KEEPING COWS.
111. As to the use of milk and of that which proceeds from milk, in a family, very little need be said. At a certain age bread and milk are all that a child wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day for children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to drink. In the making of puddings, and in the making of bread too, how useful is it! Let any one who has eaten none but baker’s bread for a good while, taste bread home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with water; and he will find what the difference is. There is this only to be observed, that in hot weather, bread mixed with milk will not keep so long as that mixed with water. It will of course turn sour sooner.
112. Whether the milk of a cow be to be consumed by a cottage family in the shape of milk, or whether it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk, and buttermilk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that has no child, or only one, would, perhaps, find it best to make some butter at any rate. Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food enough for any children’s breakfast, even when they begin to go to work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of six, helping his father to reap, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was something. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before him; and when he came up to the place, he found a sheaf cut; and, those who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an age when “young masters” have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses’ bellies. Was not this father discharging his duty by this boy much better than he would have been by sending him to a place called a school? The boy is in a school here; and an excellent school too: the school of useful labour. I must hear a great deal more than I ever have heard, to convince me, that teaching children to read tends so much to their happiness, their independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to reap. The creature that is in want must be a slave; and to be habituated to labour cheerfully is the only means of preventing nineteen-twentieths of mankind from being in want. I have digressed here; but observations of this sort can, in my opinion, never be too often repeated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot, for what is falsely called educating the people, and when some would do this by a tax that would compel the single man to give part of his earnings to teach the married man’s children to read and write.
113. Before I quit the uses to which milk may be put, let me mention, that, as mere drink, it is, unless perhaps in case of heavy labour, better, in my opinion, than any beer, however good. I have drinked little else for the last five years, at any time of the day. Skim-milk I mean. If you have not milk enough to wet up your bread with (for a bushel of flour requires about 16 to 18 pints,) you make up the quantity with water, of course; or, which is a very good way, with water that has been put, boiling hot, upon bran, and then drained off. This takes the goodness out of the bran to be sure; but really good bread is a thing of so much importance, that it always ought to be the very first object in domestic economy.
114. The cases vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down rules for the application of the produce of a cow, which rules shall fit all cases. I content myself, therefore, with what has already been said on this subject; and shall only make an observation on the act of milking, before I come to the chief matter; namely, the getting of the food for the cow. A cow should be milked clean. Not a drop, if it can be avoided, should be left in the udder. It has been proved that the half pint that comes out last has twelve times, I think it is, as much butter in it, as the half pint that comes out first. I tried the milk of ten Alderney cows, and, as nearly as I, without being very nice about the matter, could ascertain, I found the difference to be about what I have stated. The udder would seem to be a sort of milk-pan in which the cream is uppermost, and, of course, comes out last, seeing that the outlet is at the bottom. But, besides this, if you do not milk clean, the cow will give less and less milk, and will become dry much sooner than she ought. The cause of this I do not know, but experience has long established the fact.
115. In providing food for a cow we must look, first, at the sort of cow; seeing that a cow of one sort will certainly require more than twice as much food as a cow of another sort. For a cottage, a cow of the smallest sort common in England is, on every account, the best; and such a cow will not require above 70 or 80 pounds of good moist food in the twenty-four hours.
116. Now, how to raise this food on 40 rods of ground is what we want to know. It frequently happens that a labourer has more than 40 rods of ground. It more frequently happens, that he has some common, some lane, some little out-let or other, for a part of the year, at least. In such cases he may make a different disposition of his ground; or may do with less than the 40 rods. I am here, for simplicity’s sake, to suppose, that he have 40 rods of clear, unshaded land, besides what his house and sheds stand upon; and that he have nothing further in the way of means to keep his cow.
117. I suppose the 40 rods to be clean and unshaded; for I am to suppose, that when a man thinks of 5 quarts of milk a day, on an average, all the year round, he will not suffer his ground to be encumbered by apple-trees that give him only the means of treating his children to fits of the belly-ache, or with currant and gooseberry bushes, which, though their fruit do very well to amuse, really give nothing worthy of the name of food, except to the blackbirds and thrushes. The ground is to be clear of trees; and, in the spring, we will suppose it to be clean. Then, dig it up deeply, or, which is better, trench it, keeping, however, the top spit of the soil at the top. Lay it in ridges in April or May about two feet apart, and made high and sharp. When the weeds appear about three inches high, turn the ridges into the furrows (never moving the ground but in dry weather,) and bury all the weeds. Do this as often as the weeds get three inches high; and by the fall, you will have really clean ground, and not poor ground.
