232 



Farming of Cumberland. 



crop,* on soils which are too light for wheat, and is found to be 

 the best nurse-crop for young seeds. The produce may average 

 about 35 imperial bushels per acre. A great part of this crop is 

 used for bread in the farm-houses — the labouring men who provide 

 their own victuals commonly using wheat-bread. The best of 

 the barley crop is bought for malting, but a great portion of the 

 malt used here is the produce of other parts. In former times 

 malting conveniences were numerous over the county, and the 

 writer distinctly remembers the country maltsters riding about 

 on horseback, seated on long pads, j with a number of " pokes " 

 or bags of malt under them, to deliver, as per order, to their 

 customers. Ale and beer were then brewed in the farm-houses, 

 where now there is hardly such a thing done — the malting and 

 brewing being both carried on in large concerns in or near 

 towns. 



Oats generally compose half of the grain-crop of the farm, 

 they being almost invariably the first crop of the course. On 

 high-lying farms, some of which have no barley soils, they con- 

 stitute the entire crop. The potato-oat % is the kind generally 

 sown, and the quantity of seed from five to six imperial bushels 

 per acre. The produce is extremely variable ; from 24 to 60 

 bushels or even more per acre, the average being about the 

 same as that of barley. A great quantity of oats is ground into 

 meal, and made into porridge ; and this, with milk, bread, and 

 sometimes cheese, constitutes the breakfast and supper of the 

 chief part of the farm households in the county. Thin oat-cake 

 is the family bread of most farms in the extreme south-west of 

 the county, and is more or less in use all over it, except in 

 towns.§ 



Rye is very little grown, except in small patches on peat-soil, 

 or on sand which may be thought too light for other corn crops. 

 An inducement to grow rye is the higher price the straw bears 

 for saddlers' use. 



Grain is cut chiefly with the sharp hook and the sickle ; but 



* On dry land, in high condition, Mr. Isaac Atkinson, of Cockermouth, obtains 

 heavy crops of barley on the ley furrow. 



t In those days the pillion was in general use for conveying the farmers' wives 

 on horseback behind their husbands. 



X This oat is said to have originated from a single plant, found growing in a 

 potato-field in Cumberland, in the year 1788. — Lawson, of Edinburgh, 



§ Eden, in his 'History of the Poor,' says, "About the year 1740, so small was 

 the quantity of wheat used in the county of Cumberland, that it was only a rich 

 family that used a peck of wheat in the course of a year, and that was at Christmas. 

 The usual treat for a stranger was thick oat-cake and butter. An old labourer of 

 85 remarks, that when he was a boy he was at Carlisle market with his father ; 

 and wishing to indulge himself with a penny loaf made of wheat flour, he searched 

 for it for some time, but could not procure a piece of wheaten bread at any shop in 

 the town." 



Thick oat bannocks were said to be the earliest in use ; then bigg and oat mixed. 

 " Bannocks o' barley-meal" were celebrated in song in the last century, and wheat 

 followed last. 



