THE GENERAL CONDITION OF AGRICULTURE.—ROTATION OF
CROPS.—PRODUCTIVENESS.—SEEDING DOWN TO GRASS.—COMPARISON OF ENGLISH
AND AMERICAN PRACTICE.—PRACTICAL REMARKS.—RYE-GRASS, CLOVER.—BIENNIAL
GRASSES.—GUANO.—LIME.—THE CONDITION OF LABOURERS, WAGES,
ETC.—DAIRY-MAIDS.—ALLOWANCE OF BEER.
[Sidenote: _ENGLAND, A LANDSCAPE GARDEN._]
I must say that, on the whole, the agriculture of Cheshire, as the
first sample of that of England which is presented to me, is far below
my expectations. There are sufficient reasons to expect that we shall
find other parts much superior to it; but what we have seen quite
disposes of the common picture which our railroad and stage-coach
travellers are in the habit of giving to our imagination, by saying
that “all England is like a garden.” Meaning only a “landscape
garden,” a beautiful and harmonious combination of hill and dale, with
the richest masses of trees, and groups and lines of shrubbery, the
greenest turf and most picturesque buildings, it might be appropriately
said of many parts, particularly in the south of the county. But, with
reference to cultivation, and the productiveness of the land, it might
be quite as truly applied to some small districts of our own country as
to this part of England.
In commencing the cultivation of land that has been in grass, the
first crop is usually oats, and the most approved practice upon the
stiff soils seems to be, to plough deeply in the fall or winter, and
in the spring to prepare the ground with some strong implement of the
cultivator sort. Oats are sowed much thicker than is usual with us. I
hear of six bushels to the acre; but with regard to this there is much
difference of opinion. The crop of oats is not often large (from thirty
to forty bushels from an acre is common); but oats seldom make a large
crop upon clay soils. The next year the ground will be summer-fallowed,
or, by the more enterprising farmers, cropped with turnips, beets, or
with potatoes. The potatoes are sold, the turnips and beets fed to
the cows during the winter. On the poorer farms, the cows get little
but hay from December to April; and cheese-making is given up during
the winter. Others, by the help of turnips, beets, and linseed cake,
keep a constant flow of milk, and cheese-making is never interrupted.
(Of course the milking of each cow is interrupted for a while at her
calving time, which they try to have in March.)
The crop after roots is commonly barley; after fallow, wheat, of which
twenty-five to thirty bushels is a common crop, and forty not uncommon.
After wheat, oats again, and perhaps after the oats another crop of
wheat; if so, the land is manured with bones or boughten manure, and
sometimes limed at the rate, say of four tons to the acre of stone lime.
[Sidenote: _QUANTITY OF GRASS SEED TO AN ACRE._]
_Grass._—With the last crop of oats or wheat, clover and grass
seeds are sowed. Grass was thought to come better after wheat upon
under-drained land. The best farmers sow a very great variety and
large measure of grass seeds; the poorer ones are often content with
what they can find under their hay bays, sowing it, weeds and all,
purchasing only clover seed.
The quantity of grass seeds sowed is always much greater here than in
America. I should think it was commonly from a bushel to three bushels
on an acre; rarely less than one, or more than three. I do not think
more than one quarter of a bushel, or perhaps half a bushel of the
lighter seeds, is often sowed in the United States. I should attribute
the more general evenness and closeness of the English meadows in a
great degree to this, though, doubtless, much is due to the moister
climate. Land intended for permanent pasture receives much more seed,
and a larger variety, than that which is intended to be mown only for
a few years, and then be brought to tillage again. Of the good policy
of the English practice for pastures (and the same applies to lawns
and public greens) I have no doubt. Among the great variety of grasses
in an English meadow, there will be one that springs up and grows
strongly, furnishing a wholesome and delicious bite to the cattle, as
early after the first warm breath of spring as the ground will be dry
enough to bear a hoof (and on drained lands it is rarely not so). This
will be succeeded by others, and in May by others; and in July, those
natural to the driest and warmest soils will be in perfection; and so
through the year there is a constantly renewing perfection. A ranker
sward, and one that would for a season support more cattle, I think
would be obtained from sowing a smaller quantity and less variety of
seed.
I am not prepared to recommend the English practice for mowing lands.