118. There is the ground then, ready. About the 26th of August, but not earlier, prepare a rod of your ground; and put some manure in it (for some you must have,) and sow one half of it with Early York Cabbage Seed, and the other half with Sugar-loaf Cabbage Seed, both of the true sort, in little drills at 8 inches apart, and the seeds thin in the drill. If the plants come up at two inches apart (and they should be thinned if thicker,) you will have a plenty. As soon as fairly out of ground, hoe the ground nicely, and pretty deeply, and again in a few days. When the plants have six leaves, which will be very soon, dig up, make fine, and manure another rod or two, and prick out the plants, 4000 of each in rows at eight inches apart and three inches in the row. Hoe the ground between them often, and they will grow fast and be straight and strong. I suppose that these beds for plants take 4 rods of your ground. Early in November, or, as the weather may serve, a little earlier or later, lay some manure (of which I shall say more hereafter) between the ridges, in the other 36 rods, and turn the ridges over on this manure, and then transplant your plants on the ridges at 15 inches apart. Here they will stand the winter; and you must see that the slugs do not eat them. If any plants fail, you have plenty in the bed where you prick them out; for your 36 rods will not require more than 4000 plants. If the winter be very hard, and bad for plants, you cannot cover 36 rods; but you may the bed where the rest of your plants are. A little litter, or straw, or dead grass, or fern, laid along between the rows and the plants, not to cover the leaves, will preserve them completely. When people complain of all their plants being “cut off,” they have, in fact nothing to complain of but their own extreme carelessness. If I had a gardener who complained of all his plants being cut off, I should cut him off pretty quickly. If those in the 36 rods fail, or fail in part, fill up their places, later in the winter, by plants from the bed.
119. If you find the ground dry at the top during the winter, hoe it, and particularly near the plants, and rout out all slugs and insects. And when March comes, and the ground is dry, hoe deep and well, and earth the plants up close to the lower leaves. As soon as the plants begin to grow, dig the ground with a spade clean and well, and let the spade go as near to the plants as you can without actually displacing the plants. Give them another digging in a month; and, if weeds come in the mean-while, hoe, and let not one live a week. Oh! “what a deal of work!” Well! but it is for yourself, and, besides, it is not all to be done in a day; and we shall by-and-by see what it is altogether.
120. By the first of June; I speak of the South of England, and there is also some difference in seasons and soils; but, generally speaking, by the first of June you will have turned-in cabbages, and soon you will have the Early Yorks solid. And by the first of June you may get your cow, one that is about to calve, or that has just calved, and at this time such a cow as you will want will not, thank God, cost above five pounds.
121. I shall speak of the place to keep her in, and of the manure and litter, by-and-by. At present I confine myself to her mere food. The 36 rods, if the cabbages all stood till they got solid, would give her food for 200 days, at 80 pounds weight per day, which is more than she would eat. But you must use some, at first, that are not solid; and, then, some of them will split before you can use them. But you will have pigs to help off with them, and to gnaw the heads of the stumps. Some of the sugar-loaves may have been planted out in the spring; and thus these 36 rods will get you along to some time in September.
122. Now mind, in March, and again in April, sow more Early Yorks, and get them to be fine stout plants, as you did those in the fall. Dig up the ground and manure it, and, as fast as you cut cabbages, plant cabbages; and in the same manner and with the same cultivation as before. Your last planting will be about the middle of August, with stout plants, and these will serve you into the month of November.
123. Now we have to provide from December to May inclusive; and that, too, out of this same piece of ground. In November there must be, arrived at perfection, 3000 turnip plants. These, without the greens, must weigh, on an average, 5 pounds, and this, at 80 pounds a day, will keep the cow 187 days; and there are but 182 days in these six months. The greens will have helped put the latest cabbages to carry you through November, and perhaps into December. But for these six months, you must depend on nothing but the Swedish turnips.
124. And now, how are these to be had upon the same ground that bears the cabbages? That we are now going to see. When you plant out your cabbages at the out-set, put first a row of Early Yorks, then a row of Sugar-loaves, and so on throughout the piece. Of course, as you are to use the Early Yorks first, you will cut every other row; and the Early Yorks that you are to plant in summer will go into the intervals. By-and-by the Sugar-loaves are cut away, and in their place will come Swedish turnips, you digging and manuring the ground as in the case of the cabbages: and, at last, you will find about 16 rods where you will have found it too late, and unnecessary besides, to plant any second crop of cabbages. Here the Swedish turnips will stand in rows at two feet apart, (and always a foot apart in the row,) and thus you will have three thousand turnips; and if these do not weigh five pounds each on an average, the fault must be in the seed or in the management.
