Mallee - Part 2

Image 99
image 10 of 89

This transcription is complete

MONDAY, 1ST JANUARY, 1917.

(At Native Park, near Grass Patch.)

Present:

Charles Edward Dempster, Esq. (Chairman).

ALBERT EZEKIEL SHEPHERD, further examined:

964B. To the CHAIRMAN: Of my crop this season 34 acres of oats were fed off and I stripped about three bags to the acre, the three-bushel bags being well filled. Filled from eight acres of wheat cut for hay I got 12 tons. This is the best hay crop I have had. The balance of 136 acres I stripped for grain, and it has averaged four bags of good clean wheat. The bags are well filled, a lot of them weighing 200 lbs. Two acres of Yandilla King yielded 23 bushels per acre. Bert Moore measured the ground. One and nine-tenths acres stripped 15 bags. This land was a strip right through the paddock—35 chains long and 12 yards wide. It was a fair average of the quality of the field of 125 acres of land. Crossbred "73" wheat went 12 and 14 bushels to the acre; half is in the bags, and the balance is in the heap, and I am sure it is there. What brought the average down, two kings of wheat sown late and insufficient super., some 40lbs. to the acre, some nothing. There were 10½ acres which yielded 24 bags in all. The wheat was a scratch lot of Florence and Crossbred, and sown was feed off. The six acres of Comeback were disappointing, only yielding 11 bushels per acre. Twenty acres of Florence yielded 12 bushels per acre, and I will have about 550 bags of wheat. This does not include white heads and screenings. These would have probably given another 50 bags of wheat. I consider the crop was badly put in; there were 15 acres of worked and cultivated fallow put in properly. There were about 45 acres fallowed, and the balance was lightly ploughed and put in roughly.

(At Esperance-Norseman Road, near Grass Patch.)

EDWIN HOLMAN, further examined:

964C. To the CHAIRMAN: In connection with my crop harvested this season, I cut for hay 25 acres, which yielded 25 tons. From 20 acres of oats I obtained 105 bags, an average of 2½ bushels to the bag. Eight acres of Berthoud wheat on new ground gave 12 bushels to the acre; 12 acres of Yandilla King gave nine bushels, the latter being damaged by drift sand. Ten acres of Alpha averaged nine bushels; 15 acres of Florence averaged eight bushels. Early wheat did not do well this year; it was dry season—what I should term a kind of starvation season. The total area harvested was 99 acres, which averaged nine bushels 47 lbs.