Typical Farms in Cheshire and North Wales. 
585 
gets 15s. a week, with 21. extra for hay and corn harvest, and beer and 
luncheon. Three young men and two maids live in the house, their wages 
amounting to 60/. a year and keep, and two Irishmen are employed for three 
months in summer at 15s. a week and milk. The wages account amounts, 
with keep, to about 250/. per annum. 
6. The Farm o/Me. Joseph Aston, Brassey Green, Tarporley, Cheshire. 
Mr. Joseph Aston farms in Tiverton Township, not far from Beeston 
Castle, upon the New Red Sandstone (white sandstone), 140 feet above the 
sea level. The soil is mostly a stiff clay, and the subsoil for some depth is 
stiff marl or clay. The farm contains 218 acres, and, with the exception of 
ten acres rented from Lord Tollemaclie, is Mr. Aston’s own property. It 
is all in permanent pasture. There are two houses and sets of buildings on 
the holding. Mr. Aston resides in an interesting and picturesque old- 
fashioned black-and-white timbered house. The buildings run at right 
angles on either side in front, forming together a quadrangle, through which 
the residence is approached. They also are old-fashioned, but there is room 
for tying fifty-nine cattle, besides stabling, loose-box, corn-mixing and chaff 
room, piggeries, and a good Dutch barn. The new house and buildings are 
on part of the farm purchased some fifty years ago. The latter contain 
space for tying sixty-four cows, with good hay tallats 1 above, cart-shed, with 
corn room above, and newly constructed dairy with press house, and cheese 
room well designed and arranged, where the cheese manufacture is conducted. 
A boiler with 3-horse-power engine works shafting for pumping, curd- 
grinding, curd-breaking, &c., and the whey, after being drained from the 
milk vat and standing in the cisterns and being skimmed for whey-butter 
making, is pumped into the whey-troughs at the pig-sties and mixed with 
the feeding-meal. 
Mr. Aston does not mow the same fields continuously. lie reserves 
about forty acres for hay each season, and applies farmyard manure every 
other year to the land from which he takes a hay crop. He also dresses one- 
fourth of his land each year with 10 cwt. of bones per acre. No hay is 
sold, and straw is purchased for littering stock. Sand also is used in the 
shippons to save straw and promote cleanliness. The fields are large and 
the fences strongly grown. The land is laid out on the old high rounded 
butts, and has been drained 2 ft. 6 in. to 3 ft. deep in each rein, 2 with 
2-in. pipes, connected by deeper mains with the outfalls. 
The stock upon the farm consisted of — 
2 hacks. 
2 cart horses. 
84 milking cows. 
34 two-year-old heifers in-calf. 
3 yearling heifers. 
55 pigs. 
All the cattle stock are purchased, usually as two-year-old heifers, 
and they replace the older cows fed off. The cows are divided into 
two herds, one located at each homestead. They are not selected for 
uniformity, and are mixed with Welsh and Cheshire cross-bred Shorthorns, 
but they are considered to he a good milking lot. They rely on the grass 
land for summer keep, and on hay and artificial support in winter. Mr. 
Aston prefers the calves to be dropped in May. lie reserves the dairy cows 
entirely for the sale of milk in the winter, for which he obtains 9d. per gallon, 
1 This word, applied to a hay-loft over a stable, is variously spelt. It will 
be safe, however, to follow Mr. Blackmore (“ Lorna Doone,” Chap. LXXIV.),— 
“ I let Jem Slocombe go to sleep in the tallat, all one afternoon.” — Ed. 
2 The finishing-up line between the “ lands ” ploughed. 
