The physician—I do not mean him who is regularly called out of church, or from the social party, by his servant, under the pretence of a pressing call, but the real and laborious practitioner, to whom minutes are money and fame—will not idle away an hour; neither will the sober steady shopkeeper, until he has realized an independence, absent himself from his counter as long as there is a reasonable chance of a customer dropping in; nor the operative mechanic, who has to finish his piece of work within a prescribed time, and who will contrive to do it even in despite of all the petty interruptions to which he is liable.
Time is proportionably valuable to the meanest peasant who possesses a cabbage garden, and if properly estimated and applied, will add to his comforts in a degree of which, he who is habitually uncalculating and unthrifty in this respect can have but little notion.
This I am anxious to impress upon the class of labourers, many of whom I hope can read what I write, for in them I take an especial interest, probably because they are the least cared for of any class in the community. Some of them perhaps will say, with a show of reality, “If our time were to bring us in such profits as the counsellor and the doctor make, we would be busy too, and no one would see us standing idle, sitting on a ditch side, or smoking and coshering by the fireside, or talking to the neighbours, of a wet day, in a forge. If we could be coining guineas as easily as the likes of them makes the money, sitting in their soft chairs, and never doing a hand’s turn of work that would tire their limbs, we would; but what could we make, after our regular day’s work, if we can get that same, out of a bit of a garden, that would better us any thing to signify?”
Now, I shall show them by actual facts what they could in many cases do.
Johnny Halfacre is a little farmer, whom I occasionally see, and who, being in no way connected with me, nor even conscious that I am particularly observing him, goes on in his own way, without any hint or encouragement from me, or indeed from any one else, as far as I can perceive.
Johnny two years ago had not as much land as would correspond with his name, which is really genuine; he had for several previous years but a rood, including the site of his house, and a shed for a pig, and some poultry; but this rood produced more than half an acre usually does with many, and entirely by his good management and judicious application of time.
Johnny had exactly five shillings a-week, paid in full every Friday evening, from his employer, for Johnny never had time to be sick, far less to be drunk, and always avoided broken days, by contriving in-door work, at Mr B.’s, in wet weather; his wife, who had two children, washed occasionally for a neighbour’s family, thus adding two shillings and sixpence each week to their income, and the contribution of additional suds to the dunghill; but in other respects they had no advantage over other labourers. Their own little garden added greatly to the support of the family, by judicious cropping and excellent management. Johnny had every year some drills of very early ash-leaved potatoes put down in January, if possible, which he either sold at a very high price in summer at a neighbouring town, or consumed as he found most economical; and his early sowing of potatoes was far better than the more common practice of the Irish cottier, who leaves his garden uncropped with them until March or April, with the view of obtaining a more abundant crop (but of inferior quality) at a late season, when they might be purchased at a mere trifle, and that, too, without the advantage of a second crop of any description to succeed them. Johnny had too much sense for this: he began to dig his dish of potatoes for dinner in the first or second week in July, when his neighbours were half starving, or paying exorbitantly for oatmeal and old potatoes; and as he dug out his crop, he either sowed turnips, with a little ashes and a sprinkling of dung, or planted borecole for the winter; generally he had some of both, for he found turnips good for his own table in winter, and profitable for the support of some poultry, of which I shall take notice soon. He had also every variety of common kitchen vegetables in small patches, continually changing places, and thus improving the soil; he had, besides, two hives of bees; and for the sake of the straw, as well as for rotation, and the support of his pig and poultry, a little rye, vetches, or clover.
Johnny, however, only worked in the garden in the evening, after his ordinary day’s work, or, in summer, at sunrise; yet there never was a weed to be seen in it, for they never had time to grow: by using the hoe for a few moments now and then, they were always kept down, and every waste blade and briar and useless sod around the hedge which enclosed it, was carefully pared and burnt for manure.
He had worked in the large garden of a gentleman who kept an English gardener, who had taught Johnny the use of a sprong in preference to a spade for turning up the earth, especially when too hard for the latter implement; and though the handle was short, and, according to my own notion, fatiguing to the back, the fact was, that Johnny soon preferred it for dispatch and correctness of operation to the long-handled spade which all my other neighbours use. When he cut his own rye or other corn, the ground was usually so hard that a broad spade could not enter it: but Johnny quickly turned it up and broke it with his sprong, and then completely pulverized it with what the Englishman called a beck, a three-forked hoe, which, acting like the long tines of a harrow, loosened and rendered the whole perfectly fine, while it brought any latent roots of couch (or scutch grass) that might have escaped on former occasions, to the surface.
Johnny’s various vegetables greatly assisted his housekeeping. He had often a good bowl of soup, flavoured with leeks, onions, carrots, &c., made with the least conceivable portion of meat, but thickened with barley, properly shelled, and prepared like French barley, but at only one-third of the price of that which is sold under such denomination in the shops; and his family always breakfasted on porridge, or coarse bread of their own baking, with or without milk, according to circumstances—for Johnny at this time had no cow—sometimes washed down with a cup of tea, and more generally in winter with a mug of light and good table beer, which the Englishman taught Johnny to brew at Mr B.’s brew-house. Half a bushel of malt, with a quarter of a pound of hops, produced ten gallons of unadulterated beer which could not be bought any where, and the grains (given to his pig) fully counterbalanced the cost of fuel. Even at this time he killed a pig every year, and never wanted a small supply of salt meat for his cabbage or beans, which with this combination of flesh went farther in this way towards the actual supply of his dinner, and sometimes of his supper too (for any remainder of the dinner was heated and peppered up for the supper, with the addition of a broken loaf, or a skillet full of potatoes), than can be imagined by the poor man who has never cultivated his garden in the same manner—whose cabbages are of little value from want of bacon, and whose allotment, producing but one crop instead of two each year, is thus of but half its proper value to him; besides, with him potatoes succeed potatoes continually, until the ground becomes sick of yielding them.