THE CULTIVATOR. 
187 
suited for barley, and this last gives a better return with 
less exhaustion of the soil; every year a small portion 
of the pasture is broken up, and sown with colza. This 
would probably not have been permitted, had the farm 
not been occupied by the son of the proprietor. 
The natural fertility of the soil is shown by the suc¬ 
cession of the crops produced on the newly-broken-up 
land without any manure; viz. colza, wheat, beans, 
barley, beans, wheat, clover, wheat, beans, oats. Af¬ 
ter this scouring is it no wonder that the soil wants rest; 
and this is given without much care, by merely allow¬ 
ing the natural grasses to spring up without the trouble 
of sowing the seeds. It takes three years before there 
is any tolerable pasture; but as it remains twenty years 
or more in grass before it is broken up again, the dete¬ 
riorating effect of the cropping is not observed. How 
much more productive might not the land be made by 
more judicious management! The whole of the farm 
has repeatedly undergone this process, and must have 
been extremely rich at first. At present it requires re¬ 
peated manuring to produce even average crops, except 
on that portion which has been broken up from old 
grass. Under a regular and judicious course of conver¬ 
tible husbandry, this land might be kept up in the high¬ 
est state of fertility, and the ultimate profit would be 
much greater. 
If we cannot altogether praise the management of the 
arable land, we must do justice to that of the dairy and 
stock. Here the finest and richest butter in the world 
is made. The stock consists of twenty-four milch cows, 
twenty-eight yearling calves, twenty-eight two-year-old 
heifers and steers, and fifty bullocks. All these are 
wintered on straw, hay, and split beans. The straw is 
cut into chaff, and the farmer, Mr. Graeve, son of the 
proprietor, a spirited young man, 1ms procured from 
England a machine for cutting chaff, which is to be work 
de by a horse, in the same mill by which he churns his 
butter. The bullocks are fattened on the pastures, and 
are fit for the butcher by the end of July or August.- 
The weight of the cai-cass, when slaughtered, averages 
ninety stone, of eight pounds each, and sells for 12Z. or 
2s. 8 d. a stone. The cows give each, on an average, 
twelve quarts of milk per day. He churns three times 
a week, making forty pounds at each churning. The 
cream only is churned in a barrel-churn, which is turned 
by a horse. The butter comes in one hour and a quar¬ 
ter in summer; in winter it takes two or three hours.— 
As soon as it is taken out of the churn it is well washed, 
to get all the butter-milk out, and immediately salted: 
before night it is worked again, and more salt is added. 
It is then put into the cask, and brine is poured over it. 
It sells for one franc (lOd.) the pound of twenty ounces. 
This butter is famed for its keeping, and is therefore 
much sought after for ships’ provision. In summer there 
are fifty labourers on this farm, half of whom are 
boarded and lodged, and have from 81. to 12/. yearly 
wages. The day labourers have 9d. a day and their 
food. 
The calves which are reared, of which there were 
twenty-eight when we visited the farm, have per day a 
bushel of oats and eight oil-cakes amongst them, with 
hay and cut straw, from November to May. The fifty 
oxen have a sack of beans per day amongst them, and 
cut straw as much as they can eat. There were two 
hundred sheep, which are folded on the fallows, and in 
the day-time feed in the pastures and along the canals 
and dykes. When they are fat they are sold and others 
bought in. None are bred : for, when kept long on this 
land, they become subject to the staggers and the rot in 
winter and spring; they are therefore fattened and sold 
as soon as possible. 
The breed of pigs was much better than the generality 
of Flemish pigs, and appeared to have had a foreign 
cross, perhaps of a Berkshire hog; but there was no 
distinct account of this. The short legs and pricked 
ears clearly prove them not to be indigenous. 
The cows are dry for three months in the year; at 
that time they have only straw to eat, with a small quan¬ 
tity of meal diffused in the water they drink. They 
calve in April or May, and, when the grass becomes 
abundant, each cow is expected to give five pounds and 
a half of butter weekly; and as the pound is of twenty 
ounces, this is a large average, and shows good pasture. 
