Grain and Chaff from an English Manor Part 17

A farmer, after a very hot summer and dry harvest, had a good piece of barley which he offered by sample in Lincoln market. He could not make his price, the buyers complaining that it was too hard and flinty. He went home in disgust, but, after much pondering, thought he could see his way to meet the difficulty. He had the sacks of barley "shut" on his barn floor, in a heap, and several buckets of water poured over it. The heap was turned daily for a time, until the grain had absorbed all the water, and there was no sign of external moisture. The appearance of the barley was completely changed: the hard flinty look had vanished, and the grain presented a new plumpness and mellowness.

He took a fresh sample to Lincoln next market day, and made 2s. or 3s.

a quarter more than he had asked for it in its original condition.

The following lines, which have never been published except in a local newspaper, though written many years ago, apply quite well in these days of the hoped-for revival of agriculture. I am not at liberty to disclose the writer's ident.i.ty beyond his initials, E.W.

FARMER NEWSTYLE AND FARMER OLDSTYLE

"Good day," said Farmer Oldstyle, taking Newstyle by the arm; "I be c.u.m to look aboit me, wilt 'ee show me o'er thy farm?"

Young Newstyle took his wideawake, and lighted a cigar, And said, "Won't I astonish you, old-fashioned as you are!

"No doubt you have an aneroid? ere starting you shall see How truly mine prognosticates what weather there will be."

"I ain't got no such gimcracks; but I knows there'll be a flush When I sees th'oud ram tak shelter wi' his tail agen a bush."

"Allow me first to show you the a.n.a.lysis I keep, And the compounds to explain of this experimental heap, Where hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen abound, To hasten germination and to fertilize the ground."

"A putty sight o' learning you have piled up of a ruck; The only name it went by in my feyther's time was muck.

I knows not how the tool you call a nallysis may work, I turns it when it's rotten pretty handy wi' a fork."

"A famous pen of Cotswolds, pa.s.s your hand along the back, Fleeces fit for stuffing the Lord Chancellor's woolsack!

For premiums e'en 'Inquisitor' would own these wethers _are_ fit, If you want to purchase good uns you must go to Mr. Garsit.[1]

"Two bulls first rate, of different breeds, the judges all protest Both are so super-excellent, they know not which is best.

Fair[1] could he see this Ayrshire, would with jealousy be riled; That hairy one's a Welshman, and was bred by Mr. Wild."[1]

"Well, well, that little hairy bull, he shanna be so bad: But what be yonder beast I hear, a-bellowing like mad, A-snorting fire and smoke out? be it some big Roosian gun!

Or be it twenty bullocks squez together into one?"

"My steam factotum, that, Sir, doing all I have to do, My ploughman and my reaper, and my jolly thrasher, too!

Steam's yet but in its infancy, no mortal man alive Can tell to what perfection modern farming will arrive."

"Steam as yet is but an infant"--he had scarcely said the word, When through the tottering farmstead was a loud explosion heard; The engine dealing death around, destruction and dismay; Though steam be but an infant this indeed was no child's play.

The women screamed like blazes, as the blazing hayrick burned, The sucking pigs were in a crack, all into crackling turned; Grilled chickens clog the hencoop, roasted ducklings choke the gutter, And turkeys round the poultry yard on devilled pinions flutter.

Two feet deep in b.u.t.termilk the stoker's two feet lie, The cook before she bakes it finds a finger in the pie; The labourers for their lost legs are looking round the farm, They couldn't lend a hand because they had not got an arm.

Oldstyle all soot, from head to foot, looked like a big black sheep, Newstyle was thrown upon his own experimental heap; "That weather-gla.s.s," said Oldstyle, "canna be in proper fettle, Or it might as well a tow'd us there was thunder in the kettle."

"Steam is so expansive." "Aye," said Oldstyle, "so I see.

So expensive, as you call it, that it winna do for me; According to my notion, that's a beast that canna pay, Who champs up for his morning feed a hundred ton of hay."

Then to himself, said Oldstyle, as he homewards quickly went, "I'll tak' no farm where doctors' bills be heavier than the rent; I've never in hot water been, steam shanna speed my plough, I'd liefer thrash my corn out by the sweat of my own brow.

"I neither want to scald my pigs, nor toast my cheese, not I, Afore the butcher sticks 'em or the factor comes to buy; They shanna catch me here again to risk my limbs and loife; I've nought at whoam to blow me up except it be my woif."

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOPS--INSECT ATTACKS--HOP FAIRS.

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most fits."

--_All's Well that Ends Well_.