125. The Swedish turnips are raised in this manner. You will bear in mind the four rods of ground in which you have sowed and pricked out your cabbage plants. The plants that will be left there will, in April, serve you for greens, if you ever eat any, though bread and bacon are very good without greens, and rather better than with. At any rate, the pig, which has strong powers of digestion, will consume this herbage. In a part of these four rods you will, in March and April, as before directed, have sown and raised your Early Yorks for the summer planting. Now, in the last week of May, prepare a quarter of a rod of this ground, and sow it, precisely as directed for the Cabbage-seed, with Swedish turnip-seed; and sow a quarter of a rod every three days, till you have sowed two rods. If the fly appear, cover the rows over in the day-time with cabbage leaves, and take the leaves off at night; hoe well between the plants; and when they are safe from the fly, thin them to four inches apart in the row. The two rods will give you nearly five thousand plants, which is 2000 more than you will want. From this bed you draw your plants to transplant in the ground where the cabbages have stood, as before directed. You should transplant none much before the middle of July, and not much later than the middle of August. In the two rods, whence you take your turnip plants, you may leave plants to come to perfection, at two feet distances each way; and this will give you over and above, 840 pounds weight of turnips. For the other two rods will be ground enough for you to sow your cabbage plants in at the end of August, as directed for last year.
126. I should now proceed to speak of the manner of harvesting, preserving, and using the crops; of the manner of feeding the cow; of the shed for her; of the managing of the manure, and several other less important things; but these, for want of room here, must be reserved for the beginning of my next Number. After, therefore, observing that the Turnip plants must be transplanted in the same way that Cabbage plants are; and that both ought to be transplanted in dry weather and in ground just fresh digged, I shall close this Number with the notice of two points which I am most anxious to impress upon the mind of every reader.
127. The first is, whether these crops give an ill taste to milk and butter. It is very certain, that the taste and smell of certain sorts of cattle-food will do this; for, in some parts of America, where the wild garlick, of which the cows are very fond, and which, like other bulbous-rooted plants, springs before the grass, not only the milk and butter have a strong taste of garlick, but even the veal, when the calves suck milk from such sources. None can be more common expressions, than, in Philadelphia market, are those of Garlicky Butter and Garlicky Veal, I have distinctly tasted the Whiskey in milk of cows fed on distiller’s wash. It is also certain, that, if the cow eat putrid leaves of cabbages and turnips, the butter will be offensive. And the white-turnip, which is at best but a poor thing, and often half putrid, makes miserable butter. The large cattle-cabbage, which, when loaved hard, has a strong and even an offensive smell, will give a bad taste and smell to milk and butter, whether there be putrid leaves or not. If you boil one of these rank cabbages, the water is extremely offensive to the smell. But I state upon positive and recent experience, that Early York and Sugar-loaf Cabbages will yield as sweet milk and butter as any food that can be given to a cow. During this last summer, I have, with the exception about to be noticed, kept, from the 1st of May to the 22d of October, five cows upon the grass of two acres and a quarter of ground, the grass being generally cut up for them and given to them in the stall. I had in the spring 5000 cabbage plants, intended for my pigs, eleven in number. But the pigs could not eat half their allowance, though they were not very small when they began upon it. We were compelled to resort to the aid of the cows; and, in order to see the effect on the milk and butter, we did not mix the food; but gave the cows two distinct spells at the cabbages, each spell about 10 days in duration. The cabbages were cut off the stump with little or no care about dead leaves. And sweeter, finer butter, butter of a finer colour, than these cabbages made, never was made in this world. I never had better from cows feeding in the sweetest pasture. Now, as to Swedish turnips, they do give a little taste, especially if boiling of the milk pans be neglected, and if the greatest care be not taken about all the dairy tackle. Yet we have, for months together, had the butter so fine from Swedish turnips, that nobody could well distinguish it from grass-butter. But to secure this, there must be no sluttishness. Churn, pans, pail, shelves, wall, floor, and all about the dairy, must be clean; and, above all things, the pans must be boiled. However, after all, it is not here a case of delicacy of smell so refined as to faint at any thing that meets it except the stink of perfumes. If the butter do taste a little of the Swedish turnip, it will do very well where there is plenty of that sweet sauce which early rising and bodily labour are ever sure to bring.
