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A Country Year - A Farming Life.

January 1st to January 18th

From the Observations of the Fauna of Norfolk by the Rev. Richard Lubbock (1845) - I should speak of domesticated animals. With regard to Black Cattle, we have not in this county any peculiar breed of the district. Suffolk has its own peculiar Cow, which is of high repute with the dairy-man in the neighbourhood of the metropolis.

The Norfolk Horse used to be a low and rather thickset animal with great trotting powers; but of late years blood has been the order of the day here as elsewhere. It has been usual to decry Norfolk horses.

The Norfolk Sheep is indeed sui generis: this is the most remarkable of our domesticated animals, possessing nearly the agility and erratic propensities of the deer. These qualities have led to its disappearance, very few remain, and those only in open country. They are penned with difficulty. Deer hurdles will hardly confine them; and if they get out they must be sought in the next county.

The Red-Poll is a well-known bred of Suffolk meat and dairy cattle. It was bred early in the eighteen hundreds from a cross between a naturally hornless Suffolk Dun bull, a diary breed, and a beef bred horned Norfolk Red cow. Both the parent breeds have long been extinct, but descendants of their popular offspring live on, and after a lull are now undergoing something of a revival.

The Suffolk Sheep came about from a cross between the athletic Norfolk Horn ewes and a Southdown ram. It was recognised as a separate breed in 1810.

The sorrel or chestnut, more often recorded as chesnut, Suffolk Punch or Suffolk Sorrel was bred and developed in Norfolk and Suffolk as a heavy duty agricultural horse. These animals gradually replaced the former teams of oxen that had helped till the land for many a long year. Having been replaced themselves by mechanisation during the twentieth century, and almost certainly after the second world war, the Suffolk Punch is a rare breed.

The Norfolk Black is considered the oldest breed of domesticated turkey in Britain. It was developed in Norfolk and Suffolk. These are the infamous birds, that in late summer or early autumn, with the help of little leather boots to protect their feet, that were slowly walked in large flocks to Smithfield Common in London, by experienced drovers, arriving in December and in good time for the winter feasts of those who could afford such luxuries. Geese refused the boots, so their feet were tarred and sanded for a similar journey.

From The Book of the Seasons by William Howitt (1836) January - The most important business of the farmer this month, is to feed and comfort his dependant animals: his cattle in their stalls and straw-yards; his sheep in warm sheltered enclosures; giving them hay, straw, turnips, etc. Bee-hives require to be examined, and, if, necessary food supplied. In frosts, fish-ponds must have holes broken in the ice, to allow the fish necessary air. And game in the woods demand frequently attention. Corn and hempseed are given to them in seasons of great severity.

Thrashing is now a regular employment in some parts of the country, going on even by candle-light. Farm implements are repaired; drains, ditches, etc. kept open; manure is led out; and in particular situations, in favourable weather, a little ploughing is done, and common spring-wheat sown. Fruit-trees are pruned and dug round, and orchards planted. Timber is felled. Timber-trees are planted, and tree seeds sown.

A Country Year - A Farming Life.

January 1st to January 18th

From A Farmer's Year by Henry Rider Haggard, his commonplace book for 1898. - In all I am now farming 365 acres of land or thereabouts, of which 261 are situated in this parish Ditchingham, and 104 in the parish of Bedingham, 5 miles away. I hire about 110 acres.

January 1. - As the old year died so the new year was born, in peace and beauty, a mild southerly wind barely stirring the black trees. There is only one plough going on the farm to-day, turning up the five acres of glebe land.

The ploughman, Peachey, tells me that on this land, where the friction against stones is so constant, the share of the plough (not the breast) only lasts about a week. In heavy land it will last from three weeks to a month. The breast of the plough, or that part which turns the furrow, ought to wear from one to two years.

To-day two carts are carrying refuse from the undrained town of Bungay to be scattered on that part of the nine acres of land which is coming for root, or on so much of it as we can spare time to cover. We have been at the task for nearly a week, sometimes with two and sometimes with three carts and, I think, have spread about fifty loads upon the root land. This compost, disagreeable as it is in many ways and mixed with troublesome stuff, such as old tins and broken glass, is the best manure which I have ever used; but I think that to get its full value it should be spread upon the land and ploughed in at once.

January 2. - To-day being Sunday I have confined my farming operations to looking over the young stock in the yard. One of the calves there is the first-born of a heifer, and therefore doomed to die. Hood, my bailiff, a man of strong opinions, is convinced that it is useless to keep first calves of heifers, which, as he alleges, always grow up weak and puny. In vain have I pointed out that this is not the case with the offspring of other mammals, beginning with man, but I should much like to learn whether it is based upon any ascertained fact. Indeed, I believe that this story about heifers' calves is more of a superstition than a reality.

