 Number six of Cottage Economy by William Cobbett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Philippa. Paragraphs 143 to 156, keeping pigs, continued. As in the case of cows, so in that of pigs, much must depend upon the situation of the cottage, because all pigs will graze, and therefore on the skirts of forests or commons, a couple or three pigs may be kept if the family be considerable, and especially if the cottageer brew his own beer which will give him grains to assist the wash. Even in lanes or on the sides of great roads, a pig will find a good part of his food from May to November, and if he be yoked, the occupiers of the neighbourhood must be churlish and brutish indeed, if they give the owner any annoyance. Let me break off here for a moment to point out to my readers the truly excellent conduct of Lord Winchelsea and Lord Stanop, who, as I read, have taken great pains to make the labourers on their estates comfortable by allotting to each a piece of ground sufficient for the keeping of a cow. I once, when I lived at Botley, proposed to the copyholders and other farmers in my neighbourhood that we should petition the Bishop of Winchester, who was Lord of the Manors thereabouts, to grant titles to all the numerous persons called Trespassers on the Wastes, and also to give titles to others of the poor parishioners who were willing to make on the skirts of the Wastes, enclosures not exceeding an acre each. This, I am convinced, would have done a great deal towards relieving the parishes, then greatly burdened by men out of work. This would have been better than digging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a single man would agree to my proposal. One, a bullfrog farmer, now I hear pretty well sweated down, said it would only make them saucy. And one, a true disciple of Malthus, said to facilitate their rearing of children, was a harm. This man had, at the time, in his own occupation, land that had formerly been six farms, and he had two, ten, or a dozen children. I will not mention names, but this farmer will now perhaps have occasion to call to mind what I told him on that day, when his opposition, and particularly the ground of it, gave me the more pain as he was a very industrious, civil and honest man. Never was there a greater mistake than to suppose that men are made saucy and idle by just and kind treatment. Slaves are always lazy and saucy, nothing but the lash will extort from them either labour or respectful deportment. I never met with the saucy Yankee, New Englander, in my life. Never servile, always civil. This must necessarily be the character of free men living in a state of competence. They have nobody to envy, nobody to complain of. They are in good humour with mankind. It must, however, be confessed that very little comparatively speaking is to be accomplished by the individual efforts, even of benevolent men like the two noble men before mentioned. They have a strife to maintain against the general tendency of the national state of things. It is by general and indirect means, and not by partial and direct and positive regulations, that so greater good, as that which they generously aim at, can be accomplished. When we are to see such means adopted, God only knows. But if much longer delayed, I am of opinion that they will come too late to prevent something very much resembling a dissolution of society. The cottage's pig should be bought in the spring or late in winter, and, being then four months old, he will be a year old before killing time, for it should always be borne in mind that this age is required in order to ensure the greatest quantity of meat from a given quantity of food. If a hog be more than a year old, he is the better for it. The flesh is more solid and more nutritious than that of a young hog, much in the same degree that the mutton of a full-mouthed weather is better than that of a younger weather. The pork or bacon of young hogs, even if fatted on corn, is very apt to boil out, as they call it, that is to say, come out of the pot smaller in bulk than it goes in. When you begin to fat, do it by degrees, especially in the case of hogs under a year old. If you feed high all at once, the hog is apt to surf it, and then a great loss of food takes place. Peas or barley-meal is the food, the latter rather the best, and does the work quicker. Make him quite fat by all means. The last bushel, even if he sit as he eat, is the most profitable. If he can walk two hundred yards at a time, he is not well-fatted. Lean bacon is the most wasteful thing that any family can use. In short, it is un-eatable, except by drunkards who want something to stimulate their sickly appetite. The man who cannot live on solid, fat bacon, well-fed and well-cured, wants the sweet source of labour, or is fit for the hospital. But then it must be bacon, the effect of barley or peas, not beans, and not of whey, potatoes or messes of any kind. It is frequently said, and I know that even farmers say it, that bacon made from corn costs more than it is worth. Why do they take care to have it then? They know better. They know well that it is the very cheapest they can have, and they who look at both ends and both sides of every cost would as soon think of shooting their hogs as a-fatting them on messes. That is to say, for their own use, however willing they might now and then be to regale the Londoners with a bit of potato-pork. About Christmas, if the weather be coldish, is a good time to kill. If the weather be very mild, you may wait a little longer, for the hog cannot be too fat. The day before killing, he should have no food. To kill a hog nicely is so much of a profession, that it is better to pay a shilling for having it done than to stab and hack and tear the carcass about. I shall not speak of pork, for I would by no means recommend it. There are two ways of going to work to make bacon. In the one, you take off the hair by scalding. This is the practice in most parts of England and all over America, but the Hampshire way, and the best way, is to burn the hair off. There is a great deal of difference in the consequences. The first method, slackens the skin, opens all the pores of it, makes it loose and flabby by drawing out the roots of the hair. The second, tightens the skin in every part, contracts all the sinews and veins in the skin, makes the flitch a solider thing, and the skin a better protection to the meat. The taste of the meat is very different from that of a scolded hog, and to this, chiefly it was, that Hampshire Bacon owed its reputation for excellence. As the hair is to be burnt off, it must be dry, and care must be taken that the hog be kept on dry litter of some sort the day previous to killing. When killed, he is laid upon a narrow bed of straw, not wider than his carcass, and only two or three inches thick. He is then covered all over thinly with straw, to which, according as the wind may be, the fire is put at one end. As the straw burns, it burns the hair. It requires two or three coverings and burnings, and care is taken that the skin be not in any part burnt or parched. When the hair is all burnt off close, the hog is scraped clean, but never touched with water. The upper side being finished, the hog is turned over, and the other side is treated in like manner. This work should always be done before daylight. For in the daylight you cannot so nicely discover whether the hair be sufficiently burnt off. The light of the fire is weakened by that of the day. Besides, it makes the boys get up very early for once at any rate, and that is something, for boys always like a bonfire. The innards are next taken out, and if the wife be not a slattern here in the mere offal, in the mere garbage, there is food and delicate food, too, for a large family for a week, and hog's puddings for the children and some for neighbour's children who come to play with them. For these things are by no means to be overlooked, seeing that they tend to the keeping alive of that affection in children for their parents, which later in life will be found absolutely necessary to give effect to wholesome precept, especially when opposed to the boisterous passions of youth. The butcher the next day cuts the hog up, and then the house is filled with meat. Sauce, griskins, blade bones, thigh bones, spare ribs, chines, belly pieces, cheeks, all coming into use, one after the other. The last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks. But about this time it is more than possible that the Methodist parson will pay you a visit. It is remarked in America that these gentry are attracted by the squeaking of the pigs as the foxes by the cackling of the hen. This may be called slander. But I will tell you what I did know to happen. A good honest, careful fellow had a spare rib on which he