128. The other point (about which I am still more anxious) is the seed; for if the seed be not sound, and especially if it be not true to its kind, all your labour is in vain. It is best, if you can do it, to get your seed from some friend, or some one that you know and can trust. If you save seed, observe all the precautions mentioned in my book on Gardening. This very year I have some Swedish turnips, so called, about 7000 in number, and should, if my seed had been true, have had about twenty tons weight; instead of which I have about three! Indeed, they are not Swedish turnips, but a sort of mixture between that plant and rape. I am sure the seedsman did not wilfully deceive me. He was deceived himself. The truth is, that seedsmen are compelled to buy their seeds of this plant. Farmers save it; and they but too often pay very little attention to the manner of doing it. The best way is to get a dozen of fine turnip plants, perfect in all respects, and plant them in a situation where the smell of the blossoms of nothing of the cabbage or rape or turnip or even charlock kind, can reach them. The seed will keep perfectly good for four years.
No. V
KEEPING COWS—(continued.)
129. I have now, in the conclusion of this article, to speak of the manner of harvesting and preserving the Swedes; of the place to keep the cow in; of the manure for the land; and of the quantity of labour that the cultivation of the land and the harvesting of the crop will require.
130. Harvesting and preserving the Swedes. When they are ready to take up, the tops must be cut off, if not cut off before, and also the roots; but neither tops nor roots should be cut off very close. You will have room for ten bushels of the bulbs in the house, or shed. Put the rest into ten-bushel heaps. Make the heap upon the ground in a round form, and let it rise up to a point. Lay over it a little litter, straw, or dead grass, about three inches thick, and then earth upon that about six inches thick. Then cut a thin round green turf, about eighteen inches over, and put it upon the crown of the heap to prevent the earth from being washed off. Thus these heaps will remain till wanted for use. When given to the cow, it will be best to wash the Swedes and cut each into two or three pieces with a spade or some other tool. You can take in ten bushels at a time. If you find them sprouting in the spring, open the remaining heaps, and expose them to the sun and wind; and cover them again slightly with straw or litter of some sort.[6]
131. As to the place to keep the cow in, much will depend upon situation and circumstances. I am always supposing that the cottage is a real cottage, and not a house in a town or village street; though, wherever there is the quarter of an acre of ground, the cow may be kept. Let me, however, suppose that which will generally happen; namely, that the cottage stands by the side of a road, or lane, and amongst fields and woods, if not on the side of a common. To pretend to tell a country labourer how to build a shed for a cow, how to stick it up against the end of his house, or to make it an independent erection; or to dwell on the materials, where poles, rods, wattles, rushes, furze, heath, and cooper-chips, are all to be gotten by him for nothing or next to nothing, would be useless; because a man who, thus situated, can be at any loss for a shed for his cow, is not only unfit to keep a cow, but unfit to keep a cat. The warmer the shed is the better it is. The floor should slope, but not too much. There are stones, of some sort or other, every-where, and about six wheel-barrow-fulls will pave the shed, a thing to be by no means neglected. A broad trough, or box, fixed up at the head of the cow, is the thing to give her food in; and she should be fed three times a day, at least; always at day-light and at sun-set. It is not absolutely necessary that a cow ever quit her shed, except just at calving time, or when taken to the bull. In the former case the time is, nine times out of ten, known to within forty-eight hours. Any enclosed field or place will do for her during a day or two; and for such purpose, if there be not room at home, no man will refuse place for her in a fallow field. It will, however, be good, where there is no common to turn her out upon, to have her led by a string, two or three times a week, which may be done by a child only five years old, to graze, or pick, along the sides of roads and lanes. Where there is a common, she will, of course, be turned out in the day time, except in very wet or severe weather; and in a case like this, a smaller quantity of ground will suffice for the keeping of her. According to the present practice, a miserable “tallet” of bad hay is, in such cases, the winter provision for the cow. It can scarcely be called food; and the consequence is, the cow is both dry and lousy nearly half the year; instead of being dry only about fifteen days before calving, and being sleek and lusty at the end of the winter, to which a warm lodging greatly contributes. For, observe, if you keep a cow, any time between September and June, out in a field or yard, to endure the chances of the weather, she will not, though she have food precisely the same in quantity and quality, yield above two-thirds as much as if she were lodged in house; and in wet weather she will not yield half so much. It is not so much the cold as the wet that is injurious to all our stock in England.
