the farmer harvested 42 bags of seed and several weeks later told me that he had netted £800, as well as collecting 2500 bales of Timothy hay.

Telling me that cattle preferred it to cocksfoot, that lambs fattened on it better than on clover and that it made the best hay in the world, the farmer sounded rather like a high-pressure salesman.

My curiosity aroused, I made more investigations into this money spinner. In so doing, I unearthed one of the most appealing forms of farming.

A man had 400 acres of flat, strong country sown completely in timothy pasture.

The only fences were those around the boundaries of the property. The farm was harvested in late summer, the hay being left on the ground.

Next, a large mob of store sheep was bought and given the run of the place.

Evidently, the heavier the pasture was grazed, the more prolific the growth in the spring.

The sheep then survived on the hay and any shoots from the mown timothy until the end of the winter, when they were shorn in a neighbour’s shed, and then sold in fairly good condition – because timothy is such a wonderful fattener, I was again told.

Now, the farm shut up and literally allowed to go to seed until harvest time. There was plenty of time to go skiing in the winter months, fishing the southern lakes or deer stalking in the vast expanses of virgin country.

Let us now get down to figures on facts known.

Twenty-two acress net £800, but this crop would yield more bushels than when grown on the larger scale. So, we will reduce the figure to £600.

Therefore from 400 acres we should make a profit of just over £10,500. We have also the wool of approximately 600 sheep as well.

Header harvesters are a necessity and three of these, at a price of £3000 each, would be needed.

It is an interesting angle, but if the season is wet or the army worm takes over, I guess the prospects of staying in business would be nil.

No, I feel I would rather run sheep and cattle after all and gamble on the fluctuations of the stock market than on the whims of the elements.