intended to suck with his family after a long and hard day's work at coppice-cutting. Home he came at dark with his two little boys, each with a niche of wood that they had carried four miles, cheered with the thought of the repast that awaited them. In he went, found his wife, the Methodist parson, and a whole troupe of the sisterhood, engaged in prayer, and on the table they scattered the clean polished bones of the spare rib. Can any reasonable creature believe that to save the soul God requires us to give up the food necessary to sustain the body? Did St. Paul preach this? He, who while he spread the gospel abroad, worked himself in order to have it to give to those who were unable to work. Upon what, then, did these modern saints, these evangelical gentlemen, found their claim to live on the labour of others? All the other parts taken away, the two sides that remain, and that are called flitches, are to be cured for bacon. They are first rubbed with salt on their insides, or flesh-sides, then placed one on the other, the flesh-sides uppermost, in a salting trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the brine, for, to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not lie sopping in brine, which gives it that sort of taste which barrel-pork and sea-junk have, and then which nothing is more villainous. Everyone knows how different is the taste of fresh, dry salt from that of salt in a dissolved state. The one is savoury, the other nauseous. Therefore change the salt often, once in four or five days. Let it melt and sink in, but let it not lie too long. Change the flitches, put that at the bottom which was first put on the top. Do this a couple of times. This mode will cost you a great deal more in salt, or rather in taxes, than the sopping mode, but without it your bacon will not be sweet and fine and will not keep so well. As to the time required for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circumstances, the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the place where in the salting is going on. It takes a longer time for a thick than a thin flitch, it takes longer in dry than in damp weather, it takes longer in a dry than in a damp place. But for the flitches of a hog of twelve score in whether not very dry or very damp, about six weeks may do, and as yours is to be fat, which receives little injury from over salting, give time enough, for you are to have bacon till Christmas comes again. The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool, but always admit of a free circulation of air. Confined air, though cool, will taint meat sooner than the midday sun accompanied with a breeze. Ice will not melt in the hottest sun so soon as in a close and damp cellar. Put a lump of ice in cold water and one of the same size before a hot fire and the former will dissolve in half the time that the latter will. Let me take this occasion of observing that an ice-house should never be underground or under the shade of trees, that the bed of it ought to be three feet above the level of the ground, that this bed ought to consist of something that will admit the drippings to go instantly off and that the house should stand in a place open to the sun and air. This is the way they have the ice-houses under the burning sun of Virginia and here they keep their fish and meats as fresh and sweet as in winter, when at the same time neither will keep for twelve hours though let down to the depth of a hundred feet in a well. A Virginian with some poles and straw will stick up an ice-house for ten dollars worth a dozen of those ice-houses each of which costs our men of taste many scores of pounds. It is very hard to imagine indeed what anyone should want ice for in a country like this except for clodpole boys to slide upon and to drown cockneys in skating-time but if people must have ice in summer they may as well go a right way as a wrong way to get it. However, the patient that I have at this time under my hands wants nothing to cool his blood or something to warm it and therefore I will get back to the flitches of bacon which are now to be smoked for smoking is a great deal better than merely drying as is the fashion in the dairy countries in the west of England. When there were plenty of farmhouses there were plenty of places to smoke bacon in. Since farmers have lived in gentlemen's houses and the main part of the farmhouses have been knocked down these places are not so plenty. However there is scarcely any neighbourhood without a chimney left to hang bacon up in two precautions are necessary first to hang the flitches where no rain comes down upon them second not to let them be so near the fire as to melt. These precautions taken the next is that the smoke must proceed from wood not turf, peat or coal stubble or litter might do but the trouble would be great fur or deal smoke is not fit for the purpose I take it that the absence of wood as fuel in the dairy counties and in the north has led to the making of pork and dried bacon as to the time that it requires to smoke a flitch it must depend a good deal upon whether there be a constant fire beneath and whether the fire be large or small a month may do if the fire be pretty constant and such as a farmhouse fire usually is but over smoking or rather too long hanging in the air makes the bacon rust great attention to therefore be paid to this matter the flitch ought not to be dried up to the hardness of a board and yet it ought to be perfectly dry before you hang it up lay it on the floor scatter the flesh side pretty thickly over with bran or with some fine sawdust other than that of deal or fur rub it on the flesh or pat it well down upon it this keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings and makes the sort of crust to be dried on and in short keeps the flesh cleaner than it would otherwise be to keep the bacon sweet and good and free from nasty things that they call hoppers that is to say a sort of skipping maggots rendered by a fly which has a great relish for bacon to provide against this mischief and also to keep the bacon from becoming rusty the Americans whose country is so hot in summer have two methods they smoke no part of the hog except the hams or gammons they cover these with coarse linen cloth such as the finest hot bags are made of which they sew neatly on they then whitewash the cloth all over with lime whitewash such as we put on walls their lime being excellent stone lime they give the ham four or five washings the one succeeding as the former gets dry and in the sun all these washings are put on in a few hours the flies cannot get through this and thus the meat is preserved from them the other mode and that is the mode for you is to sift fine some clean and dry wood ashes put some at the bottom of a box or chest which is long enough to hold a flitch of bacon lay in one flitch then put in more ashes then the other flitch and then cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes this will effectively keep away all the flies and will keep the bacon as fresh and good as when it came out of the chimney which it will not be for any great length of time put out on a rack or kept hung up in the open air dust or even sand very dry would perhaps do as well the object is not only to keep out the flies but the air the place where the chest or box is kept ought to be dry and if the ashes should get damp as they are apt to do from the salts they contain they should be put in the fireplace to dry and then be put back again peat ashes or turf ashes might do very well for this purpose with these precautions the bacon will be as good at the end of the year as on the first day and it will keep two and even three years perfectly good for which however there can be no necessity now then this hog is altogether a capital thing the other parts will be meat for about four or five weeks the lard nicely put down will last a long while for all the purposes for which it is wanted to make it keep well there should be some salt put into it country children are badly brought up if they do not like sweet lard spread upon bread as we spread butter many a score hunches of this sort have I eaten and I never knew what poverty was I have eaten it for luncheon at the houses of good substantial farmers in France and Flanders I am not now frequently so hungry as I ought to be but I should think it no hardship to eat sweet lard instead of butter but nowadays the labourers and especially the female part of them have fallen into the taste of niceness in food and finery and dress a quarter of a bellyful and rags are the consequence the food of their choice is high priced so that for the greater part of their time they are half starved the dress of their choice is showy and flimsy so that today they are ladies and tomorrow ragged as sheep