Cottage Economy Part 4

137. Before I dismiss this article, let me offer an observation or two to those persons who live in the vicinity of towns, or in towns, and who, though they have _large gardens_, have "_no land to keep a cow_," a circ.u.mstance which they "_exceedingly regret_." I have, I dare say, witnessed this case at least a thousand times. Now, how much garden ground does it require to supply even a large family with _garden vegetables_?

The market gardeners round the metropolis of this wen-headed country; round this Wen of all wens;[8] round this prodigious and monstrous collection of human beings; these market gardeners have about _three hundred thousand families to supply with vegetables_, and these they supply well too, and with summer fruits into the bargain. Now, if it demanded _ten rods to a family_, the whole would demand, all but a fraction, _nineteen thousand acres of garden ground_. We have only to cast our eyes over what there is to know that there is not a _fourth_ of that quant.i.ty. A _square mile_ contains, leaving out parts of a hundred, 700 acres of land; and 19,000 acres occupy more than _twenty-two square miles_. Are there twenty-two square miles covered with the Wen's market gardens? The very question is absurd. The whole of the market gardens from Brompton to Hammersmith, extending to Battersea Rise on the one side, and to the Bayswater road on the other side, and leaving out loads, lanes, nurseries; pastures, corn-fields, and pleasure-grounds, do not, in my opinion, cover _one square mile_. To the north and south of the Wen there is very little in the way of market garden; and if, on both sides of the Thames, to the eastward of the Wen, there be _three square miles_ actually covered with market gardens, that is the full extent. How, then, could the Wen be supplied, if it required _ten rods_ to each family? To be sure, potatoes, carrots, and turnips, and especially the first of these, are brought, for the use of the Wen, from a great distance, in many cases.

But, so they are for the use of the persons I am speaking of; for a gentleman thinks no more of raising a large quant.i.ty of these things in his _garden_, than he thinks of _raising wheat there_. How is it, then, that it requires half an acre, or eighty rods, in a _private_ garden to supply a family, while these market gardeners supply all these families (and so amply too) from ten, or more likely, five rods of ground to a family? I have shown, in the last Number, that nearly fifteen tons of vegetables can be raised in a year upon forty rods of ground; that is to say, _ten loads for a wagon and four good horses_. And is not a fourth, or even an eighth, part of this weight, sufficient to go down the throats of a family in a year? Nay, allow that only _a ton_ goes to a family in a year, it is more than _six pound weight a day_; and what sort of a family must that be that really _swallows_ six pounds weight a day? and this a market gardener will raise for them upon less than _three rods_ of ground; for he will raise, in the course of the year, even more than fifteen tons upon forty rods of ground. What is it, then, that they _do_ with the eighty rods of ground in a private garden? Why, in the first place, they have _one crop_ where they ought to have _three_. Then they do not half _till_ the ground. Then they grow things that are _not wanted_. Plant cabbages and other things, let them stand till they be good for nothing, and then wheel them to the rubbish heap. Raise as many radishes, lettuces, and as much endive, and as many kidney-beans, as would serve for ten families; and finally throw nine-tenths of them away. I once saw not less than three rods of ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all bearing _seed_. Seed enough for half a county. They cut a cabbage _here_ and a cabbage _there_, and so let the whole of the piece of ground remain undug, till the _last_ cabbage be cut. But, after all, the produce, even in this way, is so great, that it never could be gotten rid of, if the main part were not _thrown away_. The rubbish heap always receives four-fifths even of the _eatable_ part of the produce.

