I have thought, this night, before the fire, after a day of harrowing, and casting clover-seed upon the tinings that it might grow with the barley-seed already cast, how God approves, in his Majesty, the lowliest act of procreation, whether in the starky, stiff soil of husbandry or the moistness of woman. Because all coupling is in His image, if it be to belly, and further improve Creation by begetting, and not after lust only, or for craving of it. If my seed chitts within her, and within the soil of my land, then there is merely profit, and no waste. My wife did spin all day, but is now abed. I did read before the hearth but nodded off for a half-hour and bent the page on Leviticus.
I note, on my top field, the slow progress of the harrow, this being the brashy field, with a multiplicity of small stones that rest the tines. My labourer was of the mind to remove them before the next year, which would bear little profit for me owing to the requirement of much labour to achieve a clean field. I answered, that the stones, being on white land, and that land being dry and light, make an additional weight much needed by the soil. My man grunted only, which is always the response of the simple-minded. Still no rain.
Mr Philip Swiffen, of Speen, whose land abuts on the old castle at Donnington, and who I have been visiting this day to enquire after malt-dust, and to view his winnowing machine, which is the first to be acquired in these parts, and which unnecessitates a reliance on wind, its sacking sails providing a goodly breeze which blew my hat off, showed me a field which was the place of the battle between King and Roundhead, and he boasted that it yielded wheat whose ears numbered a regular five to seven, and some at fourteen! This, he explained, was owing, most like, to the blood spilt on that land, whose juices were thereby more nutritious. I have heard this before, but not at first-hand.
My dreams are at present troubled: of dogs, and paps, and my wife’s face under the harrow, which comes of the accident up at Farmer Garrard’s, where a man was drawn under the tines when the horse (for he uses no oxen) took fright at a boy’s bird-clapper being sudden operated. A dose of brandy aids my sleep each night. My wife watches me.
My bile being bad I took white lily. Two sheep slinked their lambs in one night this week, and that is the last, though we have four pur-lambs, who will make fine tupps. There was a rime on the thatch today, and my breath never went from the air. The maid’s warmth was welcome.
I note that, in my field that was sown to St Foin a year past, and on which I suffered the cows to go after the oats were cut, the grass is much injured by their feet and the cropping of their mouths, and is still not recovered, this being due, no doubt, to its youth and the dryness of these latter months. I will hayn it up from the cattle for the remainder of the year, lest further injury be suffered by the young shoots.
My maid is not well.
The manure passage in the cow-house was deepened this day.
The clover between the barley is already a good sward. I applied pigeons’-dung after the seed, this being a cold and clay field, and the manure of my poultry. It has worked to pleasing effect. May 12th, and still no rain. Today was hotter than any before in my memory. The maid is creamy about the face. On enquiry, she pushed me off, and ran to the houses of office, where I heard her retch. She is undoubtedly bellied. I informed my wife that she (the maid) had eaten of pork poorly-salted. My wife considered it owing to the habit of steeping fish in the common well in the square. I was at a loss for an answer, for she said this strangely. She tends the herbs from six until half-past seven every morning, which I think excessive, but she will not hear of it. There is hardly time to bake, and our bread is too chock with bran, and heavy.
My wife enquired, this night, why the stick had not been put to recent use. I was at a loss for an answer at first, but took out my small Bible, that I carry always, and laid my hand upon it. A wind got up and I had to rise in the middest of the night with a lanthorn to shut fast a door into the barn that was banging with much distress to the cattle. I found the latch broken, and tied it up with rope, and was much tired by this exertion, and the wind, and the hour. The wind was warm, being a westerly, but the yard appeared rimed with the moon full out, and I retired swiftly.
Although my writing is not smooth, and my tongue thick, I wish one day to write a book of husbandry, as Mr Fitzherbert’s that wrote formerly, and Mr Worlidge’s that my uncle, though only a parson, had upon his shelf, and lent me. There is in this latter the likeness of a patent seed-drill, which I believe never to have been tried.
I did, it seems, overfeed my St Foin, according to Farmer Barr, which made it sweet and so the cattle cropped it too close. All our timber is now stored. I am fashioning new flails from the thorn, and two new forks from the hazel. My ploughman reckons on there being the need for a new mouldboard, the wood somewhat scuffed and dented, and on indicating this to Farmer Barr, the latter postulated a greater use of iron in the plough’s parts, which would enable a lengthier service, but the ploughman, who was with us, readying to plough the fallow for the wheat crop that day, maintained that an over-use of iron would be evil to the soil, whereas wood is of the soil and so is not pernicious. Why then, I asked, is it not evil to have the share and coulter of iron, when they and they only touch the soil deeply? He was at a loss to answer, but maintained simply that, the less iron the better. I asked why should the iron poison the soil. He said it was common knowledge. Ah, how common knowledge vitiates all attempts at individual Improvement of husbandry, and of the science of its betters!
I was much relieved today, May 17th, by a thunder-shower which the roots of the corn must be glad of. On riding into Ulverdon, afterwards, I noted how the earth that was cracked and white on the road was now brim with water, but not yet soft. The fields around exhaled an odour which was most pleasing. The commons were full of folk for the strips are abundant with pernicious weeds, but once pulled they will no doubt burn them, whereas if they were to cover them with dung, or soil, they will compress into a substance like butter, and cut easily for application on the fields the next year. I met Mr King in the square, and we entered the ale-house called the New Inn (although it is by no means new), and he told me there of rags that might be bought in London for 2s per hundred-weight, and chopped by widows and suchlike for circa 6d per hundred-weight, and so chopped to an inch square then scattered at the second ploughing, which cloth turning fusty underneath would procure nourishment for the seed at winter sowing. I was much taken by this, and he promised to provide me at a decent rate, whereupon I would try it upon the second earth in July. He would fetch me the cloth within the month. I have noted the mouldiness of cloth on vagrants, and on buried cast-offs within the yard or fields, but have never considered its use as a manure. We were much disturbed, in our discussion, by rowdy fellows one of whom slipped on the straw, where he had sent his spittle, and cracked his nose. The evil usage of the grain that is now ripening in my field is the Vice of the age, although in moderation essential to good health. The crop that my labourers sow and harvest is frequently too much within them, so that their breath continually smells of barley, as it were, and their minds fuddled by it. Mr King agreed, and stated that one seeds-man addicted to this tincture before us on the table witnessed the evidence of his sickness at harvest, when the field resembled a harlequin in the prints, all patches, and he vowed to Mr King never to touch a drop again, which is remarkable testimony to God’s working.