The seeds or grasses sown by Mr. Jonas for pasturage and hay are chiefly white and red clover and trefoil. His rule of seeding is the following:—
Wheat, from 8 to 10 pecks per acre
Barley, from 12 to 14 “ “ “
Oats, from 18 to 22 “ “ “
Winter Beans, 8 “ “ “
Red Clover, 20 lbs “ “
White Clover, 16 lbs “ “
Trefoil, 30 to 35 lbs. “ “
This, in New England, would be called very heavy seeding, especially in regard to oats and the grasses. I believe that twelve pecks of oats to the acre, rather exceed our average rule. Good clover seed should weigh two pounds to the quart, and eight quarts, or sixteen pounds, are the usual seeding with us.
As labor of horse and man must be economised to the best advantage on such an estate, it may be interesting to know the expense of the principal operations. The cost of ploughing averages 7s. 6d., or $1 80c. per acre. For roots, the land is ploughed three or four times, besides harrowing, drilling, and rolling. The hoeing of wheat and roots varies from 2s. to 5s., or from 48c. to $1 20c. per acre.
The sheep are all folded on turnips or grass fields, except the breeding ewes in the lambing season. The enclosures are made of hurdles, of which all reading Americans have read, but not one in a thousand ever has seen. They are a kind of diminutive, portable, post-and-rail fence, of the New England pattern, made up in permanent lengths, so light that a stout man might carry two or three of them on his shoulders at once. The two posts are sawed or split pieces of wood, about two inches thick, three wide, and from five to six feet in length. They are generally square-morticed for the rails, which are frequently what we should call split hoop-holes, but in the best kind are slats of hard wood, about two and a half inches wide and one in thickness. Midway between the two posts, the rails are nailed to an upright slat or brace, to keep them from swaying. Sometimes a farmer makes his own hurdles, thus furnishing indoor work for his men in winter, when they cannot labor in the fields; but most generally they are bought of those who manufacture them on a large scale. Some idea of the extent of sheep-folding on Chrishall Grange may be inferred from the fact, that the hurdling on it, if placed in one straight, continuous line, would reach full ten miles!
A portable steam engine, of twelve-horse power, looking like a common railway locomotive strayed from its track and taken up and housed in a farmer’s waggon-shed, performs prodigies of activity and labor. Indeed, search the three realms through and through, and you would hardly find one on its own legs doing such remarkable varieties of work. Briareus, with all his fabled faculties, never had such numerous and supple fingers as this creature of human invention. When set a-going, they are clattering and whisking and frisking everywhere, on the barn-floor, on the hay-loft, in the granary, under the eaves, down cellar, and all this at the same time. It is doubtful if any stationary engine in a machine shop ever performed more diversified operations at once; thus proving most conclusively how a farmer may work motive power which it was once thought preposterous in him to think of using. It threshes wheat and other kinds of grain at the rate of from 400 to 500 bushels a day; it conveys the straw up to a platform across what we call the “great beams,” where it is cut into chaff and dropped into a great bay, at the trifling expense of sixpence, or twelve cents, per quantity grown on an acre! While it is doing this in one direction, it is turning machinery in another that cleans and weighs the grain off into sacks ready for the market. Open the doors right and left and you find it at work like reason, breaking oil-cake, grinding corn for the fat stock, turning the grindstone, pitching, pounding, paring, rubbing, grabbing, and twisting, threshing, wrestling, chopping, flopping, and hopping, after the manner of “The Waters of Lodore.”
The housings for live stock are most admirably constructed as well as extensive, and all the great yards are well fitted for making and delivering manure. I noticed here the best arrangement for feeding swine that I had ever seen before, and of a very simple character. Instead of revolving troughs, or those that are to be pulled out like drawers to be cleaned, a long, stationary one, generally of iron, extends across the whole breadth of the compartment next to the feeding passage. The board or picket-fence forming this end of the enclosure, from eight to twelve feet in length, is hung on a pivot at each side, playing in an iron ring or socket let into each of the upright posts that support it. Midway in the lower rail of this fence is a drop bolt which falls into the floor just behind the trough. At the feeding time, the man has only to raise this bolt and let it fall on the inner side, and he has the whole length and width of the trough free to clear with a broom and to fill with the feed. Then, raising the bolt, and bringing it back to its first place, the operation is performed in a minute with the greatest economy and convenience.
There was one feature of this great farm home which I regarded with much satisfaction. It was the housing of the laborers employed on the estate. This is done in blocks of well-built, well-ventilated, and very comfortable cottages, all within a stone’s throw of the noble old mansion occupied by Mr. Jonas. Thus, no long and weary miles after the fatigue of the day, or before its labor begins, have to be walked over by his men in the cold and dark, as in many cases in which the agricultural laborer is obliged to trudge on foot from a distant village to his work, making a hard and sunless journey at both ends of the day.
Although my visit at this, perhaps the largest, farming establishment in England, occupied only a few hours, I felt on leaving that I had never spent an equal space of time more profitably and pleasantly in the pursuit or appreciation of agricultural knowledge. The open and large-hearted hospitality and genial manners of the proprietor and his family seemed to correspond with the dimensions and qualities of his holding, and to complete, vitalise, and beautify the symmetries of a true ENGLISH FARMER’S HOME.