with the scab but has not nature made the country girls as pretty as ladies oh yes bless their rosy cheeks and white teeth and a great deal prettier too but are they less pretty when their dress is plain and substantial and when the natural presumption is that they have smocks as well as gowns than they are when drawn off in the frail fabric of Sir Robert Peel where tawdry colours strive with dirty white exciting violent suspicions that all is not as it ought to be nearer the skin and calling up a train of ideas extremely hostile to that sort of feeling which every lass innocently and commendably wishes to awaken in her male beholders are they prettiest when they come through the wet and dirt safe and neat or when their draggled dress is plastered to their backs by a shower of rain however the fault has not been theirs nor that of their parents it is the system of managing all the affairs of the nation this system has made all flashy and false and has put all things out of their place pomposity, bombast, hyperbole, redundancy and obscurity both in speaking and in writing mock delicacy in manners, mock liberality, mock humanity and mock religion pits, false money, Peel's flimsy dresses Wilberforce's potato diet, castle rays and Macintosh's oratory Walter Scott's poems, Walters and Stoddard's paragraphs editor's footnote, editors of the London Times with all the bad taste and baseness and hypocrisy which they spread over this country all have arisen, grown, branched out, bloomed and born together and we are now beginning to taste of their fruit but as the fact of the adder is as it is said the antidote to its sting so in the son of the great worker of spinning jennies we have, thanks to the proctors and doctors of Oxford the author of that bill before which this false, this flashy, this flimsy, this rotten system will dissolve as one of his father's pasted calico's does at the site of the washing-tub what, says the cottager, has all this to do with hogs and bacon not directly to do with hogs and bacon indeed but it has a great deal to do my good fellow with your affairs as I shall probably hereafter more fully show though I shall now leave you to the enjoyment of your flitches of bacon which, as I before observed, will do ten thousand times more than any Methodist person or any other person, except of course those of our church to make you happy, not only in this world but in the world to come meat in the house is a great source of harmony a great preventer of the temptation to commit those things which, from small beginnings lead finally to the most fatal and atrocious results and I hold that doctrine to be truly damnable which teaches that God has made any selection, any condition relative to belief which is to save from punishment those who violate the principles of natural justice some other meat you may have but bacon is the great thing it is always ready as good cold as hot goes to the field or the coppice conveniently in harvest and other busy times demands the pot to be boiled only on a Sunday has twice as much strength in it as any other thing of the same weight and in short has in it every quality that tends to make a labourer's family able to work and well off one pound of bacon such as that which I have described is in a labourer's family worth four or five of ordinary mutton or beef which are a great part bone and which in short are gone in a moment but always observe it is fat bacon that I am talking about there will in spite of all that can be done be some lean in the gammons though comparatively very little and therefore you ought to begin at that end of the flitches for old lean bacon is not good now as to the cost a pig a spade sow is best bought in March four months old can be had now for fifteen shillings the cost till fatting time is next to nothing to a cottager and then the cost at the present price of corn would for a hog of twelve score not exceed three pounds in the whole four pounds five a pot of poison a week bought at the public house comes to twenty-six shillings of the money and more than three times the remainder is generally flung away upon the miserable tea as I have clearly shown in the first number at paragraph twenty-four I have indeed there shown that if the tea were laid aside the labourer might supply his family well with beer all the year round and have a fat hog of even fifteen score for the cost of the tea which does him and can do him no good at all the feet the cheeks and other bone being considered the bacon and the lard taken together would not exceed six pence a pound Irish bacon is cheaper yes lower priced but I will engage that a pound of mine when it comes out of the pot to say nothing of the taste shall weigh as much as a pound and a half of Irish or any dairy or slop fed bacon when that comes out of the pot no no the farmers joke when they say that their bacon costs them more than they could buy bacon for they know well what it is they're doing and besides they always forget or rather remember not to say that the fatting of a large hog yields them three or four load of dung really worth more than ten or fifteen of common yard dung in short without hogs farming could not go on and it never has gone on in any country in the world the hogs are the great stay of the whole concern they are much in small space they make no show as flocks and herds do but without them the cultivation of the land would be a poor a miserably barren concern paragraphs 157 to 158 salting mutton and beef very fat mutton may be salted to great advantage and also smoked and may be kept thus a long while not the shoulders and legs but the back of the sheep I have never made any flitch of sheep bacon but I will for there is nothing like having a store of meat in a house the running to the butcher's daily is a ridiculous thing the very idea of being fed of a family being fed by daily supplies has something in it perfectly tormenting one half of the time of a mistress of a house the affairs of which are carried on in this way is taken up in talking about what is to be got for dinner and in negotiations with the butcher one single moment spent at table beyond what is absolutely necessary is a moment very shamefully spent but to suffer a system of domestic economy which unnecessarily wastes daily an hour or two of the mistress's time in hunting for the provision for the repast is a shame indeed and when we consider how much time is generally spent in this and in equally absurd ways it is no wonder that we see so little performed by numerous individuals as they do perform during the course of their lives very fat parts of beef may be salted and smoked in a like manner not the lean for that is a great waste and is in short good for nothing poor fellows on board of ships are compelled to eat it but it is a very bad thing end of number six number seven part one of cottage economy this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Philippa bees, fowls, etc, etc paragraph 159 I now proceed to treat of objects of less importance than the foregoing but still such as may be worthy of great attention if all of them cannot be expected to come within the scope of a labourer's family some of them must and others may and it is always of great consequence that children be brought up to set a just value upon all useful things and especially upon all living things to know the utility of them for without this they never when grown up are worthy of being entrusted with the care of them one of the greatest and perhaps the very commonest fault of servants is their inadequate care of animals committed to their charge it is a well known saying that the master's eye makes the horse fat and the remissness to which this alludes is generally owing to the servant not having been brought up to feel an interest in the well-being of animals paragraphs 160 to 166 bees it is not my intention to enter into a history of this insect about which so much has been written especially by the French naturalists it is the useful that I shall treat of and that is done in not many words the best hives are those made of clean unblighted rice straw boards are too cold in England a swarm should always be put into a new hive the sticks should be new that are put into the hive for the bees to work on for if the hive be old it is not so wholesome a thousand to one but it contain the embryos of moths and other insects injurious to bees over the hive itself there should be a cap of thatch made also of clean rice straw and it should not only be new when first put onto the hive but a new one should be made to supply the place of the former one every three or four months for when the straw begins to get rotten as it soon does insects breed in it, its smell is bad and its effect on the bees is dangerous the hive should be placed on a bench the