138. It is not thus that the market gardeners proceed. Their rubbish heap consists of little besides mere cabbage stumps. No sooner is one crop _on_ the ground than they settle in their minds what is to follow it. They _clear as they go_ in taking off a crop, and, as they clear they dig and plant. The ground is never without seed in it or plants on it. And thus, in the course of the year, they raise a prodigious bulk of vegetables from eighty rods of ground. Such vigilance and industry are not to be expected in a _servant_; for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert himself for another as much as he will for himself. But if I was situated as one of the persons is that I have spoken of in Paragraph 137; that is to say, if I had a garden of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I would out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vegetables for my family, and would make it yield enough for a _cow_ besides. I should go a short way to work with my gardener. I should put _Cottage Economy_ into his hands, and tell him, that if he could furnish me with vegetables, and my cow with food, he was my man; and that if he could not, I must get one that could and would. I am not for making a man toil like a slave; but what would become of the world, if a well-fed healthy man could exhaust himself in tilling and cropping and clearing half an acre of ground? I have known many men _dig_ thirty rods of garden ground in a day; I have, before I was fourteen, digged twenty rods in a day, for more than ten days successively; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a man at Portsea, who digged forty rods in one single day, between daylight and dark. So that it is no slavish toil that I am here recommending.

KEEPING PIGS.

139. Next after the _Cow_ comes the _Pig_; and, in many cases, where a cow cannot be kept, a pig or pigs may be kept. But these are animals not to be ventured on without due consideration as to the means of _feeding_ them; for a starved pig is a great deal worse than none at all. You cannot make bacon as you can milk, merely out of the garden. There must be _something more_. A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. The sight of them upon the rack tends more to keep a man from poaching and stealing than whole volumes of penal statutes, though a.s.sisted by the terrors of the hulks and the gibbet. They are great softeners of the temper, and promoters of domestic harmony. They are a great blessing; but they are not to be had from _herbage_ or _roots_ of any kind; and, therefore, before a _pig_ be attempted, the means ought to be considered.

140. _Breeding sows_ are great favourites with Cottagers in general; but I have seldom known them to answer their purpose. Where there is an outlet, the sow will, indeed, keep herself by grazing in summer, with a little _wash_ to help her out: and when her pigs come, they are many in number; but they are a heavy expense. The sow must live as well as a _fatting hog_, or the pigs will be good for little. It is a great mistake, too, to suppose that the condition of the sow _previous to pigging_ is of no consequence; and, indeed, some suppose, that she ought to be rather _bare of flesh_ at the pigging time. Never was a greater mistake; for if she be in this state, she presently becomes a mere rack of bones; and then, do what you will, the pigs will be poor things. However fat she may be before she farrow, the pigs will make her lean in a week. All her fat goes away in her milk, and unless the pigs have a _store_ to draw upon, they pull her down directly; and, by the time they are three weeks old, they are starving for want; and then they never come to good.

141. Now, a cottager's sow cannot, without great expense, be kept in a way to enable her to meet the demands of her farrow. She may _look_ pretty well; but the flesh she has upon her is not of the same nature as that which the _farm-yard_ sow carries about her. It is the result of gra.s.s, and of poor gra.s.s, too, or other weak food; and not made partly out of corn and whey and strong wash, as in the case of the farmer's sow. No food short of that of a fatting hog will enable her to keep her pigs _alive_; and this she must have for _ten weeks_, and that at a great expense. Then comes the operation, upon the principle of _Parson Malthus_, in order to _check population_; and there is some risk here, though not very great.

But there is the _weaning_; and who, that knows any thing about the matter, will think lightly of the weaning of a farrow of pigs! By having nice food given them, they seem, for a few days, not to miss their mother.

But their appearance soon shows the want of her. Nothing but the very best food, and that given in the most judicious manner, will keep them up to any thing like good condition; and, indeed, there is nothing short of _milk_ that will effect the thing well. How should it be otherwise? The very richest cow's milk is poor, compared with that of the sow; and, to be taken from this and put upon food, one ingredient of which is _water_, is quite sufficient to reduce the poor little things to bare bones and staring hair, a state to which cottagers' pigs very soon come in general; and, at last, he frequently drives them to market, and sells them for less than the cost of the food which they and the sow have devoured since they were farrowed. It was, doubtless, pigs of this description that were sold the other day at Newbury market, for _fifteen pence a piece_, and which were, I dare say, dear even as a gift. To get such a pig to _begin_ to grow will require _three months_, and with good feeding too in winter time. To be sure it does come to be a hog at last; but, do what you can, it is a dear hog.

