Return to the Land
Quite a large number of young women have made applica- tion for work on the land, including the driving of tractors, should war demand such service. The Minister of Agriculture writes them a letter of charming tact ; he hopes that they will find health and friends, and a pleasant change -while they are doing useful work for the nation. Some of them are taking a week or fortnight of training at the county agri- cultural stations. Women are often extremely good with farm animals ; but the more modern type seem to take rather more kindly to the tractor than the heavy horse. There is in process, I think, a real psychological return to land. For myself I know, and know of, an astonishingly large number of young men who have set up small farms, especially fruit farms. One is growing large fruit in Suffolk, one small fruit in Devon, one flowers in the Midlands, and others are engaged in more general farming. Two points about these beneficent adventures are worth note. One is the astonishingly low price at which ground may be purchased ; the other the quick and solid returns from certain crops. One is so well used to the tale of losses on the land that it was very pleasant and in some measure a surprise, to know that a young fruit- grower on a rather small scale in the north-west was making as much as £400 a year. The money came largely from the local sale of small fruit, especially strawberries. Another is the freehold owner of a hundred acres of excellent fruit-land, which cost him exactly a thousand pounds. It may be added that one of the most successful apple-growers in the country is a retired corps-commander of the Great War.
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