A FARMER'S YEAR 



BEDINGHAM, DITCHINGHAM 



AND THE FARMS 



It is with very real humility that I take up my pen to write 

 of farming, following the excellent example of Thomas Tusser, 

 who, more than three hundred years ago, as I do, tilled the land 

 in Norfolk. The subject is so vast and the effort seems so pre- 

 sumptuous. I propose, however, that this book shall be the 

 journal of a farmer's year rather than a work about farming, 

 setting forth with other incidental things the thoughts and reflec- 

 tions that occur to him, and what he sees day by day in field or 

 wood or meadow, telling of the crops and those who grow them, 

 of the game and the shooting of it, of the ways of wild creatures 

 and the springing of flowers, and touching, perhaps, on some of 

 the thousand trivial matters which catch the eye and occupy the 

 attention of one who lives a good deal in the company of Nature, 

 who loves it and tries to observe it as best he may. 



I wrote 'of the trivial matters,' but at times I think that these 

 natural phenomena : the passage of the seasons, the sweep of the 

 winds and rain, the play of light upon the common, the swell and 

 ebbing of the flood water, and all the familiar wonders which happen 

 about us hour by hour, for those who take note of them have more 

 true significance than the things we seek so eagerly in cities and 

 in the rush of modern life. There is no education like that 

 which we win from the fellowship of Nature ; nothing else 

 teaches us such true lessons, or, if we choose to open our minds 



B 