January 6. - There has been little to chronicle this week. Yesterday, Wednesday, it rained without ceasing at night from a singularly clear sky, but to-day is very fine and mild. I walked down to the farm called Baker's, which I took over last November, and found two ploughs going in the eight-acre cottage field, which is being made ready for spring beans and pease. Thence I went down the lane to the brook pasture to see the man who was engaged in clearing out the dykes; a task, by the way, that cannot often be undertaken at this time of year.

Of all the forms of manual labour, I think that this dyke-drawing must be about the hardest, since the stain upon the muscles of the arms and back, continuously endured for a long day's work of lifting heavy forkfuls of mud and weeds, cannot be great. Indeed, I suspect that any man, however strong, who was not accustomed to this kind of toil, would be utterly exhausted long before his eight or ten hours were finished.

In the lane leading to this meadow I found the wildflower called green-arrow in bloom in the hedgerow; also, nestling under the shelter of a bank and white-thorn roots, the bright green leaves of the vigorous black parsley (Smyrnium Olusatrum). For years I have noticed that such signs of the coming spring show first in this lane, and very welcome is the sight of the shining leaf of that weed after the long and dreary months of winter.

A Country Year - A Farming Life.

January 1st to January 18th

The reason that vegetation appears here so soon is that at this spot the fall of the land is steep, and rain of hundreds, or possibly thousands, of years, has by degrees lowered the roadway - once, no doubt, a bridle tract - till at places it lies eight or nine feet below the surface level of the fields that border it.

Therefore the banks are very sheltered, and those herbs and flower roots that nestle in them can thrust out their new growths a month before their companions unprotected by bank dare even wake up from the winter sleep. This year, however, vegetation is at least three weeks before its time; thus, on my way home I noticed bees working busily at the hives in the farm orchard, and by the east windows of this house I found the Pyrus Japonica in bud and bloom. This, I think, is something of a record for Norfolk on the 6th of January.

January 8. - My first two lambs were born to-day. When I began to keep sheep last year, before which we had not sufficient grass lands to run them on and leave enough for a herd of cows, I started with about forty black-faced ewes in lamb to a Southdown ram. These lambs did exceedingly well; I remember that I sold the first of them at Easter for about thirty shillings a head, and all the rest were fatted and disposed of during the summer at reasonable prices. This year I took a fancy to try some Southdowns, and bought about a score of well-bred ewes of that breed together with two rams. The result of the experiment remains to be seen, but I incline to the opinion that in this district it is best to keep Suffolk ewes, crossing them perhaps with Southdowns rams to get quality in the mutton. Pure-bred Southdowns no doubt furnish the best meat, but they are too small.

With so small a flock on a mixed farm like mine, where there are many things to attend to, I have no shepherd, nor can I boast any proper lambing folds. In place of them a barn on the All Hallows Farm is divided off into little pens with hurdles, where the ewes are placed in comfort as they come on to lamb. The steward, Hood, attends to them at that critical time, certainly hitherto his ministrations have met with considerable success.

As the weather keeps so open the cows are let out for a few hours every day to take exercise in one or other of the meadows and pick up what food they can.

Here I may as well explain that my cows of which I keep about twenty at Home Farm in Ditchingham are all registered pedigree animals of the Norfolk red-poll breed, that is yet is not so well known through Great Britain as it deserves to be. Looked at with a critical eye it cannot be doubted that red-polls have many advantages, though, of course, there may be tribes which have even more. To begin with, their looks are in their favour. What can be more beautiful that the appearance of a herd of these bronze-red, shining-coated cattle as they wander over the pasture in the summer, or stand chewing their cud in the cool shadow of the trees, gazing at the intruder with wide-opened, sleepy eyes? Indeed, so fine are their limbs, and especially in the case of the young things, so deer-like their heads, that they might be taken for wild creatures which know not man, although, as a matter of fact, they are singularly docile in character. Of course, as their name implies, they are hornless, a great point where it is desired to keep a number of cattle in small or medium yards. Another advantage is their great hardiness - with ordinary care it is not common to lose a red-poll from sickness, or even calving.

The points urged against red-polls are: that they lack size, and that their milk, although very rich, is scant in quantity.

A Country Year - A Farming Life.

January 1st to January 18th

The sheep are now penned upon part of the fourteen-acre on Baker's Farm, which was layer last year. This land is foul and poor, and as we have no manure to put on it, we are folding it with the ewes before ploughing it for oats in order to freshen it up as much as possible under the circumstances. Fortunately I have still a fair supply of white turnips with which to feed them. These are said to be a better food for ewes in lambing time than beet, which as supposed to make them miscarry; and indeed beet at this time of year are still very lush. These white turnips were a catch crop grown on a portion of the twelve-acre, commonly known as the Thwaite field.

Last year, or rather the year before, the top part of this Thwaite field was sown with winter wheat, but for some unexplained reason, perhaps because of the bitter spring winds, which strike this exposed situation with great force, the crop was the worst that I ever grew. I drilled vetches in the spring into the greater part of it, in the hope that it would give me a breadth of cheap feed after such corn as there was had been cut, but these vetches failed also, owing to the drought. Indeed, that part of the field produced more poppies than anything else - red weed we call it, which, although picturesque in appearance, is not satisfactory to the farmer.