To obtain the largest quantity of grass hay from an acre, without
regard to quality, plough deep, manure deep, and sow one variety of
seed in such quantity that when it comes up it will speedily _tiller_,
and occupy the whole ground, yet not stand so closely as to greatly
crowd and compress the stools, thereby _dwarfing_ the reeds from their
natural size, and obstructing the flow of sap in their vessels. Cut it
when it has attained to its greatest size, while it is yet entirely
succulent, just at the time that the _blood_ of the plant begins to be
drawn up into the forming seed, and the bottom dries into such tough,
close, ligneous fibre that nourishment can no longer ascend from
the root. The right quantity of seed for this will vary in different
soils—a very rich, deep soil needing less than a more sterile one,
because in the latter the roots cannot extend far enough to collect the
requisite food and drink to make a large, strong, open stool, and more
herbage will grow upon the same space by having the stools stand closer.
In some degree proportionately to the closeness of the fibre and the
fineness of the grass, will be its nourishing quality, so that ninety
pounds of fine, close-grown hay, from a thick-seeded meadow, may be of
equal value with a hundred pounds of a coarser, ranker quality. But the
nourishment is by no means in the inverse ratio of size; so that for
all ordinary purposes, with all the usual hay-grasses, the farmer will
find his profit in studying to obtain the largest burthen of grass. For
this end, I am inclined to think English farmers often sow too much
seed, Americans not enough. It seems, however, to be the best farmers
in other respects that sow the most seed in England.
There is one consideration that I have omitted to mention against the
common practice on American farms, where hay is an important staple
crop: it is generally an object to retain a clean sward of grass as
long as possible, without the necessity of breaking up, from the grass
having _run out_, that is, given place to weeds, or to finer and less
profitable grasses. Where the seed has been thickly sown, the grass
takes more entire possession of the surface, and retains it longer. The
thicker grass seed is sown, therefore, other things being equal, the
longer it will _lay_.
[Sidenote: _RYE-GRASS AND TIMOTHY._]
I have known, in a district where it was the custom to sow four to
eight quarts of timothy seed, on two occasions, twenty quarts sowed.
The result was a finer grass in both cases; in one it was thought the
crop was much larger, and in the other that it was somewhat smaller,
than where ten quarts was sowed alongside. The probability is, that in
an average of ten years it will prove the larger crop on the thickest
sown, in both fields.
The commonest grass seed sowed in England, what may be called the
staple grass, is rye-grass, or ray-grass (perennial). It is a much
smaller, closer-growing grass than our timothy; I think it has
a sweeter taste, is probably, bulk for bulk, considerably more
nutritious, and perhaps so pound for pound; but I think more fat and
muscle can be made from an acre, if sowed with timothy, than with
rye-grass. A valuable quality of rye-grass is its early spring growth.
A field of rye-grass will be up some inches, offering a tempting bite
to cattle, before a field of other grasses will begin to show a green
surface. I believe that it ripens earlier, too, than timothy, and is
better for mowing-ground on that account, to be sown with clover, which
is much injured by over-ripeness, if not cut till timothy is in its
best state to make hay. I have seen no timothy in England, but I know
it is sometimes sowed.
Rye-grass has stood at the head of the mowing grasses in some parts
of England for centuries. In districts of light and dry soil, it is
least in favour than elsewhere, but I judge becomes of more value
with the improvement of husbandry generally. Marshall (1796), writing
from Gloucestershire, speaks of the general strong prejudice of
the farmers against ray-grass, which he calls his favourite grass,
“smothering every thing and impoverishing the soil, until it will grow
nothing!” they say; and arguing against them, he makes an observation
of value with reference to the question of quantity of seed. “If
_real_ ray-grass has ever been tried alone, and without success, it
has probably risen from too great a quantity having been sown. Be it
ray-grass or rubbish, I understand seldom less than a sackful” (three
heaped bushels) “an acre is thrown on, whereas _one gallon_ an acre of
_clean-winnowed real ray-grass seed_ is abundantly sufficient on such
soil as the vale in general is covered with.” The soil is “a rich, deep
loam.”
