266 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



It is then broken for turnips the next spring. But 

 there is more trouble in getting such land prepared 

 for turnips than after lea oats, and the plan can 

 only be followed to a limited extent. 



The ewes are folded on the grass meant for lea 

 oats, before it is ploughed. But still the oats are 

 usually very bad. The older the grass, the worse 

 are the oats. It is plain the sod does not rot in 

 time to help the oats. In some districts they grow 

 two crops of oats in succession, on breaking up the 

 land; the first is bad, the second good enough, 

 because the sod by that time is rotten. But this 

 plan is exhausting, and leaves the land very foul. 

 With fifty or sixty acres of turnips we have been in 

 the habit of fattening 200 sheep and over 30 

 beasts, besides keeping 200 ewes and 200 hoggets 

 of the previous spring, 60 cows, and young stock, 

 rising yearlings and two-year-olds, about 35 to 40 

 head of each age enough to stock the farm in the 

 following summer with little buying. 



We have the last two years reduced the number 

 of acres broken each year to forty instead of fifty, 

 and still fatten and keep the same stock as before, 

 with the help of more cake. This of course lessens 

 the work of men and horses ; and if, as is said, a 

 ton of cake may be reckoned as roughly equal to an 

 acre* of turnips (which I do not think it is, of such 

 crops of turnips as we grow), there is no reason that 

 such a course should not answer and keep up the 



