Mr. Hegarty's eight hundred acres are, saving one or two little lots, divided between the Millstreet farm and the mountain farm of Lackadota, for the goodwill whereof the incoming paid the outgoing tenants 560l. before he began the work of thorough reclamation. His success on this hill-side has been remarkable. This season he has taken out potatoes from eight acres at the rate of 20l. per acre, and the triumph of his method has been equally great in other crops--to wit, oats, mangolds, and turnips.
It is needless to remind agricultural readers that the artificial feeding of cattle is still in its infancy in the west and south-west of Ireland. The various kinds of cake--oil, cotton, and nut--and cattle "spices," made up of fenugreek seed and other condiments, are, if not unknown, quite unused by all but a few gentlemen farmers, of whom I shall in another letter have more to say. The old-fashioned notion was to rear cattle, turn them loose on the mountain, and sell them to be finished in the Meaths or elsewhere. On the Millstreet farm, however, root-crops are largely used for feeding, and the beasts are kept more under cover than is common here. All this means, of course, large outlay, and the farmer has expended not less than six thousand pounds in building, and in draining and liming four hundred acres of the eight hundred he occupies. He was, like Canon Griffin, one of the first to recognise the necessity for changing the potato seed, and imported "champions" before other people thought of it, and while they were growing potatoes not much bigger than marbles, and hardly fit to feed pigs upon, he was getting crops of fine tubers. In draining the portion of his farm near the river, he has found himself obliged to employ stone drains, the attempts previously made with tile drains having failed signally; and it may be added that his attempts, now shown to be successful, to drain the flat land near the river Oughbane were derided by neighbouring agriculturists, who could not see that if the land do not slope sufficiently towards the natural drainage the artificial drains may be made to do so. His farm-buildings, machinery for threshing, &c., are an agreeable sight. In building, concrete has been largely used, especially in the cow-houses and feeding stalls, and the general effect of this large farm in county Cork is that of a well-managed business, every detail of which is familiar to its head.