68 ESSEX SEED CORN 



that had been allowed to ripen off for seed. In the 

 district between Dunmow and Bury most of the 

 English trifolium seed is produced, and the cultivation 

 has been stimulated by a large American demand, for 

 crimson clover is now being extensively grown in the 

 United States as a cover crop in orchards and the like. 

 Red clover was also extensively grown for seed, it 

 being the custom to graze off the first growth, thus 

 obtaining an earlier and heavier yield of seed than if 

 it had first been cut for hay. The Browick wheat and 

 the selected stocks of barley were mostly sold as seed 

 corn; turnips were not grown on the farm, the root 

 break being mangold and cabbages, together with the 

 vetches and kale already described. Another crop 

 which was rather a novelty on a large scale were two 

 fields of sugar-beet, which a Dutch company were 

 prepared to buy for export to Holland, until they 

 could get the factory running which they were about 

 to establish at Maldon. But on these comparatively 

 stiff soils the sugar-beet grower might expect no light 

 task before him when the time came for lifting the 

 crop. If the manufacture succeeds, sugar-beet will 

 form one more crop that can be sold off the farm ; 

 and our host's farming, as that of so many other 

 successful practitioners, was to sell away everything he 

 could even the trees round some of his lower fields 

 were cricket-bat willows, the true sort, than which 

 nothing grows into money more rapidly. It is, indeed, 

 through their high proportion of saleable crops that 

 the Essex farmers are in a thriving condition again ; 

 their farming has lost some of its old-time polish, the 

 land is cheaply worked and is not so clean as formerly, 

 but the rents in the district have not dropped much 

 below the 2os. an acre level and are tending to rise 

 with the competition that now exists for vacant farms. 



