No. 4. 



Book Farming- 



133 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Book Farming. 



Sir, — I told you in my last, that my young 

 neighbour had made for himself what he calls 

 a routine of crops, and on my saying I did 

 not understand the meaning of that word, he 

 said it meant a round of crops, so that the 

 land which bears wheat this year, will come 

 in for that crop again, so many years hence, 

 and not higgledy-piggledy, as ours are very 

 apt to do if left to themselves: now this, I 

 thought, was prettily contrived, for it must 

 be a blessed thing to know what you are 

 going to do next: but, I declare, he had car- 

 ried out the idea, as he called it, in a way 

 which I had no notion of, for he had made a 

 painted map of his farm upon paper, showing, 

 by the different colours of the fields, what 

 crop had been grown upon every one the pre- 

 sent season ; and this was put into a frame 

 with glass and hung above the fire-place, in 

 his parlour, where he had it constantly in his 

 eye to con over; all this, he said, he made 

 new every year, for his own satisfaction, and, 

 I tell you, he walked me over the farm, upon 

 paper, in about half a second, from north to 

 south and from east to west, pointing out, as 

 we went along, where his corn would come 

 next year, and his wheat, and his oats and 

 potatoes, all as though the land was ready 

 ploughed for them — you may depend it was a 

 capital contrivance, and I intend to get him 

 to make me just such an one ; for, besides 

 the painting, there was something of more 

 value in the plan of changing the crops in 

 the way he does, but without it, I don't think 

 he could remember how he had determined 

 to fix it. You see, he says, we plough and 

 sow too much of our land, and I swow I think 

 we do, for he has, that's certain, more grain 

 upon one acre than I have upon three ; and 

 then he has such a capital run for his dairy 

 cows and fattening stock and sheep, in con- 

 sequence of laying up so much of his land to 

 gra^s; and I could but admire the way in 

 which he makes them, as he says, do the 

 work for him, and at last carry the crop to 

 market in the shape of fat beef and mutton ! 

 Now isn't that capital ] I guess it is. 



I have already told you how he contrived 

 to get a first-rate dairy of cows, all ready 

 made to his hand ; and seeing that his sheep 

 were the handsomest anywhere about, all of 

 the proper age for breeding, and such a num- 

 ber of them too, nearly a hundred, I just 

 asked him how he had contrived that part of 

 his business, and I promise you he is up to a 

 thing or two ! Says he, " 1 took my horse and 

 rode across the country to look about me, and 

 wherever I saw any first-rate sheep, I went 

 to the owner and asked him to sell me a few 

 of the best ; I was always refused at first, 



but that did not prevent me from urging him 

 to fix his price upon half-a-dozen or halfa- 

 score of the best ; and, as you know the old 

 story about money making the mare to go, so 

 I found it with the sheep, for I could gene- 

 rally make them to go for about a dollar ex- 

 tra, and leave their poor, emaciated, ugly 

 companions behind ! The last I tried my 

 hand at was a buck, a cross between the 

 Dishley and South-dovvn, which I had deter- 

 mined to buy at any price ; his companion, an 

 iio-ly brute, I could have had for three or four 

 dollars, but for him his owner made me pay 

 eight ! I tell you, I would have given forty 

 rather than lose him. Thus, I have at once 

 obtained a flock of ninety-eight of the hand- 

 somest ewes in the country, and they are now 

 all in lamb by the best bred bucks that money 

 could purchase, not one of which, however, 

 cost me over tVi/elve dollars." Now, I guess, 

 the people who have thus been selling "the 

 flower of their flocks" will find that they 

 have been " saving at the spigot and letting 

 run at the bimg." 



And in every thing about him he is curi- 

 ous, for, do you know, he has dug himself an 

 under-ground cellar, and arched it over with 

 stone ; and here he keeps his milk and butter, 

 instead of in the spring-house, which is, how- 

 ever, a capital one, and has always been in 

 use since I was a boy, and which, too, we 

 always thought quite necessary for this pur- 

 pose! but in that, to be sure, I set him down 

 as wrong — decidedly wrong — and so I told 

 him; for it is not possible there can be any 

 improvement upon spring-houses, that's cer- 

 tain : but I have observed, that these men are 

 always opinionated, and will have their own 

 or somebody else's way, and not the good, 

 old-fashioned plans of their grandfathers. — 

 Well, as I said, I told him he was wrong, but 

 he only replied, " come and see," and he began 

 taking me down stairs in the dark, only tell- 

 ing me to count steps, and note if I did not 

 feel it colder every one I took agoing down, 

 and it was so, that's a fact ; and when we got 

 to the bottom it was much colder than the 

 spring-house, and the milk was all standing 

 round upon a broad smooth shelf of white 

 marble, and not a drop of water in the whole 

 establishment ! I was amazed, but didn't say 

 a word. He told me that no water was ever 

 brought down there but what was boiling hot, 

 and this was to scald the shelves with, and, 

 after they had been scrubbed with a brush 

 and soap and water, they were rubbed quite 

 dry with a cloth, and this was the way the 

 floor was cleaned also, so that there may be 

 no evaporation even in the milk-house, as he 

 had learnt, first from books and afterwards 

 from experience, that all moisture of that sort 

 was injurious to the butter, taking the colour 

 out of it, and spoiling it for keeping ; and as 



