The gamekeeper, like many a countryman, would be at a loss without his
garden. His little plot of land means much to him: green food for his
table, tonic foods for his pheasants, and a place where, by digging,
he may bury some of his cares. He knows no such exercise as digging
for keeping away ill-humours. He believes that the more a man sows the
more he will reap--it is a lesson daily brought home to him. So he
puts his best work into his garden, which is often the model plot of a
rural community. In March he divides his time between spade work and
his never-ending war on vermin. If he has a pen of stock pheasants he
spends a good many minutes a day in admiration of the birds, besides
tending to their wants; and he will defy you to prove that you ever saw
a finer lot of birds. "Look at that old cock up agen yon corner--ain't
'e got some 'orns? Bless ye, them birds is worth a pound apiece."
So many a March afternoon finds the keeper hard at work at home with
spade, fork, trowel or dibbler. His great object is to finish the more
laborious work before the time of pheasants' eggs. A feature of the
garden is the neat and spacious onion-bed, smoothed with the polished
back of a favourite spade, which has dug out countless rabbits. There
must be plenty of onions for the young pheasants to come. In time of
need a keeper may sacrifice the whole of his onion-bed to his birds,
gladly buying such onions as his wife demands for the table. Then
there are two or three long rows of peas. Before sowing, the seed is
sprinkled with red lead against the ravages of long-tailed field-mice,
and after sowing strands of black thread are carried up and down the
surface against the attacks of sparrows, while above, as a terrible
warning, swings the body of a sparrow-hawk. The site of an old pheasant
pen is devoted to Brussels sprouts. A dilapidated dog-kennel will serve
to coax rhubarb to be ready for Easter Sunday's dinner.
Flower seeds are not forgotten: in shallow cartridge-boxes, protected
by a small home-made frame, seeds are sown for making the little patch
of flower-garden gay with stocks and asters, sweet peas, sun-flowers,
tobacco-plants, and zinnias. The keeper puzzles over zinnia seed, which
is like the fragment of a dead leaf, yet will come up and grow with the
speed of mustard and cress, producing a wealth of bloom.
But the planting of the potato patch is the chief work. The neat little
furrows which mark each row of potatoes, allowing the hoe to be plied
fearlessly before the potatoes show above ground, give a neatness to
the cottage garden all the time while the soil is brown and bare.
Gamekeepers, though their work for wages is never done, yet have a few
legitimate ways of adding to their incomes. Of course they have the
opportunity of making a good deal of money if they trespass on their
employers' time; but your keeper is an honest man, and his work is
the object of his life. Most keepers are skilled vegetable gardeners,
and may make a few shillings from peas and beans. Often enough they
have a cunning way with flowers, though envious amateurs are free with
their hints about the advantages to be gained from burying foxes to
enrich the soil. We know one who will put in a fair day's work with
spade and wheelbarrow before even the waggoners have stirred to give
their horses breakfast. Going his rounds, the keeper marks good briers
for budding; if he does not sell them, he will beg choice buds from
rose-growers, and a year or two later the passer-by may be tempted to
offer half-a-crown for the fine roses of his little plot. Possibly by
this time his roses mean so much to him that he will make some such
excuse as, "The missus, she thinks a mortal sight of they."
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