64 A FARMER'S YEAR 



I have had an excellent return, more indeed than could have been 

 expected. This is another testimony, if any were needed, to the 

 value of sheep as fertilisers of the soil. 



January 14. — The weather to-day is again dull, mild, and 

 quite windless. There are three ploughs going on the farm, one 

 of them at work in the nine-acre on All Hallows Farm, No. 36 upon 

 the plan, a good but rather scaldy bit of land. This field was 

 under beet and swedes last year, the beet being .sown on the lower 

 half of it, where the soil is somewhat deeper. There was a very 

 full plant of swedes, which would have produced a fine crop had it 

 not been for the drought that stunted them. The beet, standing 

 on the cooler soil, did well ; indeed beet do not mind dry weather 

 in moderation. The whole field is now coming for barley, and I 

 hope will only need this one ploughing. Peachey, the plough- 

 man, who is at work on it, a person of experience, tells me that 

 he prefers ' the first earth ' for barley, and I believe that this 

 preference is general, though if the land has been ploughed 

 early in the autumn and gone down tight, a second ploughing is 

 very beneficial. Also barley land that has been sheeped is 

 best ploughed twice, once skimmed only to cover the ' tether,' and 

 once for crop. 



This afternoon I went to Bedingham and inspected the stock. 

 There are four red-poll steers tied up fatting in a shed, and three 

 others in the yard, all looking very well. Also there is a two- 

 year-old bullock whicli promises to make such a beauty that I am 

 keeping him over with a view of showing him next Christmas, a 

 thing I have never done before. I might have disposed of him 

 at a good price to the agent of a much larger breeder who is 

 looking out for promising beasts to be shown by his employer next 

 Christmas, but I have declined the offer. Probably I shall regret 

 this ere the year is out, as eight out of ten of these animals, before 

 their time comes to go to the show bench, develop some imper- 

 fection or other which proves fatal to their chances of prize-taking. 



In fact the showing of cattle is an unprofitable business to 



