76 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



was frequently a failure, and nobody, to be sure, knew why. 

 People were very much in the dark about it in those days, as 

 indeed they were about many things else. 



Farmers, and farmers' wives too, worked hard in those eld 

 days of forty years ago, quite as hard as they do now, I think. 

 Early and late did she work the wife of whom I am writing. 

 Often have 1 known her to bake a huge pile of oatcakes before 

 her maids were down in the morning, and the husband would 

 fetch in the cows from the dew-laden fields for himself and his 

 men to milk them. " Come, lads," he used to say, not " Go, lads," 

 leading his men up to the moor as soon as breakfast was over. 

 And he whistled like a lark as he went to the hills. 



The ploughing was all on the moor, the seeding of oats and 

 of turnips, and the weeding and harvesting of both. All the 

 young cattle and the sheep were wintered up there, and the 

 milch cows chiefly at home. It was a long, hilly, inconvenient 

 farm, as many of the Peak farms are, and the work upon it, as 

 well as the time lost in going to and fro, was proportionately 

 increased. A large portion of the milking pastures was across 

 a deep valley, and the cows had more heavy exercise to undergo 

 than was good for them so far, at all events, as their milk- 

 yield was concerned. 



The Peak of Derbyshire is a healthy country both for man 

 and beast, but the winters are long and bitter as a rule. The 

 soil, however, is sound for the most part, seldom wants drain- 

 ing, and responds quickly to liberal farming. The milk pro- 

 duced upon it has now a reputation in the great cities, as it also 

 had in the old days for making cheese and butter that could be 

 depended upon for quality, and to keep for a reasonable time. 

 It is naturally drained by the fissured rock beneath, and sheep 

 remain sound upon it in the wettest of seasons. The farmers 

 are a careful, thrifty race, laying by " a nest-egg " whenever 

 they can against the inevitable time of scarcity. Consequently 

 they have weathered the storm of the last dozen years about as 

 manfully as the men of any other district in the land. 