142. The _Cottager_, then, can hold no compet.i.tion with the _Farmer_ in the _breeding_ of pigs, to do which, with advantage, there must be _milk_, and milk, too, that can be advantageously applied to no other use. The cottager's pig must be bought ready weaned to his hand, and, indeed, at _four months old_, at which age, if he be in good condition, he will eat any-thing that an old hog will eat. He will graze, eat cabbage leaves, and almost the stumps. Swedish turnip tops or roots, and such things, with a little wash, will keep him along in very good growing order. I have now to speak of the time of purchasing, the manner of keeping, of fatting, killing, and curing; but these I must reserve till my next Number.

No. VI.

KEEPING PIGS--(_continued._)

143. As in the case of cows so in that of pigs, much must depend upon the situation of the cottage; because all pigs will _graze_; and therefore, on the skirts of forests or commons, a couple or three pigs may be kept, if the family be considerable; and especially if the cottager brew his own beer, which will give him grains to a.s.sist the wash. Even in _lanes_, or on the sides of great roads, a pig will find a good part of his food from May to November; and if he be _yoked_, the occupiers of the neighbourhood must be churlish and brutish indeed, if they give the owner any annoyance.

144. Let me break off here for a moment to point out to my readers the truly excellent conduct of Lord WINCHILSEA and Lord STANHOPE, who, as I read, have taken great pains to make the labourers on their estates comfortable, by allotting to each a piece of ground sufficient for the keeping of a cow. I once, when I lived at Botley, proposed to the copyholders and other farmers in my neighbourhood, that we should pet.i.tion the Bishop of Winchester, who was lord of the manors thereabouts, to grant t.i.tles to all the numerous persons called _trespa.s.sers on the wastes_; and also to give t.i.tles to others of the poor paris.h.i.+oners, who were willing to make, on the skirts of the wastes, enclosures not exceeding an acre each. This I am convinced, would have done a great deal towards relieving the parishes, then greatly burdened by men out of work. This would have been better than digging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a single man would agree to my proposal! One, a bullfrog farmer (now, I hear, pretty well sweated down,) said it would only make them _saucy_! And one, a true disciple of _Malthus_, said, that to facilitate their rearing of children _was a harm_! This man had, at the time, in his own occupation, land that had formerly been _six farms_, and he had, too, ten or a dozen children. I will not mention names; but this farmer will _now_, perhaps, have occasion to call to mind what I told him on that day, when his opposition, and particularly the ground of it, gave me the more pain, as he was a very industrious, civil, and honest man. Never was there a greater mistake than to suppose that men are made saucy and idle by just and kind treatment. _Slaves_ are always lazy and saucy; nothing but the lash will extort from them either labour or respectful deportment. I never met with a _saucy_ Yankee (New Englander) in my life. Never servile; always civil. This must necessarily be the character of _freemen living in a state of competence_. They have n.o.body to envy; n.o.body to complain of; they are in good humour with mankind. It must, however, be confessed, that very little, comparatively speaking, is to be accomplished by the individual efforts even of benevolent men like the two n.o.blemen before mentioned. They have a strife to maintain against the _general tendency of the national state of things_. It is by general and indirect means, and not by partial and direct and positive regulations, that so great a good as that which they generously aim at can be accomplished. When we are to see such means adopted, G.o.d only knows; but, if much longer delayed, I am of opinion, that they will come too late to prevent something very much resembling a dissolution of society.

