The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1877-10-06
Farming in England.

Farming in England.
AS regards farming in England, was
astonished to find how little it had pro-
crossed in the last half century. Over the
whole country men were moving grass
with old-fashioned scythes, sometimes in
a string of dozen together, hired at so
much per day and their beer" as they
were in the olden time. Once in while
an American moving machine would be
seen in use, and more commonly ebay
tedder," a machine for scattering the
hay after it had been moved in the
swaths. This scattering is all avoided
by our mowers, but saves the hand scat
tering necessary after nd-mowing; but
we found a prejudice against these ted
ders, "for," said quite intelligent farm
er, sit shakes out the seed, and we lose
that in weight when selling the hay"
The hay crop in England is rather an
important one, as sheep and cattle are
of more consequence to them than grain
There is an immense breadth of country
under grass, and as their sun is " not so
warm" as ours it takes several days and
much turning over to dry it enough to
store safely. The average weight per
acre is greater than ours, but the extra
labor they put on it brings up the cost.
The hay is mostly drawn away from the
fields in one-horse carts-the carts of the
old heavy pattern, enough for an ordi-
nary horse to draw alone, just as we
might have seen fifty years ago. Men
and women are seen everywhere at work
in the hay-felds, and it did seem to me
that there were enough of them at it
throughout the Kingdom to move the
whole harvest of our Middle States.
There are some few very large farms,
operated by very wealthy owners, where
l saw steam plows, steam threshers and
other laborsaving farm machines; but
they are not generally difused indeed,
not at all ditfused-among the general
cultivators. | asked farmer of some
$50 acres why he had not some of these
machines, and he thought his farm was
too small. He was astonished when l
told him that farmers of much less than
100 acres with US depended mainly on
these machines. Another farmer told
me he would have long ago had some of
them, but he was afraid the laborers
would burn down his stacks and barns if
he introduced them. The farmers,
find, are very much at the mercy of the
farm laborers-much more so than they
are here. They hesitated to introduce
machinery out of sympathy with the
laborer, and now they have not any sym
pathy for him. was on one farm look
ing about with the owner when three
hired laborers came in half hour after
the time agreed on for work, and the
farmer expostulated, but in quite mild
terms, l thought; but as we were at tea
he was called out by the men, who
wanted their immediate pay. They were
not going to work for man who
talked to them in that way" They were
paid, and my friend declared that he
had said that cas- long as he could get
one man in England to NOW he would
never have Yankee mower about" He
is cured now, and the mower is in his
hands. Still, the influence of good 'eX-
amples tells.
SirRobert Peelonc told his tenantry he
would give them iron plows if they would
discard their old clumsy wooden ones.
He found the iron plows year or two
after rusting in waste places. They ex-
cused themselves: "They make the weeds
grow. They went deeper than the old
plows, and brought up old seed that had
been waiting foryears chance to grow"
But / was pleased to see on a visit to
Tamworth that Sir Roberts efforts had
done good-for certainly the farming
here is above the average of English
farming - especially in the matter of
freedom from weeds. In the matter of
cleanliness freedom from weeds--Amer-
lean farming is far ahead of English.
Thousands of acres are so filled by but
tercups, which no cattle will touch, that
not tenth part of the ground can be
grazed by the cattle. The yellow char
lock, sort of mustard, is so abundant
that grain'tields are of such golden
yellow with them that the luster can be
seen for many miles away, and the per-
sen not knowing that grain was beneath
would think that the weeds were the crop
and the crop the weeds that should be
torn out. Poppies, blue bottles and corn
cookie, with numerous other things,
abound, and / am sure am not wrong
in saying that one-tenth of all the farm
land of England is given up to weeds.
The American would grow crop of po-
tatoes, or some other one that would ad-
nit of the hoe or harrow, and in this way
in a season or two get rid of the whole
stock; but here such machinery would
interfere too much with the rights of Ia
Dor. In many cases where these weeds
had been cleaned from the growing grain
they had been taken out by the hand
labor of women and ren.-PhiLadeL-
phia Press.