CHAPTER XXII
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THE GENERAL CONDITION OF AGRICULTURE.—ROTATION OF CROPS.—PRODUCTIVENESS.—SEEDING DOWN TO GRASS.—COMPARISON OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PRACTICE.—PRACTICAL REMARKS.—RYE-GRASS, CLOVER.—BIENNIAL GRASSES.—GUANO.—LIME.—THE CONDITION OF LABOURERS, WAGES, ETC.—DAIRY-MAIDS.—ALLOWANCE OF BEER.
[Sidenote: _ENGLAND, A LANDSCAPE GARDEN._]
I must say that, on the whole, the agriculture of Cheshire, as the first sample of that of England which is presented to me, is far below my expectations. There are sufficient reasons to expect that we shall find other parts much superior to it; but what we have seen quite disposes of the common picture which our railroad and stage-coach travellers are in the habit of giving to our imagination, by saying that “all England is like a garden.” Meaning only a “landscape garden,” a beautiful and harmonious combination of hill and dale, with the richest masses of trees, and groups and lines of shrubbery, the greenest turf and most picturesque buildings, it might be appropriately said of many parts, particularly in the south of the county. But, with reference to cultivation, and the productiveness of the land, it might be quite as truly applied to some small districts of our own country as to this part of England.
In commencing the cultivation of land that has been in grass, the first crop is usually oats, and the most approved practice upon the stiff soils seems to be, to plough deeply in the fall or winter, and in the spring to prepare the ground with some strong implement of the cultivator sort. Oats are sowed much thicker than is usual with us. I hear of six bushels to the acre; but with regard to this there is much difference of opinion. The crop of oats is not often large (from thirty to forty bushels from an acre is common); but oats seldom make a large crop upon clay soils. The next year the ground will be summer-fallowed, or, by the more enterprising farmers, cropped with turnips, beets, or with potatoes. The potatoes are sold, the turnips and beets fed to the cows during the winter. On the poorer farms, the cows get little but hay from December to April; and cheese-making is given up during the winter. Others, by the help of turnips, beets, and linseed cake, keep a constant flow of milk, and cheese-making is never interrupted. (Of course the milking of each cow is interrupted for a while at her calving time, which they try to have in March.)
The crop after roots is commonly barley; after fallow, wheat, of which twenty-five to thirty bushels is a common crop, and forty not uncommon. After wheat, oats again, and perhaps after the oats another crop of wheat; if so, the land is manured with bones or boughten manure, and sometimes limed at the rate, say of four tons to the acre of stone lime.
[Sidenote: _QUANTITY OF GRASS SEED TO AN ACRE._]
_Grass._—With the last crop of oats or wheat, clover and grass seeds are sowed. Grass was thought to come better after wheat upon under-drained land. The best farmers sow a very great variety and large measure of grass seeds; the poorer ones are often content with what they can find under their hay bays, sowing it, weeds and all, purchasing only clover seed.
The quantity of grass seeds sowed is always much greater here than in America. I should think it was commonly from a bushel to three bushels on an acre; rarely less than one, or more than three. I do not think more than one quarter of a bushel, or perhaps half a bushel of the lighter seeds, is often sowed in the United States. I should attribute the more general evenness and closeness of the English meadows in a great degree to this, though, doubtless, much is due to the moister climate. Land intended for permanent pasture receives much more seed, and a larger variety, than that which is intended to be mown only for a few years, and then be brought to tillage again. Of the good policy of the English practice for pastures (and the same applies to lawns and public greens) I have no doubt. Among the great variety of grasses in an English meadow, there will be one that springs up and grows strongly, furnishing a wholesome and delicious bite to the cattle, as early after the first warm breath of spring as the ground will be dry enough to bear a hoof (and on drained lands it is rarely not so). This will be succeeded by others, and in May by others; and in July, those natural to the driest and warmest soils will be in perfection; and so through the year there is a constantly renewing perfection. A ranker sward, and one that would for a season support more cattle, I think would be obtained from sowing a smaller quantity and less variety of seed.