145. The cottager's pig should be bought in the spring, or late in winter; and being then four months old, he will be a year old before killing time; for it should always be borne in mind, that this age is required in order to insure the greatest quant.i.ty of meat from a given quant.i.ty of food. If a hog be more than a year old, he is the better for it. The flesh is more solid and more nutritious than that of a young hog, much in the same degree that the mutton of a full-mouthed wether is better than that of a younger wether. The pork or bacon of young hogs, even if fatted on corn, is very apt to _boil out_, as they call it; that is to say, come out of the pot smaller in bulk than it goes in. When you begin to fat, do it by degrees, especially in the case of hogs under a year old. If you feed _high_ all at once, the hog is apt to _surfeit_, and then a great loss of food takes place. Peas, or barley-meal is the food; the latter rather the best, and does the work quicker. Make him _quite fat_ by all means. The last bushel, even if he sit as he eat, is the most profitable. If he can walk two hundred yards at a time, he is not well fatted. Lean bacon is the most wasteful thing that any family can use. In short, it is uneatable, except by drunkards, who want something to stimulate their sickly appet.i.te. The man who cannot live on _solid fat_ bacon, well-fed and well-cured, wants the sweet sauce of labour, or is fit for the hospital.

But, then, it must be _bacon_, the effect of barley or peas, (not beans,) and not of whey, potatoes, or _messes_ of any kind. It is frequently said, and I know that even farmers say it, that bacon, made from corn, _costs more than it is worth_! Why do they take care to have it then? They know better. They know well, that it is the very _cheapest_ they can have; and they, who look at both ends and both sides of every cost, would as soon think of shooting their hogs as of fatting them on _messes_; that is to say, for _their own use_, however willing they might now-and-then be to regale the Londoners with a bit of potato-pork.

146. About _Christmas_, if the weather be coldish, is a good time to kill.

If the weather be very mild, you may wait a little longer; for the hog cannot be too fat. The day before killing he should have no food. To kill a hog nicely is so much of a profession, that it is better to pay a s.h.i.+lling for having it done, than to stab and hack and tear the carca.s.s about. I shall not speak of _pork_; for I would by no means recommend it.

There are two ways of going to work to make bacon; in the one you take off the hair by _scalding_. This is the practice in most parts of England, and all over America. But the _Hamps.h.i.+re_ way, and the best way, is to _burn the hair off_. There is a great deal of difference in the consequences.

The first method slackens the skin, opens all the pores of it, makes it loose and flabby by drawing out the roots of the hair. The second tightens the skin in every part, contracts all the sinews and veins in the skin, makes the flitch a solider thing, and the skin a better protection to the meat. The taste of the meat is very different from that of a scalded hog; and to this chiefly it was that Hamps.h.i.+re bacon owed its reputation for excellence. As the hair is to be _burnt_ off it must be _dry_, and care must be taken, that the hog be kept on dry litter of some sort the day previous to killing. When killed he is laid upon a narrow bed of straw, not wider than his carca.s.s, and only two or three inches thick. He is then covered all over thinly with straw, to which, according as the wind may be, the fire is put at one end. As the straw burns, it burns the hair. It requires two or three coverings and burnings, and care is taken, that the skin be not in any part burnt, or parched. When the hair is all burnt off close, the hog is _sc.r.a.ped_ clean, but never touched with _water_. The upper side being finished, the hog is turned over, and the other side is treated in like manner. This work should always be done _before day-light_; for in the day-light you cannot so nicely discover whether the hair be sufficiently burnt off. The light of the fire is weakened by that of the day. Besides, it makes the boys get up very early for once at any rate, and that is something; for boys always like a bonfire.

147. The _inwards_ are next taken out, and if the wife be not a slattern, here, in the mere offal, in the mere garbage, there is food, and delicate food too, for a large family for a week; and hog's puddings for the children, and some for neighbours' children, who come to play with them; for these things are by no means to be overlooked, seeing that they tend to the keeping alive of that affection in children for their parents, which, later in life, will be found absolutely necessary to give effect to wholesome precept, especially when opposed to the boisterous pa.s.sions of youth.