Hay is made more carefully and better stacked on this 
farm than we have seen it on any other. The ricks are 
square, as they are in England, and hold from forty to 
fifty tons of hay; they are carefully thatched, and want 
only the pulling and trimming of the licks in Middle¬ 
sex, to vie with them in neatness. 
There are seventeen horses kept for farm-work ; these 
are mostly of a French breed, much more active and 
vigourous than the heavy Flemish horses. A good horse 
costs from 16/. to 20/. The cows are mostly Dutch, and 
cost from 8/. to 10/. each. They are large and have fine 
udders. The colour is generally black and white, the 
horns moderate, and the skin fine. They are not so 
high as the Hohlerness cows, but their carcasses are as 
large; some of them give an astonishing quantity of 
milk. 
This is one of the largest farms in Flanders, and may 
be considered as an intermediate between the upland 
farms and the polders. The buildings are scattered and 
irregular. It was formerly the property of a religious 
order, but confiscated and sold at the Revolution in 
1794. The chapel still remains, but it is converted into 
a barn. The tenant purchased the land for a small sum 
compared to its worth, and his son is the present occu¬ 
pier. A small canal winds through the property, act¬ 
ing as a drain for the superfluous water, and at the same 
time as an easy means of conveying the produce of the 
farm-yard, and taking manure to the fields bordering 
upon it. With a little attention it is not difficult to make 
this farm produce everything that a frugal Flemish fa¬ 
mily requires, and enable the occupier to lay up a con¬ 
siderable sum every year. In the hand of a skilful and 
scientific farmer a fortune might be realized on such a 
soil in a few years, by keeping up the fertility, instead 
of reducing it by excessive cropping of the land broken 
up from pasture ; but especially by introducing improv¬ 
ed breeds of cattle, and grazing them to advantage. 
Not far from Roulers, at Newkerken, there is a small 
farm of about sixty acres, occupied by a Mr. Verpoort, 
which is worth noticing. The soil is a good sound grey 
loam of a moderate quality, the subsoil being retentive; 
the fields are divided by ditches four feet wide and three 
deep. Some trees and underwood are planted along 
some of the ditches but not everywhere. There are no 
raised banks; the earth of the ditches having been 
spread over the land. The fields are all small, not ex¬ 
ceeding three or four acres each, and mostly of an ob¬ 
long shape. There was no water in the ditches when 
we saw it; but it is probable that in winter they are ne¬ 
cessary to keep the land dry, as the country is so fiat 
that the water must be along time in running off. The 
principal produce on this land is wheat, of which theie 
are eighteen or twenty acres every year. The wheat 
this year (1837) was sown on land which the year be¬ 
fore had been cropped as follows: two acres in beans, 
four clover, two potatoes, three colza, three flax, 
and four fallow—eighteen acres in all. Mr. Verpoort, 
thinks that it might be more advantageous to have 
more fallow, as the land is very apt to be overrun 
with weeds, in spite of every precaution, and a fallow 
now and then is unavoidable. The other crops besides 
wheat where distributed as follows : three acres in rye 
and turnips, four oats, five flax, three colza, four and 
a half clover after flax, two beans, three potatoes, half 
an acre beet-root, five fallow, ten grass, half of which 
was pastured, and half mown. These ten acres lie 
along a low rivulet, and are flooded in winter. What 
makes this farm worthy of notice is the great propor¬ 
tion of wheat sown, and the variety of other produce, 
which return at a much longer interval, clover enly every 
nine or ten years. 
The whole of the work of this farm is done with two 
horses. There are thirteen fine cows, four heifers, two 
or three calves, one colt, and five or six hogs; and all 
these animals seem well fed. Except a few grains from 
the brewers, and some linseed cakes, no food is pur¬ 
chased for the cattle, but the farm supplies all that is 
required. Mr. Verpoort used to breed horses and sell 
them to English dealers, who came round to the diffe- 
rent farms, and bought three-year-old colts at a fair 
price; but none of them had been there for some time, 
at which he was disappointed, having a very promising 
colt eighteen months old, very large and fat, which he 
thought would be much admired. The colt had been 
brought up in the stable, like a fatting calf, without 
much exercise. His feet were flat and wide ; and, from 
good feeding, he was large and heavy. He might at 
one time have been admired as a heavy dray-horse, but 
he was evidently very unfit formuscular action; and al¬ 
though as well shaped as most Flemish horses, he was 
not likely ever to become very useful. 
