I thought the ale good, but Hilary was certain it was not equal to what he used to brew himself before he had so large an acreage to look after, and indeed before the old style of farm-life went out of fashion. Then he used to sit up all night watching—for brewing is a critical operation—and looking out of doors now and then to pass the long hours saw the changes of the sky, the constellations rising in succession one after the other, and felt the slight variations of the wind and of moisture or dryness in the air which predict the sunshine or the shower of the coming day. He seemed to have thought a good deal in those lonely watches; but he passed it off by referring to the malting. Barn barley was best for malting—i.e. that which had been stored in a barn and therefore kept perfectly dry, for ricks sometimes get wet before they can be thatched. But barn barley was not often come by nowadays, as one by one the old barns disappeared: burned perhaps, and not rebuilt. He had ceased to brew for some time; Cicely could, however, remember sipping the sweet wort, which is almost too sweet for the palate after childhood.
They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not all that was required. Cicely superintended the baking, passing the barm through a sieve with a wisp of clean hay in it. The hay takes off any sourness, and ensures it being perfectly sweet. She knew when the oven was hot enough by the gauge-brick: this particular brick as the heat increased became spotted with white, and when it had turned quite white the oven was ready. The wood embers were raked out with the scraper, and the malkin, being wetted, cleaned out the ashes. 'Thee looks like a gurt malkin' is a common term of reproach among the poor folk—meaning a bunch of rags on the end of a stick. We went out to look at the oven; and then Mrs. Luckett made me taste her black-currant gin, which was very good. Presently we went into the orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I watched it Mrs. Luckett advised me to turn my back and not to look too long in that direction. 'For,' said she, 'one magpie is good luck, but two mean sorrow; and if you should see three—goodness!—something awful might happen.'[1] ]
One lovely June afternoon as Hilary and I strolled about the fields, we passed some lambs at play. 'Lamb is never good eating without sunshine,' said Hilary. Not only wheat and plants generally but animals also are affected by the absence of sun, so that the epicure should hope as devoutly as the farmer that the dull and overcast season of 1879 will not be repeated. Hilary's remark was founded upon the experience of long years—such experience as is only to be found in farmhouses where kindred succeed each other, and hand down practical observations from father to son.
The thistles were showing rather strongly in the barley—the result of last year's rain and the consequent impossibility of proper clearing. These thistles he thought came from portions of the root and not from seed. Last year all the farmers had been Latter Lammas men. The 1st of August is Lammas Day; and in the old time if a farmer had neglected his work and his haymaking was still unfinished on August 13 (i.e. old style), he was called in reproach a Latter Lammas man. But last year (1879) they were all alike, and the hay was about till September; yet Hilary could recollect it being all done by St. Swithin's, July 15.
Sometimes, however, the skilled and careful agriculturist did not succeed so well as the lazy one. Once in seven years there came a sloven's year, according to the old folk, when the sloven had a splendid crop of wheat and hardly knew where to put it. Such a harvest was as if a man had gone round his farm with the sun in one hand and the watering-pot in the other! Last year there had been nearly as much mathern (wild camomile) and willow-wind (convolvulus and buckwheat) as crop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so often again. The colt's tail is a cloud with a bushy appearance like a ragged fringe, and portends rain.
I remarked that it was curious how thunderstorms sometimes returned on the same day of the week and at the same hour for a month running. Hilary said they had been known to return every day at the same hour. The most regular operation on a farm is the milking: one summer his fogger declared it came on to thunder day after day in the afternoon just as he took his yoke off his shoulders. Such heavy and continuous downpour not only laid the crops, but might spoil them altogether; for laid barley had been known to sprout there and then, and was of course totally spoiled. It was a mistake to associate thunder solely with hot weather; the old folk used to say that it was never too cold to thunder and never too warm to snow.
A sweet yet faintly pungent odour came on the light breeze over the next field—a scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of the bean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hop-trefoil: honey sometimes has a flavour which resembles it. The hop-trefoil is a favourite crop for sheep, but Hilary said it was too soft for horses. The poppies were not yet out in the wheat. When in full bloom some of the cottagers gather the scarlet flowers in great quantities and from them make poppy wine. This liquor has a fine colour and is very heady, and those who make it seem to think much of it. Upon the hills where furze grows plentifully the flowers are also collected, and a dye extracted from them. Ribbons can thus be dyed a bright yellow, but it requires a large quantity of the flowers.
A little farther a sheep-dog looked at us from a gateway; and on coming nearer we found the shepherd busily engaged cutting the feet of his sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot down in a meadow—they do not suffer from it on the arable uplands where folded—and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Every shepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to be the only certain remedy.