148. The butcher, the next day, cuts the hog up; and then the house is _filled with meat_! Souse, griskins, blade-bones, thigh-bones, spare-ribs, chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use one after the other, and the last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks. But about this time, it is more than possible that the Methodist parson will pay you a visit. It is remarked in America, that these gentry are attracted by the squeaking of the pigs, as the fox is by the cackling of the hen. This may be called slander; but I will tell you what I did know to happen. A good honest careful fellow had a spare-rib, on which he intended to sup with his family after a long and hard day's work at coppice-cutting. Home he came at dark with his two little boys, each with a nitch of wood that they had carried four miles, cheered with the thought of the repast that awaited them. In he went, found his wife, the Methodist parson, and a whole troop of the sisterhood, engaged in prayer, and on the table lay scattered the clean-polished bones of the spare-rib! Can any reasonable creature believe, that, to save the soul, G.o.d requires us to give up the food necessary to sustain the body? Did Saint Paul preach this? He, who, while he spread the gospel abroad, _worked himself_, in order to have it to give to those who were unable to work? Upon what, then, do these modern saints; these evangelical gentlemen, found their claim to live on the labour of others.

149. All the other parts taken away, the two sides that remain, and that are called _flitches_, are to be cured for _bacon_. They are first rubbed with salt on their insides, or flesh sides, then placed, one on the other, the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the _brine_; for, to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not lie sopping in brine; which gives it that sort of taste which barrel-pork and sea-jonk have, and than which nothing is more villanous. Every one knows how different is the taste of fresh, dry salt, from that of salt in a dissolved state. The one is savoury, the other nauseous. Therefore, _change the salt often_. Once in four or five days.

Let it melt, and sink in; but let it not lie too long. Change the flitches. Put that at bottom which was first put on the top. Do this a couple of times. This mode will cost you a great deal more in salt, or rather in _taxes_, than the _sopping mode_; but without it, your bacon will not be sweet and fine, and _will not keep so well_. As to the _time_ required for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circ.u.mstances; the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the place wherein the salting is going on. It takes a longer time for a thick than for a thin flitch; it takes longer in dry, than in damp weather; it takes longer in a dry than in a damp place. But for the flitches of a hog of twelve score, in weather not very dry or very damp, about six weeks may do; and as yours is to be _fat_, which receives little injury from over-salting, give time enough; for you are to have bacon till Christmas comes again. The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool, but always admit of a _free circulation of air_: _confined_ air, though _cool_, will taint meat sooner than the mid-day sun accompanied with a breeze. Ice will not melt in the hottest sun so soon as in a close and damp cellar. Put a lump of ice in _cold water_, and one of the same size before a _hot fire_, and the former will dissolve in half the time that the latter will. Let me take this occasion of observing, that an ice-house should never be _under ground_, or _under the shade of trees_. That the bed of it ought to be three feet above the level of the ground; that this bed ought to consist of something that will admit the drippings to go instantly off; and that the house should stand in a place _open to the sun and air_. This is the way they have the ice-houses under the burning sun of Virginia; and here they keep their fish and meat as fresh and sweet as in winter, when at the same time neither will keep for twelve hours, though let down to the depth of a hundred feet in a well. A Virginian, with some poles and straw, will stick up an ice-house for ten dollars, worth a dozen of those ice-houses, each of which costs our men of taste as many scores of pounds. It is very hard to imagine, indeed, what any one should want ice _for_, in a country like this, except for clodpole boys to slide upon, and to drown c.o.c.kneys in skaiting-time; but if people must have ice in summer, they may as well go a right way as a wrong way to get it.