The cows on this farm were milked three times a day 
for three months after calving, and only twice after¬ 
wards. They were fed in summer with clover cut for 
them and brought into the stalls. Occasionally they 
were led out into the pasture, but only for a few hours 
at a time, and never in the middle of the day, when the 
flies would teaze them. In winter they had their bras- 
sin, made of turnips and potatoes cut in pieces, and 
chopped straw, boiled together in a copper, and some 
linseed cake added to this. Sometimes beans were 
soaked in water for twenty-four hours, and then mixed 
with the brassin. The roots were cut by a machine 
something like our turnip-cutters, but not so perfect.- 
This is the only farm where we have seen a machine, 
as the spade is the usual instrument with which roots 
are cut. The chaff-cutter is exactly like our common 
chaff-box, where the work is done by the hand ; and, ex¬ 
cept where horse-power can be applied, or the chaff-cut¬ 
ter can be attached to a mill, the hand-box is, perhaps, 
the instrument which will cut most chaff in a given time 
by mere manual labour. The cows are of the Dutch 
breed, and apparently very good milkers. Mr. Verpoort 
fattens calves a twelvemonth old, and thinks itmore ad¬ 
vantageous than if he kept them longer. This young 
beef is probably more readily disposed of in Flanders 
than it would be in England. All the labourers on this 
farm are fed in the house. The women have five-peno 
and the men eight-pence a day for wages, which makes 
the food to be reckoned at only three pence per head 
per day. A labourer obliged to find his own food could 
scarcely provide himself at so cheap a rate ; but the far¬ 
mer, who has everything from his own farm, finds that 
it is more economical to feed the labourers, even at that 
low rate. They have for breakfast bread and potatoes, 
with tea as it is called, but it is a very weak infusion of 
that herb, and may be better called hot water with.milk 
in it. For dinner they have a soup of butter-milk and 
bread boiled in it; after that they have potatoes and a 
bit of salt pork. For supper skimmed milk or butter 
milk and potatoes. 
The hogs are kept in separate dark styes, and fed on 
beans and the remnant of the brassin. They are six 
months or more in fatting, and then not remarkably 
fat. 
The whole farm is in very good condition and clean. 
The beans are sown in the furrows after the plough; the 
produce per acre, on an average, is 
four quarters of 
wheat, seven of oats, four of beans. All the roots aie 
consumed on the farm. The land does not suit barley 
so well as wheat. The clover is usually sown amongst 
the wheat in spring. Flax is sown after oats, and colza 
after rye and turnips, which two last always come after 
wheat. This seems to be the most universal practice all 
over Flanders. 
No sheep are kept on this farm ; but a neighbouring 
farmer, who has eighty acres, keeps one hundred sheep 
which he fattens, not by pasturing them, but by feed¬ 
ing in the stable like oxen. They have clover cut lor 
them, and sometimes partake of the brassin. I hey get 
fat, but whether the flesh is w-ell tasted when they are 
killed, is more than we can say; the principal object is 
profit, of which the dung forms an important item. 
