Fruit-fed Porkers.

Lord Bledisloe's addresses on public occasions invariably contain some useful thought, some advice by which New Zealanders can profit. His Excellency's talk on farm topics at a recent agricultural show near Auckland held more than one hint of value to the man and woman on the land. When he came to the question of making use of second-rate and superfluous fruit, in particular apples, he suggested feeding the pigs with the unmarketable surplus.

To this sound advice it could be added that fruit-fed pork would be about the healthiest kind of pig one could place on mankind's menu. Some of our orchardist-farmers already dispose of their unmarketable surplus in that way. One recalls here the old days in the Waikato, and elsewhere, when many a farmer fattened his porkers on peaches. There were groves of peach-trees, Maori-planted, everywhere in some of the districts where confiscated native lands were occupied by pakeha settlers, and there was, of course, no possible market for those peaches with which the trees were loaded. There was far more fruit than the farmer families could consume, and so cattle as well as pigs fed on the windfalls, and many a cartload of the big honey peaches was brought from the groves and tipped into the pigs’ dining room. The bacon made from those pigs, cured in the farm smoke-house in the old leisurely and thorough way, was delicious.

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