132. The Manure. At the beginning this must be provided by collections made on the road; by the results of the residence in a cottage. Let any man clean out every place about his dwelling; rake and scrape and sweep all into a heap; and he will find that he has a great deal. Earth of almost any sort that has long lain on the surface, and has been trodden on, is a species of manure. Every act that tends to neatness round a dwelling, tends to the creating of a mass of manure. And I have very seldom seen a cottage, with a plat of ground of a quarter of an acre belonging to it, round about which I could not have collected a very large heap of manure. Every thing of animal or vegetable substance that comes into a house, must go out of it again, in one shape or another. The very emptying of vessels of various kinds, on a heap of common earth, makes it a heap of the best of manure. Thus goes on the work of reproduction; and thus is verified the words of the Scripture, “Flesh is grass, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Thus far as to the outset. When you have got the cow, there is no more care about manure; for, and especially if you have a pig also, you must have enough annually for an acre of ground. And let it be observed, that, after a time, it will be unnecessary, and would be injurious, to manure for every crop; for that would produce more stalk and green than substantial part; as it is well known, that wheat plants, standing in ground too full of manure, will yield very thick and long straws, but grains of little or no substance. You ought to depend more on the spade and the hoe than on the dung-heap. Nevertheless, the greatest care should be taken to preserve the manure; because you will want straw, unless you be by the side of a common which gives you rushes, grassy furze, or fern; and to get straw you must give a part of your dung from the cow-stall and pig-sty. The best way to preserve manure, is to have a pit of sufficient dimensions close behind the cow-shed and pig-sty, for the run from these to go into, and from which all runs of rain water should be kept. Into this pit would go the emptying of the shed and of the sty, and the produce of all sweepings and cleanings round the house; and thus a large mass of manure would soon grow together. Much too large a quantity for a quarter of an acre of ground. One good load of wheat or rye straw is all that you would want for the winter, and half of one for the summer; and you would have more than enough dung to exchange against this straw.
133. Now, as to the quantity of labour that the cultivation of the land will demand in a year. We will suppose the whole to have five complete diggings, and say nothing about the little matters of sowing and planting and hoeing and harvesting, all which are a mere trifle. We are supposing the owner to be an able labouring man; and such a man will dig 12 rods of ground in a day. Here are 200 rods to be digged, and here are little less than 17 days of work at 12 hours in the day; or 200 hours’ work, to be done in the course of the long days of spring and summer, while it is light long before six in the morning, and long after six at night. What is it, then? Is it not better than time spent in the ale-house, or in creeping about after a miserable hare? Frequently, and most frequently, there will be a boy, if not two, big enough to help. And (I only give this as a hint) I saw, on the 7th of November last (1822,) a very pretty woman, in the village of Hannington, in Wiltshire, digging a piece of ground and planting it with Early Cabbages, which she did as handily and as neatly as any gardener that ever I saw. The ground was wet, and therefore, to avoid treading the digged ground in that state, she had her line extended, and put in the rows as she advanced in her digging, standing in the trench while she performed the act of planting, which she did with great nimbleness and precision. Nothing could be more skilfully or beautifully done. Her clothes were neat, clean, and tight about her. She had turned her handkerchief down from her neck, which, with the glow that the work had brought into her cheeks, formed an object which I do not say would have made me actually stop my chaise, had it not been for the occupation in which she was engaged; but, all taken together, the temptation was too strong to be resisted. But there is the Sunday; and I know of no law, human or divine, that forbids a labouring man to dig or plant his garden on Sunday, if the good of his family demand it; and if he cannot, without injury to that family, find other time to do it in. Shepherds, carters, pigfeeders, drovers, coachmen, cooks, footmen, printers, and numerous others, work on the Sundays. Theirs are deemed by the law works of necessity. Harvesting and haymaking are allowed to be carried on on the Sunday, in certain cases; when they are always carried on by provident farmers. And I should be glad to know the case which is more a case of necessity than that now under our view. In fact, the labouring people do work on the Sunday morning in particular, all over the country, at something or other, or they are engaged in pursuits a good deal less religious than that of digging and planting. So that, as to the 200 hours, they are easily found, without the loss of any of the time required for constant daily labour.