On another farm situated near Grammont, the pro¬ 
perty of Mr. Spital, who is a great amatuer and breeder 
of English blood-horses, we found the soil ol a still 
stronger nature, but the cultivation very similar to the 
last. The name of the tenant is Vander Stude, a sensi¬ 
ble and intelligent farmer, who seems to be well ac¬ 
quainted with the practice of the best farmers. He holds 
about one hundred and thirty acres of land, of which 
three-fourths are arable and one-fourth pasture. A third 
of his arable land, or about thirty acres, is in wheat, 
ten rye, fourteen oats, fourteen clover, ten flax, twelve 
colza, three beans, three barley, and six in potatoes.—• 
There is no fallow, yet the land is clean. It seems not 
so wet as the last, and this may account for the fallows 
not being so necessary. He sows turnips after rye or 
colza. The colza plants are raised on the land which 
has had clover upon it, with one ploughing. The flax 
is sown in March, on clover ley also, with only one shal¬ 
low ploughing, which is given before winter; but the 
land is repeatedly harrow r ed before the flax is sown.—• 
Everything which is grown on the farm, except wheat, 
flax, and rapeseed or colza is consumed upon it. His 
urine-cistern is twenty feet square, and seven feet deep, 
but he says that it is much too small. There is a smal¬ 
ler cistern under the dung in the yard, from which the 
drainings are occasionally pumped up, and spread over 
the dung to accelerate its decomposition. The produce 
of the land is from four to five quarters of wheat per 
acre; the same of colza: but this last is worth one-fourth 
more than the wheat. The flax is sold on the ground at 
about sixteen pounds an acre, the farmer feeding the 
labourers who pull it;—this is a lower produce than 
where the land is differently prepared for this crop. 
The stock consists of seventeen cows, five calves, and 
a few heifers, nine cart horses, and three colts. The 
labourers are fed and paid exactly as at the last farm. 
A few hops are grown on about half an acre. 
Near Alost we met with one of the smallest farms, 
which will maintain a family without other work; it 
was barely five acres. The house was much larger than 
such an occupation warranted; but it was an old farm¬ 
house, and the land had been divided into smallhold¬ 
ings, leaving only five acres to go with the house.— 
There was a small orchard of about a quarter of an 
acre, in whch there were some thriving apple and plumb 
trees. The grass under these was good ; and the only 
cow which the man had was led by the wife to graze 
there for a short time every day, apparently more to 
give her exercise than for the food she could pick up.— 
The grass seemed to have been cut for her in another 
part. This cow had cost eight pounds, and the man re¬ 
gretted that he had not had the means to purchase a se¬ 
cond,\as he could have maintained two very well. Half 
of the land was in wheat, the other half in clover, flax, 
and potatoes; so that the clover did not recur sooner 
than in six years, the flax and potatoes in nine. As 
soon as the wheat was cut he began to back the stubble 
about four inches deep with the heavy hoe, and as fast 
as he got a piece done, it was sown with turnips, after 
having some of the contents of the urine-tank poured 
over it: for, small as the farm was, it had its reservoir 
for this precious manure. Thus a considerable portion 
of the wheat stubble was soon covered with young tur¬ 
nips of a quick-growing sort, which, if sown in the be¬ 
ginning or middle of August, were fit to be pulled in 
November and December, and stored in the cellar for 
winter use. There was a small patch of cameline, 
which was sown less for seed than for the stem, of 
which he made brooms in his leisure hours in winter.—• 
But these hours could be but few, and only when snow 
covered the ground, and prevented him from digging 
and trenching, which was a constant operation ; for the 
whole five acres had to be dug in the course of the year, 
and as much of it as possible trenched: the soil being a 
stiff loam of a good depth, which was much improved 
by trenching and stirring. The milk and potatoes fed 
the family, with the addition of a little salt pork; for 
a pig was fed on the refuse of the food given to the cow, 
and a very little corn, and consequently was not over¬ 
burdened with fat. Most of the wheat and all the flax 
were sold, and more than paid the rent, which was not 
high—about 10/. a year without any rates, tithes, or 
taxes. Incessant labour kept the man in good health, 
and his wife was not idle. They had two or three young 
children, one at the breast: but, except the wish for 
another cow, there seemed no great dissatisfaction with 
their lot, nor any great fears for the future. They had 
no parish-fund to fall back upon, not even a union work- 
house; but had they come to want by unforsecn acci¬ 
dents, they would have found the hand of private chari¬ 
ty stretched out to help them. 
We have before alluded to a farm of which the occu¬ 
pier kept ewes for the sake of their lambs, which he 
alone in the neighbourhood fatted for the butchers. His 
