boon to a class of society which sorely needs such
aid;—the class of gentlewomen who have not
enough to do. We hear a great deal of the
penalties of an unnatural mode of life endured by
single and widowed women in confined circumstances, who pine away their lives in towns; and
we see many who do not suffer from poverty,
losing health and energy for want of interesting
occupation. If this book should induce only one
in a hundred of these languid women to try a
country life, with the amusement of a little farming in a safe way, it will have been a blessing to
our generation.
John Sillett’s experiment was one of fork and spade husbandry exclusively. That of the ladies on their Four Acres was an experiment of grazing, almost exclusively. Mine is one of an intermediate order. I do not derive the subsistence of a household from my two acres; nor do I keep cows and pigs on the easy conditions of a plentiful allowance of grass and arable land, with the resource of a Right of Common, to serve at every pinch. I am obliged to keep a considerable portion of my little plot in grass; but my main dependence for the subsistence of my cows is on fork and spade husbandry. Thus, like the ladies, I keep cows for comfort and luxury, to which I may add the serious consideration of creating a subsistence for a labourer and his wife; while, with John Sillett, I obtain the value of the ground and animals chiefly by tillage, instead of merely gathering in the expensive commodity of grass. The case is this: —
I bought a field, in order to build myself a house, in a beautiful valley in the north of England. The quantity of land was somewhat less than two acres and a quarter, of which more than half an acre was rock. On the rocky portion stands the house, with its terrace and the drive up to it, and little oak and sycamore and ash copses behind and flanking it. An acre and a quarter was left in grass, which I at first let for grazing for £4 10s. a year. Enough ground was left for a few vegetable and flower beds, which the women of the household took such care of as they could. At the end of a year from our entrance upon our pretty house in the field, the state of things was this. The meadow was a constant eyesore; for the tenant took no sort of care of it. His cow was there, rain or shine, without shelter or shade, and usually ill, one way or another. The grass was lumpy and weedy. Sheep burst in through the hedge on the south boundary, that hedge being no business of mine, but belonging to the tenant on the other side. It was a broad, straggling, weedy hedge, which harboured vermin, and sent showers of seeds of pestilent weeds into my garden ground; and as sure as my cabbages began to grow, the hungry sheep—sharp-set as they are in March — made their way in, and ate off a whole crop in the night. It cost me from £6 to £10 a year to hire an occasional gardener, by whom the aspect of the place was barely kept decent.
At the same time, my household were badly off for some essential comforts. The supply of milk in our neighbourhood could never be depended on; and it failed when it was most wanted — in the travelling season when the district was thronged with strangers. During that season, even the supply of meat was precarious. Fowls, hams, eggs, butter, everything was precarious or unattainable; so that housekeeping was, in the guest season, a real anxiety.
Becoming nearly desperate under difficulties which townsfolk scarcely dreamt of, I ventured upon the experiment — more bold eleven years ago than now — of using my own patch of land for the production of comforts for my own household. I have made this explanation because I wish it to be clearly understood that I did not propose to make money by my miniature farming, and should never have undertaken it with any such view. I could not afford to lose money. The experiment must pay itself or stop. But, here was the land, with its attendant expenses; here were our needs and discomforts; the experiment was to make the one compensate the other. At the end of eleven years, I find that the plan has been unquestionably successful, though some of the estimates of the first two or three seasons have been modified, and an average of agricultural mishaps has occurred, as if to render the enterprise a fair specimen. It has, on the whole, been sufficiently successful to attract a great deal of notice, and influence some proceedings in the neighbourhood; and, therefore, as I conceive, to justify my adding one more illustration to those which already exist of the benefit of making the most of a small area of land.
The first essential was a labourer. I obtained one from an agricultural county, as spade husbandry was a thing unheard-of in my own neighbourhood. He brought his wife; and his wages were at first 12s. a week, out of which he paid the low rent of 1s. 6d. per week for his cottage; a model cottage which I built, with the cow-house adjoining, for £130. These stone dwellings last for ever, and need few or no repairs, so that money is well invested in them; and I regard as a good investment the money afterwards laid out in a hay-house, a little boiling-house, a root-house, two fowl-yards, and a commodious stone dwelling for the pig. My man’s wages were raised by degrees; and they are now 14s. a week all the year round, with the cottage rent free. The wife has the use of my wash-house and its apparatus, and opportunities of earning a good deal by means of them. In case of my scheme not answering, there was a certainty that the cottage and other buildings would let at any moment, with the land; while their quality would not deteriorate with time, like that of brick or wooden buildings.
The other requisite preparations were tanks for manure, implements, and some additional fencing. Two tanks, well cemented within, and covered by heavy stone lids, receive the sewage and slops of every kind from the house, cottage, and cow stable; and a larger tank, among a clump of trees in a far corner of the field, receives the sweepings of stable and stye, and the bulk of the manure. The implements are spades, an elastic steel fork, hoes, rakes, a scythe, shears, and clippers, a heavy roller for the meadow, a chaff-cutter, a curry-comb and brushes for the cows’ coats; troughs, milk-pails, and the apparatus of the boiling-house