I am not prepared to recommend the English practice for mowing lands. To obtain the largest quantity of grass hay from an acre, without regard to quality, plough deep, manure deep, and sow one variety of seed in such quantity that when it comes up it will speedily _tiller_, and occupy the whole ground, yet not stand so closely as to greatly crowd and compress the stools, thereby _dwarfing_ the reeds from their natural size, and obstructing the flow of sap in their vessels. Cut it when it has attained to its greatest size, while it is yet entirely succulent, just at the time that the _blood_ of the plant begins to be drawn up into the forming seed, and the bottom dries into such tough, close, ligneous fibre that nourishment can no longer ascend from the root. The right quantity of seed for this will vary in different soils—a very rich, deep soil needing less than a more sterile one, because in the latter the roots cannot extend far enough to collect the requisite food and drink to make a large, strong, open stool, and more herbage will grow upon the same space by having the stools stand closer.
In some degree proportionately to the closeness of the fibre and the fineness of the grass, will be its nourishing quality, so that ninety pounds of fine, close-grown hay, from a thick-seeded meadow, may be of equal value with a hundred pounds of a coarser, ranker quality. But the nourishment is by no means in the inverse ratio of size; so that for all ordinary purposes, with all the usual hay-grasses, the farmer will find his profit in studying to obtain the largest burthen of grass. For this end, I am inclined to think English farmers often sow too much seed, Americans not enough. It seems, however, to be the best farmers in other respects that sow the most seed in England.
There is one consideration that I have omitted to mention against the common practice on American farms, where hay is an important staple crop: it is generally an object to retain a clean sward of grass as long as possible, without the necessity of breaking up, from the grass having _run out_, that is, given place to weeds, or to finer and less profitable grasses. Where the seed has been thickly sown, the grass takes more entire possession of the surface, and retains it longer. The thicker grass seed is sown, therefore, other things being equal, the longer it will _lay_.
[Sidenote: _RYE-GRASS AND TIMOTHY._]
I have known, in a district where it was the custom to sow four to eight quarts of timothy seed, on two occasions, twenty quarts sowed. The result was a finer grass in both cases; in one it was thought the crop was much larger, and in the other that it was somewhat smaller, than where ten quarts was sowed alongside. The probability is, that in an average of ten years it will prove the larger crop on the thickest sown, in both fields.
The commonest grass seed sowed in England, what may be called the staple grass, is rye-grass, or ray-grass (perennial). It is a much smaller, closer-growing grass than our timothy; I think it has a sweeter taste, is probably, bulk for bulk, considerably more nutritious, and perhaps so pound for pound; but I think more fat and muscle can be made from an acre, if sowed with timothy, than with rye-grass. A valuable quality of rye-grass is its early spring growth. A field of rye-grass will be up some inches, offering a tempting bite to cattle, before a field of other grasses will begin to show a green surface. I believe that it ripens earlier, too, than timothy, and is better for mowing-ground on that account, to be sown with clover, which is much injured by over-ripeness, if not cut till timothy is in its best state to make hay. I have seen no timothy in England, but I know it is sometimes sowed.
Rye-grass has stood at the head of the mowing grasses in some parts of England for centuries. In districts of light and dry soil, it is least in favour than elsewhere, but I judge becomes of more value with the improvement of husbandry generally. Marshall (1796), writing from Gloucestershire, speaks of the general strong prejudice of the farmers against ray-grass, which he calls his favourite grass, “smothering every thing and impoverishing the soil, until it will grow nothing!” they say; and arguing against them, he makes an observation of value with reference to the question of quantity of seed. “If _real_ ray-grass has ever been tried alone, and without success, it has probably risen from too great a quantity having been sown. Be it ray-grass or rubbish, I understand seldom less than a sackful” (three heaped bushels) “an acre is thrown on, whereas _one gallon_ an acre of _clean-winnowed real ray-grass seed_ is abundantly sufficient on such soil as the vale in general is covered with.” The soil is “a rich, deep loam.”
