106 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



" What a precious nasty mess this fold be in ! " mur- 

 mured a good but slow labourer just now, in our 

 unintended hearing, as he vainly endeavoured to push 

 his barrow laden from the calf-pens, up a yielding 

 incline of accumulated muck ; " and them pigs be 

 always a mooting it." . 



" Come, you wouldn't say that if you were a turnip 

 grower." 



" Nay, sir, it be rare stuff for that job." 



" Very good, then ; just get your pike and level that 

 heap, then lay yonder board upon it, and you may 

 wheel any amount on it without difficulty." 



Intensely dull is the lowest order of the bucolic 

 mind : the monkey that used puss's paw to fork out 

 his roasted chestnuts from the fire, were a professor of 

 political economy, beside so many of our labouring 

 population, who believe, even in this enlightened age, 

 that the ugliest local hag is a witch, and account for 

 every death of stock upon the farm with a " Please sir, 

 him had a pain." 



The fact is, I consider pigs in the fold-yard do an 

 immensity of good by breaking up and compounding 

 the mixed strata of the manure pan, reducing it to a 

 pulpy state, fit for transportation at once into the root 

 drills, without being robbed of its moisture and spirit, 

 as it is so much through evaporation when turned in a 

 heap upon the headland, not to mention the saving of 

 labour. And the pigs, too, they do very well for them- 

 selves somehow in this employment. The juices may 

 feed them as mud fattens the carp. The waste of cake 

 and corn, too, they secure. This reminds me that from 

 stress of work lately, we have not been able to crush 

 the oats as I like to have them done. The carters. 