January 14. - The weather to-day is again dull, mild, and quite windless. There are three ploughs going on the farm, one of them at work in the nine-acre on All Hallows Farm. The field was under beet and swede last year, the beet being sown in the lower half of it, where the soil is deeper. There was a very full plant of swedes, which would have produced a fine crop had it not been for the drought that stunted them. The beet, standing in the cooler soil, did well; indeed beet do not mind dry weather in moderation. The whole field is now coming into barley, and I hope will only need one ploughing. Peachey, the ploughman, who is at work on it, a person of experience, tells me that he prefers 'the first earth' for barley, and I believe this preference is general, though if land has been ploughed early in the autumn, a second ploughing is very beneficial.

January 12. - The weather for the last three days has been damp, mild, and misty. On the farm we have been ploughing and hedge-trimming. I was talking yesterday to Buck, my milkman, at All Hallows Farm - where I keep nearly all my cows - who, as is the custom with such men when not milking or attending to the cattle, is employed on odd jobs about the land. He was trimming a fence of the back lawn, which ever since I had the farm in hand has been kept neatly clipped with shears, and took the opportunity to remark that in another twenty years there would not be a hedge left alive in the country.

I asked him why; to which he answered that farmers have entirely given up the old custom that was in force when he was a boy, of cutting the thorns off right by the roots and 'ditching' the crown of the fence by coating with mud out of the holl. He informed me that in the old days it was usual for a provision to be inserted in leases enforcing this custom.

But nowadays we have no leases, and, if we had, the face of the farmer who was asked to bind himself to keep his fences in a particular way, or indeed to do anything except to follow his own sweet will, would probably be a study. As regards hedges, I am inclined to think that Buck is too pessimistic in alleging that they will all die. I have, however, myself observed that hawthorns have a natural tendency to get thin at the bottom, however much they are trimmed at the top.

A Country Year - A Farming Life.

January 1st to January 18th

This afternoon I went to Bedingfield and inspected the stock. There are four red-poll steers tied up fatting in the shed, and three others in the yard, all looking very well. Also there is a two-year-old bullock which promises to make such a beauty that I am keeping him over with the view of showing him next Christmas, a thing I have never done before. I might have disposed of him at a good price to an agent of a much larger breeder who is looking out for promising beasts to be shown by his employer, but I have declined the offer.

Probably I shall regret this ere the year out, as eight out of ten of these animals, develop some imperfection or other which proves fatal to their chances of prize-taking. In fact the showing of cattle is an unprofitable business to any except the largest breeders, who make it part of their routine in order to advertise their herds and thus obtain large prices for their young bulls and heifers. The bulls and dams be costly animals, but the expense of preparing their progeny for the ring is considerable.

Besides these steers there are ten young things running in the big meadow, whence they come up at night and are fed with a mixture of hay, chaff, and swedes. Also there are farm-horses (we are managing with two at Bedingham now, one of them in foal), colts and ponies, so it will be seen that for the size of the place there is a good proportion of stock.

January 15. - The mild, windless weather continues, bringing with it a great deal of influenza and other sickness. It is, however, a splendid open time for the farmer; thus, to-day, at a season of the year when very often everything is frost-bound, I have three ploughs going on the farm, while carts are carrying dead leaves from the shrubbery to the yards, and mud 'fyed' from the pond is being dumped into heaps to be spread on the back lawn. To-day also we have begun felling the undergrowth on the Bath Hills, most of which has not been cut for the last twelve or fourteen years; indeed, in considerable woods it is divided into seven portions for this purpose, one portion being cut each year, when the stouter stuff is split for hurdles, and the rest, of less substance, twisted into another form of hurdle which is known as a 'lift,' the brushwood being tied for faggots.

It will be observed that of these various agricultural operations which are now in progress, only one, the felling, can be carried on in frost, while even that must cease during snow and heavy rain. Well-to-do people often express a wish for a 'good old-fashioned winter,' but they do not understand what this means to the poor, with whom fuel is scanty, and who have to earn their daily bread by labouring on the land. The poor, who do not skate or make snowballs, pray for an open winter; although, indeed, frost in moderation is a good thing for the land, as it pulverises the earth and destroys noxious insects by the thousand.

Today I saw the first snowdrops blooming in the garden.

In walking over the eight-acre meadow on Baker's to look at the dykes which the man has now finished drawing, I heard partridges calling to each other on the neighbouring layer for the first time this year. I have not, however, seen any pairs as yet. This meadow is full of docks, the result of long neglect, and it will cost much trouble and expense to rid of them.

Ever since I began to observe the ways of plants I have been trying to discover what useful part a dock can perform in the economy of Nature, but hitherto without the slightest result.

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