98 A FARMER'S YEAR 



beans. For some reason or other we were unable to horse-hoe it 

 sufficiently early, and in the end, in order to prevent the beans 

 from being smothered, we were obliged to pull the usurping 

 barley by hand, for the hoe could not deal with it a tedious and 

 a costly process. 



I have seldom seen beans looking better than those on this 

 piece at Bedingham. 



January 31. Yesterday, Sunday, it rained sharply during the 

 morning but cleared in the afternoon, when a gale came up from 

 the south-west ; at night also there were flaws of rain. The large 

 ox, which was supposed to have recovered from the derangement 

 of its third stomach, is sick again. Now it grinds its teeth 

 and is foaming at the mouth as though it had hydrophobia. 

 My own opinion is that none of them know from what the poor 

 animal is suffering. 



I find that I am now employing fifteen hands in all on the 

 two farms, not reckoning Mrs. Hood, who makes the butter, or 

 Mrs. Moore, who attends to the fowls at Bedingham. This allows 

 for nine men and one boy on the home farms, with four men and 

 one boy at Bedingham. One of these, however, is an extra man 

 employed by piece-work on the draining. 



To-day, the last of the month, is lovely and spring-like, with 

 a drying north-west wind. This morning we drilled three acres 

 of sheep's-feed on No. 24. This field has stood for two years under 

 layer, and as it is light land, before the flag was broken up we 

 gave it a dressing of heavy clay from the pit in this garden which 

 was enlarged last autumn. Also, it has been more or less manured 

 with road and yard scrapings, and anything else that we could find 

 to put upon it. The rain of yesterday has not done much more 

 than damp this light land, so the seed went in very well. We 

 were using fifteen coulters on the drill, and one coomb, that is four 

 bushels, of seed to the acre. 



It looked a curious mixture as it lay in the boxes or hoppers 

 of the drill, oats for the most part, mingled with wheat, tares, and 



