A Farmer’s Life 
borough, when he was going round with milk, 
somebody asked him, “‘ Did you lose your watch, 
then?” “Lose my watch? What d’ye mean?” 
‘“Oh, I saw ye pulling your hay-rick to pieces 
again.” 
At hearing this the man from Sussex laughed. 
“‘T’ve heard that old tale often enough,” he 
said. Down by Findon and Washington, under 
Chanétonbury Ring, he must have meant. I 
felt that many generations of hay-making folk 
had maybe enjoyed that jest. 
As we leant over a gate admiring a field of 
roots (there were cow-cabbages farther on, then 
more mangold, then swedes) the visitor praised 
the soil. Then my uncle remembered how he 
had once sowed wheat there. Many years ago 
it was, one dry Oétober; and the seed-corn lay 
in dry dust. An old Yorkshireman passing 
by had said, “It'll never come up.” “ That'll 
be a long time for it to lay, won’t it?” Mr. 
Smith had replied. A week passed. Then a 
Steady rain fell, and two or three days after it 
all the drills of wheat could be seen—thin green 
lines right across the field. In the following 
August they harvested eleven sacks to the acre 
there, which was the finest wheat crop my uncle 
had ever had. Indeed it was a big yield for this 
neighbourhood. But the visitor with me said 
twelve sacks to the acre was common in Sussex. 
106 