In a very rare black-letter book on hop culture, _A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden_, published in the year 1578 and therefore over 340 years old, the author, Reynolde Scot, has the following quaint remarks on one of the disorders to which the hop plant is liable:

"The hoppe that liketh not his entertainment, namely his seat, his ground, his keeper, or the manner of his setting, comith up thick and rough in leaves, very like unto a nettle; and will be much bitten with a little black flye, who, also, will not do harme unto good hoppes, who if she leave the leaf as full of holes as a nettle, yet she seldome proceedeth to the utter destruction of the Hoppe; where the garden standeth bleake, the heat of summer will reform this matter."

Thomas Tusser, who lived 1515 to 1580, in his _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_, included many seasonable verses on Hop-growing, among which the following are worth quoting:

MAY.

Get into thy hop-yard for now it is time To teach Robin Hop on his pole how to climb, To follow the sun, as his property is, And weed him and trim him if aught go amiss.

JUNE.

Whom fancy perswadeth among other crops, To have for his spending sufficient of hops: Must willingly follow of choices to chuse Such lessons approved, as skilfull do use.

Ground gravelly, sandy, and mixed with clay, Is naughty for hops, any manner of way; Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone, For dryness and barrenness let it alone.

Chuse soil for the hop of the rottenest mould, Well dunged and wrought as a garden plot should: Not far from the water (but not overflown), This lesson well noted is meet to be known.

The sun in the south, or else southly and west, Is joy to the hop, as welcomed ghest: But wind in the north, or else northerly east, To hop is as ill, as a fray in a feast.

Meet plot for a hop-yard, once found as is told, Make thereof account, as of jewell of gold: Now dig it and leave it the sun for to burn, And afterward fence it to serve for that turn.

The hop for his profit, I thus do exalt, It strengtheneth drink and it favoureth malt, And being well brewed, long kept it will last, And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast.

In Worcestershire and Herefordshire hop-gardens are always called hop-yards, which seems to be only a local and more ancient form of the same word, and from the same root. The termination occurs also in "orchard"--from the Anglo-Saxon _ortgeard_ (a wort-yard) --"olive-yard," and "vineyard."

The quotation from the _Perfitie Platforme of a Hoppe Garden_ refers to "a little black flye," now called "the flea" (Worcestershire plural "flen"), really a beetle like the "turnip fly," and it is the first pest that attacks the hop every year.

"First the flea, then the fly, Then the lice, and then they die,"

is a couplet repeated in all the hop districts to-day, but the damage done by the flea is not to be compared to that caused by the next pest, the fly. The latter is one of the numerous species of aphis which begins its attack in the winged state, and after producing wingless green lice in abundance--which further increase by the process known as "gemmation"--reappears with wings in the final generation of the lice, and hibernates in readiness for its visitation in the spring next year.

So long as the hop plant maintains its health the aphis is comparatively harmless, for the plant is then able to elaborate to the full the bitter principle which is its natural protection. On a really hot day in July it is sometimes possible to detect the distinctive scent of the hop quite plainly in walking through the plantation, long before any hops appear, and when this is noticeable very little of the aphis blight can be found. There is however nearly always a small sprinkling lying in wait, and a few days of unsuitable weather will reduce the vitality of the plant so that the blight immediately begins to increase.

There is little doubt that all the distinctive principles of plants or trees have been evolved, and are in perfect health elaborated, as a protection from their most destructive insect or fungoid enemies; just as physical protective equipment, such as thorns, p.r.i.c.kles, and stinging apparatus, is produced by other plants or trees as safeguards against more powerful foes. If it were not so, plants that are even now seriously damaged and kept in check by such pests would long ago have become extinct.

Pursuing this theory it seems likely that the solanin of the potato is its natural protection against the disease caused by the fungus _Phytophthora infestans_. The idea is suggested by the invariably increasing liability to the potato disease experienced as new sorts become old. The new kinds of potatoes are produced from the seed--not the tubers--of the old varieties, and the seed, when fully vitalized and capable of germination, may be a.s.sumed to contain the maximum potentiality for transmission of the active principle to the tubers immediately descended from it. During the early years of their existence these revitalized tubers contain so much solanin that they are not only injurious, but more or less poisonous, to man, and it is only after they have been cultivated, and have produced further generations of tubers _from_ tubers, that they become eatable, showing that in the tuber condition the plant gradually loses its efficient protection.

In the case of the hop the most effective remedy is a solution of qua.s.sia and soft soap. The caustic potash in the soap neutralizes the oily integument of the lice and dries them up, but the qua.s.sia supplies a bitter principle not unlike that of the hop, though without its grateful aroma, which acts as a protection in the absence of the bitter of the hop itself. So closely does the hop bitter resemble that of qua.s.sia, that in seasons of hop failure it is said to be employed as a subst.i.tute in brewing, and at one time its use for that purpose was prohibited by law.

As a further proof that the bitter principle of the hop is distasteful to the aphis, it is noticeable that when the fly first arrives it always attacks the topmost shoots of the bine where the leaves have not developed, and where the active principle is likely to be weakest.