Clover (red and Dutch) is more sowed here for hay than with us, though it is much more difficult to make good hay of it in this climate. It is sowed in the spring, as with us, perhaps 20 lbs. to the acre. We commonly sow 5 to 10 lbs. Arthur Young tried about a dozen experiments to ascertain the most profitable quantity of clover seed to sow, and concluded his record of them as follows:
“The more seed, as far as 20 lbs. per acre, undoubtedly the better. This is a plain fact, contradicted by no part of the experiments; and the great inferiority of 5 to 7 lbs. shows equally clear that such portion of seed is too small for an acre. Where land is well manured, less seed is required; 12½ lbs. seems the proper quantity” (on very rich, gravelly soil.)
A bushel of clover seed weighs 60 to 64 lbs.
In ground intended for mowing but one or two years, biennial varieties of the rye-grass are sown, which are of stronger growth than the perennial. They are also sowed sometimes with permanent grasses, giving, on a deep, rich soil, a heavier burthen of grass the first year of cutting than these would do. For this purpose, I have thought it might be well to sow the biennial or sub-perennial rye-grass seed with timothy, which does not usually yield a fair crop at its first cutting, and have twice attempted to make trial of the Italian rye-grass, but in both cases the seeds that I had procured failed of germination.
I shall have occasion hereafter to notice several species of herbage that are much valued in England, that have not been generally introduced in the United States.[20]
[20] Fifteen or twenty varieties of grass seeds are sowed together, and the expense for seed in laying down for pasture is often ten or twelve dollars an acre.
[Sidenote: _TOP-DRESSING.—GUANO.—WAGES._]
The grass is mowed for hay for a longer or shorter course of years; sometimes broken up after one or two seasons, sometimes becoming permanent or perennial pasture, and so running on indefinitely; and sometimes being mowed for a number of years. One field I saw that had been mowed eight years, and having received a dressing of 30 cwt. of bones, promised fair yet to bear heavy swaths. Mowing lands are usually top-dressed at the end of the second year, and afterwards every second or third year. All the homestead dung is commonly reserved for this purpose, and all other manure is purchased from the towns. Guano for turnips and wheat is coming into general use; some think very profitably, others have been disappointed. For wheat, it is applied at the seed sowing, and sometimes again as a top dressing in the spring; but in a dry season it is thought that this second application has done more harm than good. Guano has been a good deal tried as a top dressing for pastures, and it has been said to improve the quality of cheese when so used. The immediate effect upon grass, when applied in the spring, is always very advantageous; but later in the summer,
## particularly if the season is dry, the good effect disappears, and
sometimes the result is unfavourable.
Of course the round of crop varies according to every farmer’s notion. What I have described is as common as any, though not probably among the best farmers. Another crop is beans, which is introduced between either of those I have mentioned, sometimes at the head. Not uncommonly the first crop is wheat, the ground having been summer fallowed. Wheat is drilled or sowed broad-cast; most commonly sowed in this county, and is either ploughed or harrowed in, opinions varying as to which is best. My own experience on a stiff soil is decidedly in favour of ploughing in.
_Labourers._—Wages, as they have been reported to me, vary much, and unaccountably. I should think the average for able-bodied men as day-labourers, working and receiving pay only in days that commence fair, was $2.25 a week, perhaps averaging thirty-three cents a day. The rent of a labourer’s cottage, with a bit of garden attached (less than a quarter of an acre), is from $15 to $25. In addition they have sometimes a few perquisites from the farmers who regularly employ them. A great many labourers in winter are without work, and wages are then a trifle less than I have mentioned, as in harvest time they are also a trifle more. The reader will understand that out of this thirty-three cents, which I have supposed to be the average receipts of a labourer per day, he has to pay his rent, and provide food and raiment for his family. Of course his diet cannot be very sumptuous (the cost of provisions being, perhaps, ten per cent. higher than with us), but I have not learned particulars.
The wages of farm servants, hired by the month or year, and boarded in the family, are for men, from $45 to $65 a year; for boys, $15 to $25; maid-servants, $30 to $40; dairy-maids, greatly varying, say from $50 to $100.
It is customary to give all labourers and servants a certain allowance of beer besides their wages. It is served out several times a day, and may be supposed to cost, on an average, ten cents a day for each person. One farmer estimated it at twice that.
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