150. However, the patient that I have at this time under my hands wants nothing to cool his blood, but something to warm it, and, therefore, I will get back to the flitches of bacon, which are now to be _smoked_; for smoking is a great deal better than merely _drying_, as is the fas.h.i.+on in the dairy countries in the West of England. When there were plenty of _farm_-houses there were plenty of places to smoke bacon in; since farmers have lived in gentleman's houses, and the main part of the farm-houses have been knocked down, these places are not so plenty. However, there is scarcely any neighbourhood without a chimney left to hang bacon up in. Two precautions are necessary: first, to hang the flitches where no _rain_ comes down upon them: second, not to let them be so near the fire as to _melt_. These precautions taken, the next is, that the smoke must proceed from _wood_, not turf, peat, or coal. Stubble or litter might do; but the trouble would be great. _Fir_, or _deal_, smoke is not fit for the purpose. I take it, that the absence of wood, as fuel, in the dairy countries, and in the North, has led to the making of pork and dried bacon. As to the _time_ that it requires to smoke a flitch, it must depend a good deal upon whether there be a _constant fire beneath_, and whether the fire be large or small. A month may do, if the fire be pretty constant, and such as a farm-house fire usually is. But over smoking, or, rather, too long hanging in the air, makes the bacon _rust_. Great attention should, therefore, be paid to this matter. The flitch ought not be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly dry. Before you hang it up, lay it on the floor, scatter the flesh-side pretty thickly over with bran, or with some fine saw-dust other than that of deal or fir. Rub it on the flesh, or pat it well down upon it. This keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings, and makes a sort of crust to be dried on; and, in short, keeps the flesh cleaner than it would otherwise be.

151. To keep the bacon sweet and good, and free from nasty things that they call _hoppers_; that is to say, a sort of skipping maggots, engendered by a fly which has a great relish for bacon: to provide against this mischief, and also to keep the bacon from becoming rusty, the Americans, whose country is so hot in summer, have two methods. They smoke no part of the hog except the hams, or gammons. They cover these with coa.r.s.e linen cloth such as the finest hop-bags are made of, which they sew neatly on. They then _white-wash_ the cloth all over with _lime_ white-wash, such as we put on walls, their lime being excellent stone-lime. They give the ham four or five was.h.i.+ngs, the one succeeding as the former gets dry; and in the sun, all these was.h.i.+ngs are put on in a few hours. The flies cannot get through this; and thus the meat is preserved from them. The _other_ mode, and that is the mode for you, is, to sift _fine_ some clean and dry _wood-ashes_. Put some at the bottom of a box, or chest, which is long enough to hold a flitch of bacon. Lay in one flitch; then put in more ashes; then the _other flitch_; and then cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes. This will effectually keep away all flies; and will keep the bacon as fresh and good as when it came out of the chimney, which it will not be for any great length of time, if put on a rack, or kept hung up in the open air. _Dust_, or even _sand_, very, very _dry_, would, perhaps, do as well. The object is not only to keep out the flies, but the _air_. The place where the chest, or box, is kept, ought to be _dry_; and, if the ashes should get damp (as they are apt to do from the salts they contain,) they should be put in the fire-place to dry, and then be put back again. Peat-ashes, or turf-ashes, might do very well for this purpose. With these precautions, the bacon will be as good at the end of the year as on the first day; and it will keep two, and even three years, perfectly good, for which, however, there can be no necessity.

152. Now, then, this hog is altogether a capital thing. The other parts will be meat for about four or five weeks. The _lard_, nicely put down, will last a long while for all the purposes for which it is wanted. To make it keep well there should be some salt put into it. Country children are badly brought up if they do not like sweet lard spread upon bread, as we spread b.u.t.ter. Many a score hunches of this sort have I eaten, and I never knew what poverty was. I have eaten it for luncheon at the houses of good substantial farmers in France and Flanders. I am not now frequently so hungry as I ought to be; but I should think it no hards.h.i.+p to eat _sweet_ lard instead of b.u.t.ter. But, now-a-days, the labourers, and especially the female part of them, have fallen into the taste of _niceness_ in food and _finery in dress_; a quarter of a bellyful and rags are the consequence. The food of their choice is high-priced, so that, for the greater part of their time, they are half-starved. The dress of their choice is _showy_ and _flimsy_, so that, to-day, they are _ladies_, and to-morrow ragged as sheep with the scab. But has not Nature made the country girls as pretty as ladies? Oh, yes! (bless their rosy cheeks and white teeth!) and a great deal prettier too! But are they _less_ pretty, when their dress is plain and substantial, and when the natural presumption is, that they have smocks as well as gowns, than they are when drawn off in the frail fabric of Sir Robert Peel,[9] "where tawdry colours strive with dirty white," exciting violent suspicions that all is not as it ought to be nearer the skin, and calling up a train of ideas extremely hostile to that sort of feeling which every la.s.s innocently and commendably wishes to awaken in her male beholders? Are they prettiest when they come through the wet and dirt safe and neat; or when their draggled dress is plastered to their backs by a shower of rain? However, the fault has not been theirs, nor that of their parents. It is _the system_ of managing the affairs of the nation. This system has made all _flashy_ and _false_, and has put all things out of their place.

