32 A FARMER'S YEAR 



vate in this parish is comparatively speaking light. Not that it is 

 a light-land farm in the sense that some of the Norfolk country is 

 light — that in the neighbourhood of Brandon, for instance — but on 

 the whole it is soil that would do better in a wet season than in a 

 dry one. And for the last few years it has been dreadfully dry, at 

 least at those periods of the season when rain was most wanted. 



This land at Ditchingham, of which I propose to treat in the 

 following pages, is made up of four separate holdings : i. That 

 portion of my own property which I farm, amounting to about one 

 hundred and forty-six acres, whereof about ninety-six are pasture ; 

 2. The hired farm known as Baker's, taken on this last November, 

 and amounting to about fifty-six acres, of which eight acres are 

 pasture ; 3. The hired farm known as All Hallows, of nearly forty- 

 four acres, of which about seven are pasture ; 4. Glebe land 

 amounting to fourteen acres, no pasture. Therefore, with sundry 

 enclosures, in Ditchingham I am farming about two hundred and 

 sixty acres of land, of which one hundred and twelve acres are 

 pasture, some of it laid down within the last few years. On this 

 farm the stock at the beginning of the year 1898 was : 



Cattle above two years old, including twenty cows . 34 

 Other cattle, including calves . . . . .18 

 Sheep, including two rams . . . -SO 



Pigs 33 



Horses and colts . . . . . . .11 



Total head ...... 146 



The labour employed here at Ditchingham at the beginning of the 

 year was one working steward, eight men, one boy. 



My farming began in the year 1889, when, letting off the rest 

 of it in small parcels, I took about a hundred and twenty acres in 

 hand on the occasion of the tenant giving up the farm. Then the 

 land which I took over, naturally good for the most part, was in so 

 scandalous a condition that now, after eight years' cleaning and 

 manuring, it has only just recovered its fertility. The heart had 

 been dragged out of it and very little put into it in return ; for 



