Country life -- England; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
another to the three half-acres, and so on; shut the gates, and the
clock struck five; breakfasted; set two men to ditch the five roods, two
men to chop sods, and spread about the land, two more to throw up manure
in the yard, and three men and six women to weed wheat; set on the
carpenter to repair cow-cribs, and set them up till winter; the wheeler,
to mend the old carts, cart-ladders, rakes, etc., preparatory to
hay-time and harvest; walked to the six-acres, found hogs in the grass,
went back and set a man to hedge and thorn; sold the butcher a fat calf
and the suckler a lean one.--The clock strikes nine; walked into the
barley-field; barleys fine--picked off a few tiles and stones, and cut a
few thistles; the peas fine but foul; the charlock must be topped; the
tares doubtful, the fly seems to have taken them; prayed for rain, but
could not see a cloud; came round to the wheat-field, wheats rather
thin, but the finest colour in the world; sent four women on to the
shortest wheats; ordered one man to weed along the ridge of the long
wheats, and two women to keep rank and file with him in the furrows;
thistles many, blue-bottles no end; traversed all the wheat-field, came
to the fallow-field; the ditchers have run crooked, set them straight;
the flag sods cut too much, the rush sods too little, strength wasted,
shew the men how to three-corner them; laid out more work for the
ditchers, went to the ploughs, set the foot a little higher, cut a
wedge, set the coulter deeper, must go and get a new mould-board against
to-morrow; went to the other plough, gathered up some wood and tied over
the traces, mended a horse-tree, tied a thong to the plough-hammer, went
to see which lands wanted ploughing first, sat down under a bush,
wondered how any man could be so silly as to call me _reverend_; read
two verses in the Bible of the loving-kindness of the Lord in the midst
of his temple, hummed a tune of thankfulness, rose up, whistled, the
dogs wagged their tails, and away we went, dined, drunk some milk and
fell asleep, woke by the carpenter for some slats which the sawyers must
cut, etc. etc.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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