legs of which mice and rats cannot creep up tin round the legs is best but even this will not keep down ants which are mortal enemies of bees to keep these away if you find them infest the hive take a green stick and twist it round in the shape of a ring to lay on the ground round the leg of the bench and at a few inches from it and cover this stick with tar this will keep away the ants if the ants come from one home you may easily trace them to it and when you have found it pour boiling water on it in the night when all the family are at home this is the only effectual way of destroying ants which are frequently so troublesome it would be cruel to cause this destruction if it were not necessary to do it in order to preserve the honey and indeed the bees too besides the hive and its cap there should be a sort of shed with top back and ends to give additional protection in winter though in summer hives may be kept too hot and in that case the bees become sickly and the produce becomes light the situation of the hive is to face the southeast or at any rate to be sheltered from the north and the west from the north always and from the west in winter if it be a very dry season in summer it contributes greatly to the success of the bees to place clear water near their home in a thing that they can conveniently drink out of for if they have to go a great way for drink they have not much time for work it is supposed that bees live only a year at any rate it is best never to keep the same stall or family over two years except you want to increase your number of hives the swarm of this summer should always be taken in the autumn of next year it is whimsical to save the bees when you take the honey you must feed them and if saved they will die of old age before the next fall and though young ones will supply the place of the dead this is nothing like a good swarm put up during the summer as to the things that bees make their collections from we do not perhaps know a thousandth part of them but of all the blossoms that they seek eagerly that of the buckwheat stands foremost go round a piece of this grain just towards sunset when the buckwheat is in bloom and you will see the air filled with bees going home from it in all directions the buckwheat too continues in bloom a long while for the grain is dead ripe on one part of the plant while there are fresh blossoms coming out on the other part a good stall of bees that is to say the produce of one is always worth about two bushels of good wheat the cost is nothing to the labourer he must be a stupid countryman indeed who cannot make a beehive and a lazy one indeed if he will not if he can in short there is nothing but care demanded and there are very few situations in the country especially in the south of England where a labouring man may not have half a dozen stalls of bees to take every year the main things are to keep away insects mice and birds and especially a little bird called the bee bird and to keep all clean and fresh as to the hives and coverings never put a swarm into an old hive if wasps or hornets annoy you watch them home in the daytime and in the night kill them by fire or by boiling water fowls should not go where bees are for they eat them suppose a man get three stalls of bees in a year six bushels of wheat give him bread for an eighth part of the year scarcely anything is a greater misfortune than shiftlessness it is an evil little short of the loss of eyes or of limbs paragraphs 167 to 168 geese they can be kept to advantage only where there are green commons and there they are easily kept live to a very great age and are amongst the hardiest animals in the world if well kept a goose will lay a hundred eggs in a year the French put their eggs under large hens of common fowls to each of which they give four or five eggs or under turkeys to which they give nine or ten goose eggs if the goose herself sits she must be well and regularly fed at or near to her nest when the young ones are hatched they should be kept in a warm place for about four days and fed on barley meal mixed if possible with milk and then they will begin to graze water for them or for the old ones to swim in is by no means necessary nor perhaps ever even useful or how is it that you see such fine flocks of geese all over Long Island in America where there is scarcely such a thing as a pond or a run of water geese are raised by grazing but to fat them something more is required corn of some sort or boiled Swedish turnips some corn and some raw Swedish turnips or carrots or white cabbages or lettuces make the best fatting the modes that are resulted to by the French for fatting geese nailing them down by their webs and other acts of cruelty are I hope such as English men will never think of they will get fat enough without the use of any of these unfeeling means being employed he who can deliberately inflict torture upon an animal in order to heighten the pleasure his palate is to receive in eating it is an abuser of the authority which God has given him and is indeed a tyrant in his heart who would think himself safe if at the mercy of such a man since the first edition of this work was published I've had a good deal of experience with regard to geese it is a very great error to suppose that what is called a Mikkelmer's goose is the thing geese are in general eaten at the age when they are called green geese or after they have got their full and entire growth which is not until the latter part of October green geese are tasteless squabs loose flabby things no rich taste in them and in short a very indifferent sort of dish the full grown goose has solidity in it but it is hard as well as solid and in place of being rich it is strong now there is a middle course to take and if you take this course you produce the finest birds of which we can know anything in England for three years including the present year I've had the finest geese that I ever saw or ever heard of I've bought from twenty to thirty every one of these years I buy them off the common late in June or very early in July they have cost me from two shillings to three shillings each first purchase I bring the flock home and put them in a pen about twenty feet square where I keep them well littered with straw so as for them not to get filthy they have one trough in which I give them dry oats and they have another trough where they have constantly plenty of clean water besides these we give them two or three times a day a parcel of lettuces out of the garden we give them such as are going to seed generally but the better the lettuces are the better the geese if we have no lettuces to spare we give them cabbages either loved or not loved though observe the white cabbage as well as the white lettuce that is to say the loved cabbage and lettuce are a great deal better than those that are not loved this is the food of my geese they thrive exceedingly upon this food after we've had the flock about ten days we begin to kill and we proceed once or twice a week until about the middle of October sometimes later a great number of persons who have eaten of these geese have all declared that they did not imagine that a goose could be brought to be so good a bird these geese are altogether different from the hard strong things that come out of the stubble fields and equally different from the flabby things called the green goose I should think that the cabbages or lettuces perform half the work of keeping and fatting my geese and these are things that really cost nothing I should think that the geese upon an average do not consume more than a shillings worth of oats each so that we have these beautiful geese for about four shillings each no money will buy me such a goose in London but the thing I can get nearest to it will cost me seven shillings every gentleman has a garden that garden has in the month of July a wagon load at least of lettuces and cabbages to throw away nothing is attended with so little trouble as these geese there is hardly anybody near London that has not room for the purposes here mentioned the reader will be apt to exclaim as my friends very often do cobbits geese are all swans well, better that way than not to be pleased with what one has however let gentlemen try this method of fatting geese it saves money, mind, at the same time let them try it and if any one who shall try it shall find the effect not to be that which I say it is let him reproach me publicly with being a deceiver the thing is no invention of mine while I could buy a goose of the common for half a crown I did not like to give seven shillings for one in London and yet I wished that geese should not be excluded from my house therefore I bought a flock of geese and brought them home to Kensington they could not be eaten all at once it was necessary therefore