Pomposity, bombast, hyperbole, redundancy, and obscurity, both in speaking and in writing; mock-delicacy in manners; mock-liberality, mock-humanity, and mock-religion. Pitt's false money, Peel's flimsy dresses, Wilberforce's potatoe diet, Castlereagh's and Mackintosh's oratory, Walter Scott's poems, Walter's and Stoddart's[10] paragraphs, with all the bad taste and baseness and hypocrisy which they spread over this country; all have arisen, grown, branched out, bloomed, and borne together; and we are now beginning to taste of their fruit. But, as the fat of the adder is, as is said, the antidote to its sting; so in the Son of the great worker of Spinning-Jennies, we have, thanks to the Proctors and Doctors of Oxford, the author of that _Bill_, before which this false, this flashy, this flimsy, this rotten system will dissolve as one of his father's pasted calicoes does at the sight of the was.h.i.+ng-tub.

153. "What," says the cottager, "has all this to do with hogs and bacon?"

Not directly with hogs and bacon, indeed; but it has a great deal to do, my good fellow with your affairs, as I shall, probably, hereafter more fully show, though I shall now leave you to the enjoyment of your flitches of bacon, which, as I before observed, will do ten thousand times more than any Methodist parson, or any other parson (except, of course, those of _our_ church) to make you happy, not only in this world, but in the world to come. _Meat in the house_ is a great source of _harmony_, a great preventer of the temptation to commit those things, which, from small beginnings, lead, finally, to the most fatal and atrocious results; and I hold that doctrine to be _truly d.a.m.nable_, which teaches that G.o.d has made any selection, any condition relative to belief, which is to save from punishment those who violate the principles of _natural justice_.

154. _Some_ other meat you may have; but, bacon is the great thing. It is always ready; as good cold as hot; goes to the field or the coppice conveniently; in harvest, and other busy times, demands the pot to be boiled only on a Sunday; has twice as much strength in it as any other thing of the same weight; and in short, has in it every quality that tends to make a labourer's family able to work and well off. One pound of bacon, such as that which I have described, is, in a labourer's family, worth four or five of ordinary mutton or beef, which are great part _bone_, and which, in short, are gone in a moment. But always observe, it is _fat bacon_ that I am talking about. There will, in spite of all that can be done, be _some_ lean in the gammons, though comparatively very little; and therefore you ought to begin at that end of the flitches; for, _old lean bacon_ is not good.

155. Now, as to the _cost_. A pig (a _spayed sow_ is best) bought in March four months old, can be had now for fifteen s.h.i.+llings. The cost till fatting time is next to nothing to a Cottager; and then the cost, at the present price of corn, would, for a hog of twelve score, not exceed _three pounds_; in the whole _four pounds five_; a pot of poison a week bought at the public-house comes to _twenty-six s.h.i.+llings_ of the money; and more than _three times the remainder_ is generally flung away upon the miserable _tea_, as I have clearly shown in the First Number, at Paragraph 24. I have, indeed, there shown, that if the tea were laid aside, the labourer might supply his family well with beer all the year round, and have a fat hog of even _fifteen score_ for the _cost of the tea_, which does him and can do him _no good at all_.