Clover (red and Dutch) is more sowed here for hay than with us, though
it is much more difficult to make good hay of it in this climate. It
is sowed in the spring, as with us, perhaps 20 lbs. to the acre. We
commonly sow 5 to 10 lbs. Arthur Young tried about a dozen experiments
to ascertain the most profitable quantity of clover seed to sow, and
concluded his record of them as follows:
“The more seed, as far as 20 lbs. per acre, undoubtedly the better.
This is a plain fact, contradicted by no part of the experiments; and
the great inferiority of 5 to 7 lbs. shows equally clear that such
portion of seed is too small for an acre. Where land is well manured,
less seed is required; 12½ lbs. seems the proper quantity” (on very
rich, gravelly soil.)
A bushel of clover seed weighs 60 to 64 lbs.
In ground intended for mowing but one or two years, biennial varieties
of the rye-grass are sown, which are of stronger growth than the
perennial. They are also sowed sometimes with permanent grasses,
giving, on a deep, rich soil, a heavier burthen of grass the first year
of cutting than these would do. For this purpose, I have thought it
might be well to sow the biennial or sub-perennial rye-grass seed with
timothy, which does not usually yield a fair crop at its first cutting,
and have twice attempted to make trial of the Italian rye-grass, but in
both cases the seeds that I had procured failed of germination.
I shall have occasion hereafter to notice several species of herbage
that are much valued in England, that have not been generally
introduced in the United States.[20]
[20] Fifteen or twenty varieties of grass seeds are sowed together, and
the expense for seed in laying down for pasture is often ten or twelve
dollars an acre.
[Sidenote: _TOP-DRESSING.—GUANO.—WAGES._]
The grass is mowed for hay for a longer or shorter course of years;
sometimes broken up after one or two seasons, sometimes becoming
permanent or perennial pasture, and so running on indefinitely; and
sometimes being mowed for a number of years. One field I saw that had
been mowed eight years, and having received a dressing of 30 cwt.
of bones, promised fair yet to bear heavy swaths. Mowing lands are
usually top-dressed at the end of the second year, and afterwards every
second or third year. All the homestead dung is commonly reserved for
this purpose, and all other manure is purchased from the towns. Guano
for turnips and wheat is coming into general use; some think very
profitably, others have been disappointed. For wheat, it is applied at
the seed sowing, and sometimes again as a top dressing in the spring;
but in a dry season it is thought that this second application has
done more harm than good. Guano has been a good deal tried as a top
dressing for pastures, and it has been said to improve the quality of
cheese when so used. The immediate effect upon grass, when applied
in the spring, is always very advantageous; but later in the summer,
particularly if the season is dry, the good effect disappears, and
sometimes the result is unfavourable.
Of course the round of crop varies according to every farmer’s notion.
What I have described is as common as any, though not probably among
the best farmers. Another crop is beans, which is introduced between
either of those I have mentioned, sometimes at the head. Not uncommonly
the first crop is wheat, the ground having been summer fallowed. Wheat
is drilled or sowed broad-cast; most commonly sowed in this county,
and is either ploughed or harrowed in, opinions varying as to which
is best. My own experience on a stiff soil is decidedly in favour of
ploughing in.
_Labourers._—Wages, as they have been reported to me, vary much,
and unaccountably. I should think the average for able-bodied men as
day-labourers, working and receiving pay only in days that commence
fair, was $2.25 a week, perhaps averaging thirty-three cents a day.
The rent of a labourer’s cottage, with a bit of garden attached (less
than a quarter of an acre), is from $15 to $25. In addition they have
sometimes a few perquisites from the farmers who regularly employ them.
A great many labourers in winter are without work, and wages are then a
trifle less than I have mentioned, as in harvest time they are also a
trifle more. The reader will understand that out of this thirty-three
cents, which I have supposed to be the average receipts of a labourer
per day, he has to pay his rent, and provide food and raiment for
his family. Of course his diet cannot be very sumptuous (the cost of
provisions being, perhaps, ten per cent. higher than with us), but I
have not learned particulars.
The wages of farm servants, hired by the month or year, and boarded in
the family, are for men, from $45 to $65 a year; for boys, $15 to $25;
maid-servants, $30 to $40; dairy-maids, greatly varying, say from $50
to $100.
It is customary to give all labourers and servants a certain allowance
of beer besides their wages. It is served out several times a day,
and may be supposed to cost, on an average, ten cents a day for each
person. One farmer estimated it at twice that.