A Farmer’s Life 
I should ha’ thought what you’ve done would 
ha’ made ’n bigger.’ ”’ 
One other scrap of this talk is worth recalling. 
The subject was hay-making, as to which my 
uncle admitted that the old methods did produce 
on the whole a better quality of hay than the 
newer methods. But, he urged, where a farmer 
would send a foreman and twenty women in the 
old times, now he could get a carter, and a pony 
in a machine, to do more in a few hours than of 
old the gang would do in a day. And doing it 
in the old way, with hay at its present price (that 
is, the price at the time of this talk), you would 
be losing money. 
Of rick-firing there was a good deal of tech- 
nical talk, and of the way to cut a rick out in such 
a case—getting ladders and hay-cutting knives, 
to work down into the centre. ‘The cut-out stuff 
being spread on the ground was liable to burst 
into flame if the wind caught it. Once (but only 
once) my uncle had seen a waggon going along 
the road with hay in such a state that little wisps 
falling off here and there began to flare up on 
the road. 
Many years ago—in the old Farnborough 
days—he had finished building a rick near the 
farm-house. ‘The next morning two sons of 
Mr. Longman, his landlord—two lads at that 
time—came to him, presumably sent by their 
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