THE LADIES’ WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2570, 3 August 1909, Page 3

THE LADIES’ WORLD.

WOMEN AGRICULTURISTS. TRAINING FARM FOR GIRLS. , New South Wales is to have an agricultural training farm for women, where girls may he taught dairy fanning, vegetable growing, poultry' fanning, flower and fruit growing. They will not learn mere theory; students and teachers are to uo all the work, even ploughing, if necessary, though it is not the intention to train women to such heavy work, for Miss Brace, tho pioneer of the movement, can drive a furrow as straight as most men.

The training will be almost wholly practical, for tho object is to enable «young women to earn their own livj ing on tho land; or, if they should marry farming men, to help their husbands.

A few weeks ago two English ladies. Miss Brace and Miss Alcock, arrived in Sydney to study agricultural conditions in this State, with the object, later on, of starting such a training school, or training farm. Miss Brace has already gone up to a- farm at Onrimbah, beyond Hornsby, to find how her English and American experience may bo adopted to Australian conditions. Miss Alcock, who is to manage the business part of the experiment, remains in Sydney.

“At first,” said Miss Alcock, “we meant the training school to be for English girls. There are so many girls in England who want to come out here, just as their brothers do. Little is known of Australia, and wo thought you would have had training schools already for Australian girls. “There ai-e about eight women’s agricultural colleges in England now. Miss Crook’s, at Brcdon’s Norton, in Worcestershire, is the best.. In some what is taught is too theoretical, but women from others are able to turn their training to good account. Some of them .ret positions as- head gardeners, and others take up land for themselves and make it pay. Many of them employ only women laborers. But now that we find you have no such colleges, Miss Brace’s idea is to train Australian girls. We have four pupils already, and they are anxious to begin. Miss Brace will be back in Sydney in about three months, and then we will take up land and start the school.”

Miss Brace, until she was twenty, managed her father’s estate. There was dairy farming, and she herself did every kind of farm work, including ploughing. Then she took a farm in Devonshire, which she ran for eleven years, • with only the help of a boy of twelve. Then she went to London, where she worked for the Women’s Gardening Association; this, Miss Alcock explained, is really a kind of shop, whoso object is tho distribution of farm produce. Then she went “slumming,” and later she and Miss Alcock travelled in America, studying agricultural conditions, especially in California. Among other things they studied the irrigation problem. The scientific side is not to be neglected. It is intended to take up enough land to enable the girls, when they have been thoroughly trained, to settle upon it and farm parts for themselves. Or, perhaps, later they might take ux) selections elsewhere. “Some people in England told us,” said Miss Alcock, “that the girls would marry as soon as Miss Brace had trained them, but then they would be able to help their husbands, if they were farmers.” Housework is not to be neglected at the training farm ; every part of the work will be done by women. “Besides,” Miss Alcock added, “the women and men would gravitate to their natural places. Women have to do so much of tho farm work hero already, and it is better to do it in a trained way. A great deal of work is naturally women’s work. Women ai"o supposed to be better at dairying; for instance, they are better milkers than men. Vegetable growing is primarily women’s work.“Besides,” she said, “what a Chinaman can do a woman can do. The girls would be taught market-gardening, as it is done in France entirely’by women. You don’t need much ground, and you grow lots of things the Chinaman won’t grow. I have heard housekeepers complain about lettxxce, for instance, that they arc not grown properly. There are so many things women can do if they are trained. I was at a house on the Blue Mountains where a woman paid a man 7s a day to do work she could have done herself. And once this experiment has proved successful there will be other schemes.”