to fix upon a mode of feeding them the above mode was adopted by my servant as far as I know without any knowledge of mine but the very agreeable result made me look into the matter and my opinion that the information will be useful to many persons at any rate is sufficient to induce me to communicate it to my readers paragraphs 169 to 170 ducks no water to swim in is necessary to the old and it is injurious to the very young they never should be suffered to swim if water be near till more than a month old the old duck will lay in the year if well kept ten dozen of eggs and that is her best employment for common hens are the best mothers it is not good to let young ducks out in the morning to eat slugs and worms for though they like them these things kill them if they eat a great quantity grass corn white cabbages and lettuces and especially buckwheat cut when half ripe and flung down in the hole this makes fine ducks ducks will feed on garbage and all sorts of filthy things but their flesh is strong and bad in proportion they are in Long Island fatted upon a coarse sort of crab called a horse-foot fish prodigious quantities of which are cast on the shores the young ducks grow very fast upon this and very fat but woe unto him that has to smell them when they come from the spit and as for eating them a man must have a stomach indeed to do that when young they should be fed upon barley meal or curds and kept in a warm place in the night time and not let out early in the morning they should if possible be kept from water to swim in it always does them harm and if intended to be sold to be killed young they should never go near ponds ditches or streams when you come to fat ducks you must take care that they get at no filth whatever they will eat garbage of all sorts they will suck down the most nauseous particles of all those substances which go from an ear a dead rat three parts rotten is a feast to them for these reasons I should never eat any ducks unless there was some mode of keeping them from this horrible food I treat them precisely as I do my geese I buy a troop when they are young and put them in a pen and feed them upon oats, campages, lettuces and water and have the place kept very clean my ducks are in consequence of this a great deal more fine and delicate than any others that I know anything of paragraphs 171 to 175 turkeys these are flying things and so are common fowls but it may happen that a few hints respecting them may be of use to raise turkeys in this chilly climate is a matter of much greater difficulty than in the climates that give great warmth but the great enemy to young turkeys for old ones are hardy enough is the wet this they will endure in no climate and so true is this that in America where there is always a wet spell in April the farmers wives take care never to have a brood come out until that spell is passed in England where the wet spells come at haphazard the first thing is to take care that young turkeys never go out on any account except in dry weather till the dew be quite off the ground and this should be adhered to till they get to the size of an old partridge and have their backs well covered with feathers and in wet weather they should be kept under cover all day long as to the feeding of them when young various nice things are recommended hard eggs chopped fine with crumbs of bread and a great many other things but that which I have seen used and always with success and for all sorts of young poultry is milk turned into curds this is the food for young poultry of all sorts some should be made fresh every day and if this be done and the young turkeys kept warm and especially from wet not one out of a score will die when they get to be strong they may have meal and grain but still they always love the curds when they get their head feathers they are hardy enough and what they then want is room to prowl about it is best to breed them under a common hen because she does not ramble like a hen turkey and is a very curious thing that the turkeys bred up by a hen of the common fowl do not themselves ramble much when they get old and for this reason when they buy turkeys for stock in America where there are such large woods and where the distant rambling of turkeys is inconvenient they always buy such as have been bred under the hens of the common fowl than which a more complete proof of the great powers of habit is perhaps not to be found and ought not this to be a lesson to fathers and mothers of families ought not they to consider that the habits which they give their children are to stick by those children during their whole lives the hen should be fed exceedingly well too while she is sitting and after she is hatched for though she does not give milk she gives heat and let it be observed that as no man ever yet saw healthy pigs with a poor sow so no man ever saw healthy chickens with a poor hen this is a matter much too little thought of in the rearing of poultry but it is a matter of the greatest consequence never let a poor hen sit feed the hen well while she is sitting and feed her most abundantly when she has young ones for then her labour is very great she is making exertions of some sort or other during the whole 24 hours she has no rest is constantly doing something or other to provide food or safety for her young ones as to fatting turkeys the best way is never to let them be poor cramming is a nasty thing and quite unnecessary barley meal mixed with skim milk given to them fresh and fresh will make them fat in a short time either in a coop, in a house or running about boiled carrots and Swedish turnips will help and this is a change of sweet food in France they sometimes pick turkeys alive to make them tender of which I shall only say that the man that can do this or order it to be done or to be skinned alive himself paragraphs 176 to 180 fowls these are kept for two objects their flesh and their eggs as to rearing them everything said about rearing turkeys is applicable here they are best fatted too in the same manner but as to laying hens there are some means to be used to secure the use of them in winter they ought not to be old hens that is birds hatched in the forgoing spring are perhaps the best at any rate let them not be more than two years old they should be kept in a warm place and not let out even in the daytime in wet weather for one good sound wetting will keep them back for a fortnight the dry cold even in the severest cold if dry is less injurious than even a little wet in wintertime if the feathers get wet in our climate in winter or in short days they do not get dry for a long time and it is this that spoils and kills many of our fowls the French who are great egg-eaters take singular pains as to the food of laying hens in winter they let them out very little even in their fine climate and give them very stimulating food barley boiled and given them warm curds, buckwheat which I believe is the best thing of all except curds parsley and other herbs chopped fine leeks chopped in the same way also apples and pears chopped very fine oats and wheat crippled and sometimes they give them hemp seed and the seed of nettles or dried nettles harvested in summer and boiled in the winter some give them ordinary food and once a day toasted bread soft in wine white cabbages chopped up are very good in winter for all sorts of poultry this is taking a great deal of pains but the produce is also great and very valuable in winter for as you preserved eggs they are things to run from and not after all this supposes however a proper hen-house about which we in England take very little pains the vermin, that is to say the lice that poultry breed are the greatest annoyance and as our wet climate furnishes them for a great part of the year with no dust by which to get rid of these vermin we should be very careful about cleanliness in the hen-houses many a hen when sitting is compelled to quit her nest to get rid of the lice they torment the young chickens and in short are a great injury the foul-house should therefore be very often cleaned out and sand or fresh earth should be thrown on the floor the nest should not be on shelves or on anything fixed but little flat baskets something like those that the gardeners have in the markets in London and which they call sieves should be placed against the sides of the house upon pieces of wood nailed up for the purpose by this means the nests are kept perfectly clean because the baskets are when necessary taken down the hay thrown out and the baskets washed which cannot be done if the nest be made in anything forming a part of the building besides this the roosts ought to be cleaned every week and the hay changed in the nests of laying hens it is good to fumigate the house frequently by burning dry herbs, juniper wood, cedar