A fire, this end of February, reduced two cottages to ashes on the edge of the village. One of my labourers spent the day building another for the poor widow whose wretched abode one of these was. In total the goods lost were two stools, two tables, a candlestick, and three truckle beds. The rest were carried out before the fire properly took hold but amounted to less than half the loss. Our Chapel will provide a proportion. The smell of the burning is sharp even here.
The habit of folding sheep on the fields to be sown is much taken up in these parts: I have hired fifty ewes (wethers are not so beneficial) and their lambs, whose dung in particular is rich, partaking as it does of the mother’s milk. This has cost me 7d for each night, but I am certain that it will gain me profit from the greater yield this summer. My labourers claim I am making shepherds out of them, although they too have sheep on their commons. They do not fancy the moving of the fences, I fear. This day my wife was found by the maid, with a straw doll hung about her neck.
How to avoid the spalting of dry land when it is ploughed took up the bulk of my conversation with Mr Lisle, Esquire, whom I encountered on the Ulverdon road, past the ash-copse, early this morning. He was on his way to inspect a spongy ground he had pared off and burnt the summer last, and sown with hay-dust. Mr Lisle reckoned on ploughing lightly therefore, or not at all, because the bad ground that is turned up beneath the good makes the effort worthless. Mr Lisle’s horse was made jittery by a crow that swooped very close, but he was in no danger. This led us swiftly to a second observation: Pliny’s remark that good soil can be told by the flocking of crows and other birds to its turning-up, stirring the air about the ploughman like gulls about a ship. This is due to the abundance of certain types of insects who are particular about the soil they choose to abide in. Mr Lisle is a great expert on these matters and an hour spent in his company furnishes a good crop of information. He has much land hereabouts but I believe he comes from Crux Easton, to the South. He reckons on there being another month of dry weather, the last year being so moist. He has the Queen’s ear, it is said, but that is only from the fusty-minded of Ulverdon to whom any man that hails from afar and bears the title of Esq. is worthy of awe. My wife has not eaten for two days. Yesterday I placed before her some white meat with bread but she scarcely looked. Our maid swept and stoked the fire all the while talking of her sick father who aids in the smithy but is no decent church man, and not making allowance for my wife’s situation. I am resolved to be rid of her. She wears her bodice loose and will not tie up her hair as is seemly. She beats the coverlets like a mad woman, or a soldier his drum. It scares the poultry across the yard. There was no butter churned this week, as I was busy with the ploughing of the fallow, which I have resolved to turn to wheat and not let it lie idle, my wife was abed, and the maid was in the herb garden (it being a new moon this Tuesday), and planting chervil and coriander on my wife’s instructions. I saw the market from the top field and reflected that this was the first day we had not sent to it with butter. I prayed then and there in the field and, being on my knees, noticed the brashiness of the new-turned-up soil more keenly than heretofore. The stones are very light, but enough to rest the harrow, I fear. My knees have remained cold, which is curious. They have retained the winter in them as the soil does. I heated some water and washed before the fire this day.
This morning early I smelt spring.
Of the inestimable advantages of enclosing land: despite the clovering of the fallow that is taken up by many neighbouring villages, the fusty gents of Ulverdon, hid in this valley from the outer world as they are, have decreed that fallow remain naked for fear of wearying of the soil. Some men I know, seeing my and others’ clover and St Foin, and the health of the winter cattle, and the goodness of the soil so pastured, chafe at this regulation, and would fence their-strips if it were affordable. They might, at ploughing, remove the fences and thereby gain still the common advantages of the shared plough and oxen. However, to such degree are the stones of tradition buried deep that no man might lift them alone, or stub up the shrubs of complacency. The bare widenesses of the commons around Ulverdon, that are not to sheep, suffer considerably, in places, from the winds, and I have seen a score of strips with the meagre corn quite flattened each summer.
I have spent this day constructing a dry hedge for the protection of my young trees that I am to plant about my top field. I hired a lad to help me, as my servants were dunging. The lad was amused by this artificial thing, but I explained to him that the winds up here would nip the tender trees and he nodded sagely. If we are to Improve effectively, the young must be instructed forthwith in the new ways.
I was paused in my tawing of the harness by a shriek from the upper window of the house. My wife had taken it into her head to batter the poor maid with a pan for tearing a hole in the linen for the flock-bed. The hole was but a finger’s width where already the linen was worn almost out. The maid was somewhat bruised about the face but otherwise unharmed. I gave her a jug of beer for which she was exceeding grateful. My wife lay abed. I myself bathed the afflicted places with a tincture of camomile, and was reminded of Our Lord’s feet.
On tawing of harness: it is to be recommended that, if cracks in bending from over-dryness are to be avoided, a proper dressing of allum and salt must be applied to halters, cruppers, belly-bands etc., and especially where the leather is horny, or has a seam of black running through.
Today I caught the maid at her offices. She was pissing within the dairy and not, as instructed, upon the dung-heap which is hidden from general view. Being midway through her passing of urine she made no effort to hide herself and I was afflicted with a view of her private place, which, unlike my wife’s, is crow-black. Her skirts were too far up about her waist to shield any particular from me and I remonstrated with her, but am recognisant of the fact that my prayers have gone unanswered. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
My wife beat me, on my instructions, again this night. I am much disturbed, at present, by appearances in my sleep of our youngest, who has not been gone from this world more than a year now. I woke deeply troubled by this. I was about the yard early overseeing the oxen and a coulter was badly nipped, I noticed. If the Lord has not granted me a son, and only sickly daughters who do not live, my cousin must take hold of this land when I am gone, and the thought weakens my resolve. This morning was deadly cold, and the foddering barton was stone-hard in white heaps. Despite the decent feed, the cows are milking thinly at present. Their racks are halfway full and little is trodden that is not straw. My servant says it is the inclemency of the weather. Some of the udders are, indeed, cracked. Everything steams.
The advantages of the turnwrest cannot be over-estimated. When combined with a draught of horses it is incomparable. My own draught remains of oxen but Mr King’s I have seen in action and his horses are easy of manoeuvre and appear faster, particularly at the headland turn, which in my lower fields is altogether too narrow for my heavy beasts. We replaced three shares in one morning, the soil being so brashy. The coulter cut deep, it being a dry month of March so far, and a drier February, this year 1712, but the crows and rooks and gulls followed close on our heels, which bodes well for the soil, which I have meliorated with much dung since the wheat harvest. The land’s chockiness was never so obvious as this morning, when the share was bone-white after the first furrow. I pray for a dripping summer which always spreads its juices easily in our dry chalk land. In dry summers the barley ears tend to blight and a shrivelled look.