138 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



acre, and that in a district where we are thankful to 

 obtain 33 as a rule. The money-value of this single 

 crop was equal to forty years' purchase-money of the 

 fee-simple of the ground itself, taking the rent as it 

 stood when the farm came into the present cultivator's 

 hands. The stubble is now being ploughed about ten 

 inches deep, and will be again dressed with the marl ; 

 the consequence of which will be that, after the frosts 

 have done their part, there will be a permanently- 

 established loam of golden value, within forty yards 

 of the pit from which we neighbours haul a hungry, 

 sparkling, quartz, gravel, to strew upon our garden- 

 walks. 



The burnt surface of an old, foul clover, or rather 

 couch ley, which I had pared and just done brown 

 (mind, the red-brick tint is a sign of lost strength, 

 owing to the fires having been too vehement), in large, 

 slow fires, built on a pile of thorn-stumps that were 

 excavated from a hedgerow which I have found it 

 expedient to level, with a view to dividing the farm 

 proportionately for rotation of crops, I find, as I had 

 anticipated, does admirably under the fattening pigs, 

 in a bay of a disused barn. There is already a thick 

 floor of fat stuff, richly soaked as a Yorkshire pudding 

 (for I had it hauled in during sunshine, in a thirsty 

 state), which, pulverized, I shall drill in with the 

 turnip-seed, thereby escaping the ruinous artificial- 

 manure drain. One effect took me by surprise, al- 

 though, of course, had one given the matter a thought, 

 it was an effect simply to be expected ; and that was 

 that, whereas, before we used these ashes to strew the 

 floor with, I found it impossible to approach the pig- 

 lodge, much less to stay near it any time, owing to 