wood or with brimstone for nothing stands so much in need of cleanliness as a foul-house in order to have fine fouls and plenty of eggs the ailments of fouls are numerous but they would seldom be seen if the proper care were taken it is useless to talk of remedies in a case where you have complete power to prevent the evil if well fed and kept perfectly clean fouls will seldom be sick and as to old age they never ought to be kept more than a couple or three years for they get to be good for little as layers no teeth can face them as food it is perhaps seldom that fouls can be kept conveniently about a cottage but when they can three, four or half a dozen hens to lay in winter when the wife is at home the greater part of the time are worth attention they would require but little room might be bought in November and sold in April and six of them with proper care might be made to clear every week the price of a gallon of flour if the labour were great I should not think of it but it is none and I am for neglecting nothing in the way of pains in order to ensure a hot dinner every day in winter when the man comes home from work as to the fatting of fouls information can be of no use to those who live in a cottage all their lives but it may be of some use to those who are born in cottages and go to have the care of poultry at richer person's houses fouls should be put to fat about a fortnight before they are wanted to be killed the best food is barley meal wetted with milk but not wetted too much they should have clear water to drink and it should be frequently changed crammed fouls are very nasty things but barn door fouls as they are called are sometimes a great deal more nasty barn door would indeed do exceedingly well but it unfortunately happens that this stable is generally pretty near to the barn and now let any gentleman who talks about sweet barn door fouls have one caught in the yard where the stable is also let him have it brought in, killed and the craw taken out and cut open then let him take a ball of horse-dung from the stable door and let his nose tell him how very small is the difference between the smell of the horse-dung and the smell of the craw of his foul in short roast the foul and then pull aside the skin at the neck put your nose to the place and you will almost think that you are at the stable door hence the necessity of taking them away from the barn door a fortnight at least before they are killed we know very well that ducks that have been fed upon fish either wild ducks or tame ducks will scent a whole room and drive out of it all those who have not pretty good constitutions it must be so Solomon says that all flesh is as grass and those who know anything about beef know the difference between the effect of the grass in Herefordshire and Lincolnshire and the effect of turnips and oil-cake in America they always take the fouls from the farmyard and shut them up a fortnight or three weeks before they be killed one thing however about fouls ought always to be born in mind they are never good for anything when they have attained their full growth unless they be capons or poulards if the poulays be old enough to have little eggs in them they are not worth one farthing and as to the cocks of the same age they are fit for nothing but to make soup for soldiers on their march and they ought to be taken for that purpose paragraphs 181 to 183 pigeons a few of these may be kept about any cottage for they are kept even in towns by labourers and artisans they cause but little trouble they take care of their own young ones and they do not scratch or do any other mischief in gardens they want feeding with tears, peas or small beans and buckwheat is very good for them to begin keeping them they must not have flown at large before you get them you must keep them for two or three days shut into the place which is to be their home and then they may be let out and will never leave you as long as they can get proper food and are undisturbed by vermin or unannoyed exceedingly by lice the common dove-house pigeons are the best to keep they breed oftenest and feed their young ones best they begin to breed at about nine months old and if well kept they will give you eight or nine pair in the year any little place, a shelf in the cowshed a board or two under the eaves of the house or in short any place under cover even on the ground floor they will sit and hatch and breed up their young ones in it is not supposed that there could be much profit attached to them but they are of this use they are very pretty creatures very interesting in their manners and they are an object to delight children and to give them the early habit of fondness for animals and of setting a value on them which as I have often had to observe before is a very great thing a considerable part of all the property of a nation consists of animals of course a proportionate part of the cares and labours of a people appertain to the breeding and bring to perfection those animals and if you consult your experience you will find that a labourer is generally speaking of value in proportion as he is worthy of being entrusted with the care of animals the most careless fellow cannot hurt a hedge or ditch but to trust him with the team or the flock is another matter and mind for the man to be trustworthy in this respect the boy must have been in the habit of being kind and considerate towards animals and nothing is so likely to give him that excellent habit as his seeing from his very birth animals taken great care of and treated with great kindness by his parents and now and then having a little thing to call his own end of number seven part one number seven part two of cottage economy by William Cobbett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Philippa paragraphs 184 to 188 rabbits in this case too the chief use perhaps is to give children those habits of which I've just been speaking nevertheless rabbits are really profitable three doze and a buck will give you a rabbit to eat for every three days in the year which is a much larger quantity of food than any man will get by spending half his time in the pursuit of wild animals to say nothing of the toil, the tearing of clothes and the danger of pursuing the latter everybody knows how to knock up a rabbit hutch the dose should not be allowed to have more than seven litters in a year six young ones to a dough is all that ought to be kept and then they will be fine abundant food is the main thing and what is there that a rabbit will not eat I know of nothing green that they will not eat and if hard pushed they will eat bark and even wood the best thing to feed the young ones on when taken from the mother is the carrot, wild or garden parsnips, swedish turnips, roots of dandelion for too much green or watery stuff is not good for weaning rabbits they should remain as long as possible with the mother they should have oats once a day and after a time they may eat anything with safety but if you give them too much green at first when they are weaned they rot as sheep do variety of food is a great thing and surely the fields and gardens and hedges furnish this variety all sorts of grasses, strawberry leaves, ivy, dandelions the hogweed or wild parsnip in root, stem and leaves I have fed working horses six or eight a number upon this plant for weeks together it is a tall, bold plant that grows in prodigious quantities in the hedges and coppices in some parts of England it is the perennial parsnip it has flower and seed precisely like those of the parsnip and hogs, cows and horses are equally fond of it many a half-starved pig have I seen within a few yards of cartloads of this pigmeat this arises from want of the early habit of attention to such matters I, who used to get hogweed for pigs and for rabbits when a little chap have never forgotten that the wild parsnip is good food for pigs and rabbits when the doe has young ones feed her most abundantly with all sorts of greens and herbage and with carrots and the other things mentioned before besides giving her a few oats once a day that is the way to have fine healthy young ones which if they come from the mother in good case will very seldom die but do not think that because she is a small animal a little feeding is sufficient rabbits eat a great deal more than cows or sheep in proportion to their bulk of all animals rabbits are those that boys are most fond of they're extremely pretty, nimble in their movements engaging in their attitudes and always completely under immediate control the produce has not long to be waited for in short they keep an interest constantly alive in a little chap's mind and they really cost nothing for as to the oats where is the boy that cannot in harvest time pick up enough along the lanes to serve his rabbits for a year