2i6 A FARMER'S YEAR 



' No, partner,' interrupted another man, ' he dew take plenty 

 out for sure, but I never did hear that he putnawthing in,' thereby 

 in a sentence summing up the character which report gives to this 

 tiller of the soil. 



The average weight of a ewe's fleece is from four to five pounds ; 

 but I believe that the fleeces of hoggets, that is, year-old sheep 

 which have never been shorn before, sometimes weigh as heavy as 

 fifteen pounds. 



While I was leaning this afternoon over one of the pit-field 

 gates (No. 25) I was much struck by the curious contrasts of the 

 lights and colours. The order of Nature seemed to be reversed ; 

 the light lay upon the land, the sky was dark. The air was very 

 still and heavy, and in the sou'-western heaven a dense thunder- 

 cloud brooded like the shadow of advancing night. Against this 

 lowering sky the red sheep-rack made a patch of brilliant colour, 

 while Peachy and his horses baulk-splitting beyond it were out- 

 lined with singular clearness upon a vivid green background of 

 sprouting oaks and the long line of hedgerow elms. All round, 

 indeed, appeared different shades of green, strangely varied and 

 distinct in the low lights flung through the pall of overhanging 

 thunder-cloud. Thus, to the left appeared the bright green of the 

 sheep's-feed and the grey-green of the bordering land, where, 

 although it has been fed, the corn is springing again at the 

 roots, and contrasted with the yellowish green of the barley in the 

 immediate foreground ; while beyond this, in the middle distance, 

 another patch of colour was furnished by the faded pink of the 

 double roller standing with its shafts pointing to the sky. Among 

 this barley two labourers, an old and a young man, waded slowly 

 side by side, cutting thistles with their hooked spuds. Thus they 

 went like dream figures silently through the silent corn, never 

 speaking, and only halting now and again to file their spuds, 

 till at length they came to the foot of the field, and having 

 thrown the bunches of docks gathered in their left hands upon 

 its fence to wither in the sun, turned, as though at a word of com- 

 mand, and once more began their search up the long slopes of green. 