134. And what a produce is that of a cow! I suppose only an average of 5 quarts of milk a day. If made into butter, it will be equal every week to two days of the man’s wages, besides the value of the skim milk: and this can hardly be of less value than another day’s wages. What a thing, then, is this cow, if she earn half as much as the man! I am greatly under-rating her produce; but I wish to put all the advantages at the lowest. To be sure, there is work for the wife, or daughter, to milk and make butter. But the former is done at the two ends of the day, and the latter only about once in the week. And, whatever these may subtract from the labours of the field, which all country women ought to be engaged in whenever they conveniently can; whatever the cares created by the cow may subtract from these, is amply compensated for by the education that these cares will give to the children. They will all learn to milk,[7] and the girls to make butter. And which is a thing of the very first importance, they will all learn, from their infancy, to set a just value upon dumb animals, and will grow up in the habit of treating them with gentleness and feeding them with care. To those who have not been brought up in the midst of rural affairs, it is hardly possible to give an adequate idea of the importance of this part of education. I should be very loth to intrust the care of my horses, cattle, sheep, or pigs, to any one whose father never had cow or pig of his own. It is a general complaint, that servants, and especially farm-servants, are not so good as they used to be. How should they? They were formerly the sons and daughters of small farmers; they are now the progeny of miserable property-less labourers. They have never seen an animal in which they had any interest. They are careless by habit. This monstrous evil has arisen from causes which I have a thousand times described; and which causes must now be speedily removed; or, they will produce a dissolution of society, and give us a beginning afresh.
135. The circumstances vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down precise rules suited to all cases. The cottage may be on the side of a forest or common; it may be on the side of a lane or of a great road, distant from town or village; it may be on the skirts of one of these latter: and then, again, the family may be few or great in number, the children small or big, according to all which circumstances, the extent and application of the cow-food, and also the application of the produce, will naturally be regulated. Under some circumstances, half the above crop may be enough; especially where good commons are at hand. Sometimes it may be the best way to sell the calf as soon as calved; at others, to fat it; and, at others, if you cannot sell it, which sometimes happens, to knock it on the head as soon as calved; for, where there is a family of small children, the price of a calf of two months old cannot be equal to the half of the value of the two months’ milk. It is pure weakness to call it “a pity.” It is a much greater pity to see hungry children crying for the milk that a calf is sucking to no useful purpose; and as to the cow and the calf, the one must lose her young, and the other its life, after all; and the respite only makes an addition to the sufferings of both.
136. As to the pretended unwholesomeness of milk in certain cases; as to its not being adapted to some constitutions, I do not believe one word of the matter. When we talk of the fruits, indeed, which were formerly the chief food of a great part of mankind, we should recollect, that those fruits grew in countries that had a sun to ripen the fruits, and to put nutritious matter into them. But as to milk, England yields to no country upon the face of the earth. Neat cattle will touch nothing that is not wholesome in its nature; nothing that is not wholly innoxious. Out of a pail that has ever had grease in it, they will not drink a drop, though they be raging with thirst. Their very breath is fragrance. And how, then, is it possible, that unwholesomeness should distil from the udder of a cow? The milk varies, indeed, in its quality and taste according to the variations in the nature of the food; but no food will a cow touch that is any way hostile to health. Feed young puppies upon milk from the cow, and they will never die with that ravaging disease called “the distemper.” In short, to suppose that milk contains any thing essentially unwholesome is monstrous. When, indeed, the appetite becomes vitiated: when the organs have been long accustomed to food of a more stimulating nature; when it has been resolved to eat ragouts at dinner, and drink wine, and to swallow “a devil,” and a glass of strong grog at night; then milk for breakfast may be “heavy” and disgusting, and the feeder may stand in need of tea or laudanum, which differ only as to degrees of strength. But, and I speak from the most ample experience, milk is not “heavy,” and much less is it unwholesome, when he who uses it rises early, never swallows strong drink, and never stuffs himself with flesh of any kind. Many and many a day I scarcely taste of meat, and then chiefly at breakfast, and that, too, at an early hour. Milk is the natural food of young people; if it be too rich, skim it again and again till it be not too rich. This is an evil easily cured. If you have now to begin with a family of children, they may not like it at first. But persevere; and the parent who does not do this, having the means in his hands, shamefully neglects his duty. A son who prefers a “devil” and a glass of grog to a hunch of bread and a bowl of cold milk, I regard as a pest; and for this pest the father has to thank himself.
