Cottage Economy Part 5

166. 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 any thing is a greater misfortune than _shiftlessness_. It is an evil little short of the loss of eyes or of limbs.

GEESE.

167. 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 turkies, to which they give nine or ten goose-eggs. If the goose herself sit, 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 fine geese all over Long Island (in America) where there is scarcely such a thing as a pond or a run of water?

168. 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 resorted to by the French for fatting geese, _nailing_ them down by their webs, and other acts of cruelty, are, I hope, such as Englishmen 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 G.o.d 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 have had a good deal of experience with regard to geese. It is a very great error to suppose that what is called a Michaelmas 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 any thing in England. For three years, including the present year, I have had the finest geese that I ever saw, or ever heard of. I have 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 loaved or not loaved; though, observe, the white cabbage as well as the white lettuce, that is to say, the loaved cabbage and lettuce, are a great deal better than those that are not loaved. This is the food of my geese. They thrive exceedingly upon this food. After we have had the flock about ten days, we begin to kill, and we proceed once or twice a week till 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 a 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 shilling's 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 that 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 any body near London that has not room for the purposes here mentioned. The reader will be apt to exclaim, as my friends very often do, "Cobbett's 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 off 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.

DUCKS.

169. No water, to _swim_ in, is necessary to the old, and 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 quant.i.ty. Gra.s.s, corn, white cabbages, and lettuces, and especially buck-wheat, cut, when half ripe, and flung down in the haulm. 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 coa.r.s.e sort of _crab_, called a horse-foot fish, prodigious quant.i.ties of which are cast on the sh.o.r.es. The young ducks grow very fast upon this, and very fat; but wo 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!

170. 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 for manure. A dead rat three parts rotten is a feast to them. For these reasons I should never eat any ducks, unless there were 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, cabbages, 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 any-thing of.

TURKEYS.

171. 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 pa.s.sed. 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 be of 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.

172. 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.

173. 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 it 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?

174. The _hen_ should be fed _exceedingly well_, too, while she is _sitting_ and _after_ she has 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 twenty-four hours; she has no rest; is constantly doing something or other to provide food or safety for her young ones.

175. 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 it 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, ought to be skinned alive himself.

FOWLS.

176. These are kept for two objects; their _flesh_ and their _eggs_. As to _rearing them_, every thing 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_. Pullets, that is, birds hatched in the foregoing 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 day-time, 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 winter-time. If the feathers get wet, in our climate, in winter, or in short days, they do not get dry for a long time; and this it is that spoils and kills many of our fowls.

177. 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, _buck-wheat_, (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 cribbled; 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 sopped in wine. White cabbages chopped up are very good in winter for all sorts of poultry.

178. This is taking a great deal of pains; but the produce is also great and very valuable in winter; for, as to _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 fowl-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 any-thing 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 any-thing 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 fowl-house, in order to have fine fowls and plenty of eggs.

179. The _ailments_ of fowls 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, fowls 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, and no _teeth_ can face them as food.

180. It is, perhaps, seldom that fowls 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 fowls, 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 persons' houses.

Fowls 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 fowls are very nasty things: but "_barn-door_" fowls, as they are called, are sometimes a great deal more nasty. _Barn_-door would, indeed, do exceedingly well; but it unfortunately happens that the _stable_ is generally pretty near to the barn. And now let any gentleman who talks about sweet barn-door fowls, 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 fowl. In short, roast the fowl, 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 const.i.tutions. It must be so. Solomon says that all flesh is gra.s.s; and those who know any-thing about beef, know the difference between the effect of the gra.s.s in Herefordshire and Lincolnshire, and the effect of turnips and oil cake. In America they always take the fowls from the farm-yard, and shut them up a fortnight or three weeks before they be killed. One thing, however, about fowls ought always to be borne in mind.

They are never good for any-thing when they have attained their full growth, unless they be _capons_ or _poullards_. If the poulets be old enough to have little eggs in them, they are not worth one farthing; and as to the c.o.c.ks 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.

PIGEONS.

181. A few of these may be kept about any cottage, for they are kept even in towns by labourers and artizans. 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 tares, peas, or small beans; and buck-wheat 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.

182. 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 cow shed; 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.

183. 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; 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 bringing 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 intrusted 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 trust-worthy 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_.

RABBITS.

184. In this case, too, the chief use, perhaps, is to give children those habits of which I have been just speaking. Nevertheless, rabbits are really profitable. Three does and a buck will give you a rabbit to eat for _every three days in the year_, which is a much larger quant.i.ty 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.

185. Every-body knows how to knock up a rabbit hutch. The does should not be allowed to have more than _seven litters_ in a year. Six young ones to a doe 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 any-thing with safety. But if you give them too much _green_ at first when they are weaned, they _rot_ as sheep do. A _variety_ of food is a great thing; and, surely, the fields and gardens and hedges furnish this variety! All sorts of gra.s.ses, strawberry-leaves, ivy, dandelions, the _hog-weed_ or _wild parsnip_, in root, stem, and leaves. I have fed working horses, six or eight in number, upon this plant for weeks together. It is a tall bold plant that grows in prodigious quant.i.ties 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 cart-loads of this pig-meat! This arises from want of the early habit of attention to such matters. I, who used to get hog-weed for pigs and for rabbits when a little chap, have never forgotten that the wild parsnip is good food for pigs and rabbits.

186. 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.

187. Of all animals rabbits are those that _boys_ are most fond of. They are extremely pretty, nimble in their movements, engaging in their att.i.tudes, 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.

188. 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 ninety-nine 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.

GOATS AND EWES.

189. In some places where a cow cannot be kept, a goat may. A correspondent points out to me, that a Dorset ewe 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 _belonged to the regiment_, and that went about with it on shipboard and every-where 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 gra.s.s; and in winter they lived on cabbage-leaves, turnip-peelings, potatoe-peelings, and other things flung out of the soldiers' rooms and huts. One of these goats belonged to me, and, on an 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 was seldom dry more than three weeks in the year.

190. 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 every thing. 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; furze-bushes, heath-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 bra.s.s.

191. 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 they then 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.

192. I have often wondered how it happened that none of our labourers kept goats; and I really should be glad to see the thing tried. They are 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.

CANDLES AND RUSHES.

193. We are not permitted to make candles ourselves, and if we were, they ought seldom 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 labourers'

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 potatoe-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!

194. 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 hop-shoots 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 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.

195. The rushes 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.

196. 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 rush is shifted forward from time to time, as it burns down to the thing that holds it.