SELF-SUFFICING FAEMING 11 



shire ' appeared in the seventeenth century, recommends 

 its use after the land was harrowed. On some manors 

 harrowing was one of the services which the villeins 

 associated to render. But the implement was of the 

 lightest and rudest description. Fleta gives the amount of 

 wheat sown to the acre as two bushels, and the average 

 yield at ten to twelve bushels. But, except on the best 

 land, so small a seeding was rare. The quantity of seed 

 for barley, oats, or rye was far greater. Probably the 

 labour of sowing was performed by the bailiff himself, as, 

 at the beginning of this century, it was performed by the 

 farmer with his own hand.' All seed was sown broadcast, 

 and the land, which was generally wet and foul, was more 

 thickly seeded then than now. After the plots were sown 

 and fenced, the hay ward exacted a penalty from all tres- 

 passers, except messengers riding in haste. Corn was 

 weeded in June, for the maxim was ancient, — 



Who weeds in May 

 Throws all away. 



In the fourteenth century, on the 220 acres of Hawsted 

 Manor Farm, in Suffolk, sixty sarclers or weeders were 

 employed on one day at 2^. apiece. In dry weather they 

 were armed with a hook and a forked stick, in wet with 

 tongs. 



Nothing is more characteristic of the infancy- of farm- 

 ing than the violence of its alternations. When roots and 

 grasses were unknown, there was no middle course between 

 incessant cropping and barrenness. The fallow was ' un 

 veritable Dimanche accorde a la terre.' As with the land, 

 so with its products. Feasting trode on the heels of famine. 

 In the graphic language of ancient chroniclers, parents in 



* Professor Rogers, History of Agriculture and Pnces, i. 16. 



