408 THE MIDLANDS 



hut which Charles Cotton built to mark his friendship 

 with Izaak Walton, and flows by the white scars and 

 luxuriant vegetation of Dovedale, until beyond Ash- 

 bourne it reaches the softer valleys and more fertile 

 meadows that lie on the New Red Sandstone. 



In the stone-wall country the farms run small, most 

 of them about 50 acres, and only one field on each 

 farm is under the plough for oats. So high and bleak 

 is the country that the bulk of these oats does not 

 ripen ; that year in the first days of October many ol 

 the fields were grass green, and others were being cut 

 to feed in the straw without threshing. The best of 

 the oats only are threshed and ground locally for home 

 consumption. But the farmers were in no hurry about 

 their oats ; haymaking was still going on, and here and 

 there was a field still uncut. It is the custom to carry 

 the hay very green ; and as it is thrown up into a loft 

 to lie loose, there is less danger of its heating than 

 when made into a stack. In these northern counties 

 everything is built under one roof, the house at one 

 end, the shippon for the cows next, with the hay loft 

 over, and the stable beyond. Most of the farms have 

 a small Dutch barn alongside for the straw and the 

 rest of the hay. 



The whole of the farming in this countryside depends 

 on milk ; the cows are pastured on the grass during 

 the summer and live on the hay and oat straw through 

 the winter. Little imported food is bought, just as 

 artificial manures are rarely applied to the grassland ; 

 no effort is made to produce winter milk, for which, 

 indeed, there is small outlet except where a farmer is 

 near a station j^even then it is regarded as unprofitable. 

 The milking is done in the open, the cows are entirely 

 out of doors until the winter sets in. When they are 

 indoors they get no litter, the small stock of straw is 



