On Virginia Husbandry. 101 
accurate estimate of the expence of timber fences, mean- 
ing sawed post and railing, which I have had for some 
years back, and I am highly in favour of, for though 
they come high in the beginning, yet [ think them the 
cheapest in the end, as I suppose with tolerable care, 
they would last fifteen or twenty years. The staking and 
wattleing is also an expensive fence, but looks neat, and 
is of considerable duration, say from six to ten years, 
when well done with trimmed cedar brush, or cedar 
poles interwoven on the stakes; which last kind of fence 
I have of late been in the habit of making. 
The cedar succeeds tolerable well here, though we 
have not yet any live fences in this vicinage. The stock 
on my farms are, cattle, sheep, and hogs, though the 
former succeed tolerably well, I think the latter does 
best. As I generally kill on my estate, from fifty to sixty 
thousand pounds of pork annually. The hogs are penned, 
and fed on corn and vegetables, for six or eight weeks 
before the killing season. We have an abundance of na- 
tive manure, in our low ground-marshes, yet such is 
the routine of my cropping, the extent of the farms, 
and certain hands appointed to each, I cannot find lei- 
sure or means to collect it. I make no artificial manure, 
except what is made by my cattle in farm yards, which 
I keep highly littered with straw, marsh hay, corn stalks, 
&c. through the winter, and spring, and during the 
summer I have moveable pens, in which I put my cattle 
at night; these I generally place on my light lands, by 
which they shortly become equal to those of superior 
native quality. Our pastures are not sufficiently luxu- 
riant here to make grazing for market an object ; yet I 
have always tolerable good grass beef im the fall, which is 