the care is all and the habit of taking care of things is of itself a most valuable possession to those gentlemen who keep rabbits for the use of their family and a very useful and convenient article they are I would observe that when they find their rabbits die they may depend on it that 99 times out of the hundred starvation is the malady and particularly short feeding of the doe while and before she has young ones that is to say short feeding of her at all times for if she be poor the young ones will be good for nothing she will live being poor but she will not and cannot breed up fine young ones paragraphs 189 to 192 goats and ewes in some places where a cow cannot be kept a goat may the correspondent points out to me that a door sit you or two might be kept on a common near a cottage to give milk and certainly this might be done very well but I should prefer a goat which is hardier and much more domestic when I was in the army in New Brunswick where be it observed the snow lies on the ground seven months in the year there were many goats that belong to the regiment and that went about with it on shipboard and everywhere else some of them had gone through nearly the whole of the American war we never fed them in summer they picked about wherever they could find grass and in winter they lived on cabbage leaves, turnip peelings, potato peelings and other things flung out of the soldiers rooms and huts one of these goats belonged to me and on average throughout the year she gave me more than three half-pints of milk a day I used to have the kid killed when a few days old and for some time the goat would give nearly or quite two quarts of milk a day she would sell them dry more than three weeks in the year there is one great inconvenience belonging to goats that is they bark all young trees that they come near so that if they get into a garden they destroy everything but there are seldom trees on commons except such as are too large to be injured by goats and I can see no reason against keeping a goat where a cow cannot be kept nothing is so hardy nothing is so little nice as to its food goats will pick peelings out of the kennel and eat them they will eat mouldy bread or biscuit, fusty hay and almost rotten straw, furs, bushes, heat-thistles and indeed what will they not eat when they will make a hearty meal on paper, brown or white printed on or not printed on and give milk all the while they will lie in any dog-hole they do very well clogged or stumped out and then they are very healthy things into the bargain however closely they may be confined when sea voyages are so stormy as to kill geese, ducks, fowls and almost pigs the goats are well and lively and when a dog of no kind can keep the deck for a minute a goat will skip about upon it as bold as brass goats do not ramble from home they come in regularly in the evening and if called they come like dogs now though ewes when taken great care of will be very gentle and though their milk may be rather more delicate than that of the goat the ewes must be fed with nice and clean food and they will not do much in the milk-giving way upon a common and as to feeding them provision must be made pretty nearly as for a cow they will not endure confinement like goats and they are subject to numerous ailments that goats know nothing of then the ewes are done by the time they are about six years old for then they lose their teeth whereas a goat will continue to breed and to give milk in abundance for a great many years the sheep is frightened at everything and especially at the least sound of a dog a goat on the contrary will face a dog and if he be not a big and courageous one beat him off I've often wondered how it happened that none of our labourers kept goats and I really should be glad to see the thing tried they're pretty creatures domestic as a dog will stand and watch as a dog does for a crumb of bread as you are eating give you no trouble in the milking and I cannot help being of opinion that it might be of great use to introduce them amongst our labourers paragraphs 193 to 197 candles and rushes we are not permitted to make candles ourselves and if we were they ought sell them to be used in a labourer's family I was bred and brought up mostly by rush light and I do not find that I see less clearly than other people candles certainly were not much used in English labourer's dwellings in the days when they had meat dinners and Sunday coats potatoes and taxed candles seem to have grown into fashion together and perhaps for this reason that when the pot ceased to afford grease for the rushes the potato gorger was compelled to go to the Chandler's shop for light to swallow the potatoes by else he might have devoured peeling and all my grandmother who lived to be pretty nearly ninety never I believe burnt a candle in her house in her life I know that I never saw one there and she in a great measure brought me up she used to get the meadow rushes such as they tie the hopshoots to the poles with she cut them when they had attained their full substance but were still green the rush at this age consists of a body of pith with a green skin on it you cut off both ends of the rush and leave the prime part which on an average may be about a foot and a half long then you take off all the green skin except for about a fifth part of the way round the pith thus it is but a piece of pith all but a little strip of skin in one part all the way up which observe is necessary to hold the pith together all the way along the rush is being thus prepared the grease is melted and put in a melted state into something that is as long as the rushes are the rushes are put into the grease soaked in it sufficiently then taken out and laid in a bit of bark taken from a young tree so as not to be too large this bark is fixed up against the wall by a couple of straps put round it and there it hangs for the purpose of holding the rushes the rushes are carried about in the hand but to sit by, to work by or to go to bed by they are fixed in stands made for the purpose some of which are high to stand on the ground and some low to stand on a table these stands have an iron port something like a pair of pliers to hold the rush in and the rushes shifted forward from time to time as it burns down to the thing that holds it now these rushes give a better light than a common small dip candle and they cost next to nothing though the labourer may with them have as much light as he pleases and though without them he must sit the far greater part of the winter evenings in the dark even if he spend fifteen shillings a year in candles you may do any sort of work by this light and if reading be your taste you may read the foul libels, the lies and abuse which are circulated gratis about me by the society for promoting Christian knowledge as well by rush light as you can by the light of taxed candles and at any rate you would have one evil less for to be deceived and to pay a tax for the deception are a little too much for even modern loyalty openly to demand paragraph 198 mustard why buy this when you can grow it in your garden the stuff you buy is half drugs and is injurious to health a yard square of ground sewn with common mustard the crop of which you would grind for use in a little mustard mill as you wanted it would save you some money and probably save your life your mustard would look brown instead of yellow but the former colour is as good as the latter and as to the taste the real mustard has certainly a much better than that of the drugs and flour which go under the name of mustard let anyone try it and I am sure he will never use the drugs again the drugs if you take them freely leave a burning at the pit of your stomach which the real mustard does not paragraphs 199 to 201 dress household goods and fuel in paragraph 152 I said I think enough to caution you the English labourer against the taste now too prevalent for fine and flimsy dress it was for hundreds of years amongst the characteristics of the English people that their taste was in all matters for things solid sound and good for the useful and decent the cleanly and dress and not for the showy let us hope that this may be the taste again and let us my friends fear no troubles no perils that may be necessary to produce a return of that taste accompanied with full bellies and warm backs to the labouring classes in household goods the warm the strong the durable ought always to be kept in view oak tables bedsteads and stools chairs of oak or a view tree and never a bit of miserable deal board things of this sort ought to last several lifetimes a labourer ought to inherit from his great grandfather something besides his toil as to bedding and other things of that sort all ought to be good in their nature of a durable quality and plain in their colour