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Show I SAHARA DESERT FARM KING -w -rTTn s? - s FV f A view of the gardens and house built by A. Seddik Pacha in the center of his farm on what was the barren wasteland of the Sahara desert. He is at right, without cap. An experimental desert farm of fifty acres, for years a sun-burned waste of Sahara sand, is now yielding yield-ing "a rich harvest in fruits, vegetables vege-tables and flowers for Its owner who, six years ago, wanted to "play around" with fifty acres of sand to see what would grow. Mixed with mud brought from the banks of the Nile, twenty miles away, Irrigated by the waters of "a nearby canal fed by the Nile river itself, the once arid soil has been paying off the cost of making it productive, and by next year the full investment will have been restored by farm income. This is the amazing achievement of His Excellency, A. Seddik Pacha, one of Egypt's leading business executives. ex-ecutives. His experiment started in 1942 with a piece of land only twelve miles from the Pyramids, and his fifty acres today are a veritable Garden of Eden, rich wife mangoes, oranges, tangerines, California pears and other fruits and vegetables. , Yielding an average of $600 to the acre, the mangoe crop returns more than $15,000 a year. So successful suc-cessful have been Pacha's experimental experi-mental operations, that the land he originally bought for around $280 an acre has influenced prices of adjoining land until properties nearby are now bringing an average of $400 an acre. Seddick Pacha calls his . estate "Tara," having its origin in the farm property made famous in the historical novel by Margaret Mitchell, Mit-chell, -'Gone With theind," and its focal point is the handsome modern home he has built on a two-acre site in the midst of his farm. "A man can live like a king in the desert," says Seddik Pacha, "and all he has to do is literally push a button. But it's a full time job." Aiding him are ten men housed in a village adjoining his property which he built for their comfort. These men work full time, performing perform-ing all the manual labor involved in taking care of crops. Livestock is limited to two female buffalo and twelve cows, enough to supply milk and butter, although he has, also, a hundred pairs of white pigeons, housed in specially constructed con-structed pigeon buildings at various spots all over the farm. Water is provided by a gasoline pump, which taps a nearby canal fed by the waters of the Nile, and every four days the entire farm is irrigated ' by this system, although' an artesian well is utilized to provide pro-vide water for his own household purposes. Modern farm methods have . been introduced principally through the use of a four-drive jeep, which does all the plowing, grading and harrowing. |