My grandmother writes to my father, 6 January 1846, “I was at Moreton yesterday morning, and visited the poor and sick in order to distribute your alms; and many poor objects did I find who thankfully received the trifle I gave them. A shilling to them appeared so large a sum that they scarcely knew how to express their gratitude.” Shillings and pence were of more value then. My grandfather writes on 12 June 1847, “Animal food is from 7 to 8_d._ the pound, which is thought high here,” and on 10 December 1848, “The butcher is now selling me saddles and haunches for 6½_d._ the pound.” And it was the same with other things. Within the last twenty years I have seen an account set out between a blacksmith and a farmer without any reference at all to money. On one side there were horseshoes, ploughshares, etc., and on the other side, pork, butter, geese, etc. And both parties reckoned the items up, and saw that the totals balanced. They seemed to have some weights and measures in their mind that are not found in books, say, 4 horseshoes make 1 duck. Before the railway brought outsiders in, there was hardly anybody in the place who did not own land or rent it or work on it, and nobody at all who did not talk of it. And naturally my grandfather had a good deal to say about it in the letters that he wrote from here. He writes on 9 March 1845, “This weather for March is I should say unprecedented. (I am not like the old woman who had known hundreds of Lammas Fairs, but I have known many.) Until within the last twenty years our winters were much colder than since, but I never knew such hard freezing as this: it has been intense. I have sheep in turnips, and these are so frozen that they can only just eat enough to keep them alive.... I should say the farmers must now see the necessity of cultivating the turnip. I have heard many say it was not worth the expense, and now they are running and riding in all directions for keep for cattle, and in all probability will lose more than they will get by cattle for three years to come.” In the next few years there was a change. He writes on 24 January 1850, “On the old system wheat was generally tilled on fallow land and summer worked and manured, so that they had two years rent and an immense deal of labour for one crop. Now the plan is to till turnips in June or July, fold them down with cattle, the soil of which leaves ample for a good crop of wheat: then the wheat goes in for about 5_s._ per acre for labour, and without further manuring.” Again on 24 December 1848, “Wheat tilling now is so different from what it used to be, from so many turnips being tilled. They now till wheat up to March, having the different sorts of seed to suit--not like it was some thirty years ago when all must go into the ground at a particular time, merely two or three sorts. Now there is no end of the sorts, so that neither millers nor farmers can tell one from other in grain, and not half of them in stalk.”