and form the plates, dishes, mugs and things of that kind should be of pewter or even of wood anything is better than crockeryware bottles to carry a field should be of wood formerly nobody but the gypsies and mumpers and hop-picking in the season carried glass or earthen bottles as to glass of any sort I do not know what business it has in any man's house unless he be rich enough to live on his means it pays a tax in many cases to the amount of two thirds of its cost in short when a house is once furnished with sufficient goods there ought to be no renewal of hardly any part of them wanted for half an age except in case of destruction by fire good management in this way leaves the man's wages to provide an abundance of good food and good raiment and these are the things that make happy families these are the things that make a good, kind, sincere and brave people not little pamphlets about loyalty and content a good man will be contented fast enough if he be fed and clad sufficiently and if a man be not well fed and clad he is a base wretch to be contented fuel should be if possible provided in summer or at least some of it turf and peat must be got in summer and some wood may in the woodland countries the next winter ought to be thought of in June when people hardly know what to do with the fuel would and something should if possible be saved in the bark harvest to get a part of the fuel for the next winter fire is a capital article to have no fire or a bad fire to sit by is a most dismal thing in such a state man and wife must be something out of the common way to be in good humour with each other to say nothing of colds and other ailments which are the natural consequence of such misery if we suppose the great creator to condescend to survey his works in detail what object can be so pleasing to him as that of the labourer after his return from the toils of a cold winter day sitting with his wife and children round a cheerful fire while the wind whistles in the chimney and the rain pelts the roof but of all God's creation what is so miserable to behold or to think of as a wretched half-starved family creeping to their nest of flocks or straw there to lie shivering bent forth by the fear of absolutely expiring from want paragraph 202 hops I treated of them before but before I conclude this little work it is necessary to speak of them again I made a mistake as to the tax on the hops the positive tax is tuppence a pound and I in former editions stated it at fourpence however in all such cases there falls upon the consumer the expenses attending the paying of the tax that is to say the cost of interest of capital in the grower who pays the tax and who must pay for it whether his hops be cheap or dear then the trouble it gives him and the rules he is compelled to obey in the drying and bagging and which calls him great expense so that the tax on hops of our own English growth may now be reckoned to cost the consumer about thruppence farthing a pound paragraphs 203 to 206 yeast yeast is a great thing in domestic management I have once before published a receipt for making yeast cakes I will do it again here in Long Island they make yeast cakes a parcel of these cakes is made once a year that is often enough and when you bake you take one of these cakes or more according to the bulk of the batch and with them raise your bread the very best bread I ever ate in my life was lightened with these cakes the materials for a good batch of cakes are as follows three ounces of good fresh hops three and a half pounds of rye flour seven pounds of Indian cornmeal and one gallon of water rub the hops so as to separate them put them into the water which is to be boiling at the time let them boil half an hour then strain the liquor through a fine sieve into an earthen vessel while the liquor is hot put in the rye flour stirring the liquor well and quickly as the rye flour goes into it the day after when it is working put in the Indian meal stirring it well as it goes in before the Indian meal be all in the mess will be very stiff and it will in fact be dough very much of the consistency of the dough that bread is made of take this dough need it well as you would for pie crust roll it out with a rolling pin as you roll out pie crust to the thickness of about a third of an inch when you have it or are part of it at a time rolled out cut it up into cakes with a tumbler glass turned upside down or with something else that will answer the same purpose take a clean board a tin may be better and put the cakes to dry in the sun turn them every day let them receive no wet and they will become as hard as ship biscuit put them into a bag or box and keep them in a place perfectly free from damp when you bake take two cakes of the thickness above mentioned and about three inches in diameter put them into hot water overnight having cracked them first let the vessel containing them stand near the fireplace all night they will dissolve by the morning and then you use them in setting nor sponge as it is called precisely as you would use the yeast of beer there are two things which may be considered by the reader as obstacles first where are we to get the Indian meal Indian meal is used merely because it is of a less adhesive nature than that of wheat white pea meal or even barley meal would do just as well but second to dry the cakes to make them and quickly to mind as hard as ship biscuit which is much harder than the timber of scotch furs or Canada furs and to do this in the sun for it must not be fire where are we in this climate to get the sun in 1816 we could not for that year melons rotted in the glazed frames and never ripened but in every nine summers out of ten we have in June in July or in August a fortnight of hot sun and that is enough nature has not given us a peach climate but we get peaches the cakes when put in the sun may have a glass sash or a hand light put over them this would make their birth hotter than that of the hottest open air situation in America in short to a farmer's wife or any good housewife all the little difficulties in the attainment of such an object would appear as nothing the will only is required and if there be not that it is useless to think of the attempt paragraph 207 sowing Swedish turnip seed it is necessary to be a little more full than I have been before as to the manner of sowing this seed and I shall make my directions such as to be applied on a small or a large scale those that want to transplant on a large scale will of course as to the other parts of the business refer to my larger work it is to get plants for transplanting that I mean to sow the Swedish turnip seed the time for sowing must depend a little upon the nature of the situation and soil in the north of England perhaps early in April may be the best but in any of these southern counties any time after the middle of April and before the 10th of May is quite early enough the ground which is to receive the seed should be made very fine and manured with wood ashes or with good compost well mixed with the earth dung is not so good for it breeds the fly more or at least I think so the seed should be sown in drills and inch deep as pointed out under the head of sowing in my book on gardening when deposited in the drills evenly but not thickly the ground should be raked across the drills so as to fill them up and then the whole of the ground should be trodden hard with shoes not nailed and not very thick in the soul the ground should be laid out in four feet beds for the reasons mentioned in The Gardener when the seeds come up thin the plants to two inches apart same as you think them clear from the fly for if left thicker they injure each other even in this infant state hoe frequently between the rows even before thinning the plants and when they are thinned hoe well and frequently between them for this has a tendency to make them strong and the hoeing before thinning helps to keep off the fly a rod of ground the rows being eight inches apart and plants two inches apart in the row will contain about 2,200 plants an acre in rows four feet apart and the plants a foot apart in the row will take about 10,460 plants so that to transplant an acre you must sow about five rods of ground the plants should be kept very clean and by the last week in June or first in July you put them out I have put them out in England at all times between the seventh of June and the middle of August the first is certainly earlier than I like and the very finest I ever grew in England and the finest I ever saw for a large piece were transplanted on the 14th of July but one year with another the last week in June is the best time for size of plants manner of transplanting intercultivation preparing the land and the rest see years residence in America end of number seven