137. Before I dismiss this article, let me offer an observation or two to those persons who live in the vicinity of towns, or in towns, and who, though they have large gardens, have “no land to keep a cow,” a circumstance which they “exceedingly regret.” I have, I dare say, witnessed this case at least a thousand times. Now, how much garden ground does it require to supply even a large family with garden vegetables? The market gardeners round the metropolis of this wen-headed country; round this Wen of all wens;[8] round this prodigious and monstrous collection of human beings; these market gardeners have about three hundred thousand families to supply with vegetables, and these they supply well too, and with summer fruits into the bargain. Now, if it demanded ten rods to a family, the whole would demand, all but a fraction, nineteen thousand acres of garden ground. We have only to cast our eyes over what there is to know that there is not a fourth of that quantity. A square mile contains, leaving out parts of a hundred, 700 acres of land; and 19,000 acres occupy more than twenty-two square miles. Are there twenty-two square miles covered with the Wen’s market gardens? The very question is absurd. The whole of the market gardens from Brompton to Hammersmith, extending to Battersea Rise on the one side, and to the Bayswater road on the other side, and leaving out loads, lanes, nurseries; pastures, corn-fields, and pleasure-grounds, do not, in my opinion, cover one square mile. To the north and south of the Wen there is very little in the way of market garden; and if, on both sides of the Thames, to the eastward of the Wen, there be three square miles actually covered with market gardens, that is the full extent. How, then, could the Wen be supplied, if it required ten rods to each family? To be sure, potatoes, carrots, and turnips, and especially the first of these, are brought, for the use of the Wen, from a great distance, in many cases. But, so they are for the use of the persons I am speaking of; for a gentleman thinks no more of raising a large quantity of these things in his garden, than he thinks of raising wheat there. How is it, then, that it requires half an acre, or eighty rods, in a private garden to supply a family, while these market gardeners supply all these families (and so amply too) from ten, or more likely, five rods of ground to a family? I have shown, in the last Number, that nearly fifteen tons of vegetables can be raised in a year upon forty rods of ground; that is to say, ten loads for a wagon and four good horses. And is not a fourth, or even an eighth, part of this weight, sufficient to go down the throats of a family in a year? Nay, allow that only a ton goes to a family in a year, it is more than six pound weight a day; and what sort of a family must that be that really swallows six pounds weight a day? and this a market gardener will raise for them upon less than three rods of ground; for he will raise, in the course of the year, even more than fifteen tons upon forty rods of ground. What is it, then, that they do with the eighty rods of ground in a private garden? Why, in the first place, they have one crop where they ought to have three. Then they do not half till the ground. Then they grow things that are not wanted. Plant cabbages and other things, let them stand till they be good for nothing, and then wheel them to the rubbish heap. Raise as many radishes, lettuces, and as much endive, and as many kidney-beans, as would serve for ten families; and finally throw nine-tenths of them away. I once saw not less than three rods of ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all bearing seed. Seed enough for half a county. They cut a cabbage here and a cabbage there, and so let the whole of the piece of ground remain undug, till the last cabbage be cut. But, after all, the produce, even in this way, is so great, that it never could be gotten rid of, if the main part were not thrown away. The rubbish heap always receives four-fifths even of the eatable part of the produce.
138. It is not thus that the market gardeners proceed. Their rubbish heap consists of little besides mere cabbage stumps. No sooner is one crop on the ground than they settle in their minds what is to follow it. They clear as they go in taking off a crop, and, as they clear they dig and plant. The ground is never without seed in it or plants on it. And thus, in the course of the year, they raise a prodigious bulk of vegetables from eighty rods of ground. Such vigilance and industry are not to be expected in a servant; for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert himself for another as much as he will for himself. But if I was situated as one of the persons is that I have spoken of in Paragraph 137; that is to say, if I had a garden of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I would out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vegetables for my family, and would make it yield enough for a cow besides. I should go a short way to work with my gardener. I should put Cottage Economy into his hands, and tell him, that if he could furnish me with vegetables, and my cow with food, he was my man; and that if he could not, I must get one that could and would. I am not for making a man toil like a slave; but what would become of the world, if a well-fed healthy man could exhaust himself in tilling and cropping and clearing half an acre of ground? I have known many men dig thirty rods of garden ground in a day; I have, before I was fourteen, digged twenty rods in a day, for more than ten days successively; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a man at Portsea, who digged forty rods in one single day, between daylight and dark. So that it is no slavish toil that I am here recommending.