156. The feet, the cheeks, and other bone, being considered, the _bacon and lard_, taken together, would not exceed _sixpence a pound_. Irish bacon is "_cheaper_." Yes, _lower-priced_. But, I will engage that a pound of mine, when it comes _out_ of the pot (to say nothing of the _taste_,) shall weigh as much as a _pound and a half_ of Irish, or any dairy or slop-fed bacon, when that comes out of the pot. No, no: the farmers joke when they say, that their bacon _costs them more than_ they could buy bacon for. They know well what it is they are doing; and besides, they always forget, or, rather, remember not to say, that the fatting of a large hog yields them three or four load of dung, really worth more than ten or fifteen of common yard dung. In short, without hogs, farming _could not go on_; and it never has gone on in any country in the world. The hogs are the great _stay_ of the whole concern. They are _much in small s.p.a.ce_; they make no _show_, as flocks and herds do; but with out them, the cultivation of the land would be a poor, a miserably barren concern.

SALTING MUTTON AND BEEF.

157. _VERY FAT_ Mutton may be salted to great advantage, and also smoked, and may be kept thus a long while. Not the shoulders and legs, but the _back_ of the sheep. I have never made any flitch of _sheep-bacon_; but I will; for there is nothing like having a _store_ of meat in a house. The running to the butchers daily is a ridiculous thing. The very idea of being fed, of a _family_ being fed, by daily supplies, has something in it perfectly _tormenting_. One half of the time of a mistress of a house, the affairs of which are carried on in this way, is taken up in talking about what is to be got for dinner, and in negotiations with the butcher.

One single moment spent at table beyond what is absolutely necessary, is a moment very shamefully spent; but, to suffer a system of domestic economy, which unnecessarily wastes daily an hour or two of the mistress's time in hunting for the provision for the repast, is a shame indeed; and when we consider how much time is generally spent in this and in equally absurd ways, it is no wonder that we see so little performed by numerous individuals as they do perform during the course of their lives.

158. _Very fat parts of Beef_ may be salted and smoked in a like manner.

Not the _lean_; for that is a great waste, and is, in short, good for nothing. Poor fellows on board of s.h.i.+ps are compelled to eat it, but it is a very bad thing.

No. VII.

BEES, FOWLS, &C. &C.

159. I now proceed to treat of objects of less importance than the foregoing, but still such as may be worthy of great attention. If all of them cannot be expected to come within the scope of a labourer's family, some of them must, and others may: and it is always of great consequence, that children be brought up to set a just value upon all useful things, and especially upon all _living things_; to know the _utility_ of them: for, without this, they never, when grown up, are worthy of being entrusted with the _care_ of them. One of the greatest, and, perhaps, the very commonest, fault of servants, is their inadequate care of animals committed to their charge. It is a well-known saying that "the _master's eye_ makes the horse fat," and the remissness to which this alludes, is generally owing to the servant not having been brought up to feel _an interest_ in the well-being of animals.

BEES.

160. It is not my intention to enter into a history of this insect about which so much has been written, especially by the French naturalists. It is the _useful_ that I shall treat of, and that is done in not many words.

The best _hives_ are those made of clean unblighted _rye-straw_. Boards are too cold in England. A swarm should always be put into a _new_ hive, and the sticks should be _new_ that are put into the hive for the bees to work on; for, if the hive be old, it is not so _wholesome_, and a thousand to one but it contain the embryos of _moths_ and other insects injurious to bees. Over the hive itself there should be a cap of thatch, made also of clean rye straw; and it should not only be _new_ when first put on the hive; but a new one should be made to supply the place of the former one every three or four months; for when the straw begins to get rotten, as it soon does, insects breed in it, its smell is bad, and its effect on the bees is dangerous.

161. The hive should be placed on a bench, the legs of which mice and rats cannot creep up. Tin round the legs is best. But even this will not keep down _ants_, which are mortal enemies of bees. To keep these away, if you find them infest the hive, take a green stick and twist it round in the shape of a ring to lay on the ground round the leg of the bench, and at a few inches from it; and cover this stick with _tar_. This will keep away the ants. If the ants come from one home, you may easily _trace them to it_; and when you have found it, pour _boiling water_ on it in the night, when all the family are at home.

This is the only effectual way of destroying ants, which are frequently so troublesome. It would be cruel to cause this destruction, if it were not necessary to do it, in order to preserve the honey, and indeed the bees too.

162. Besides the hive and its cap, there should be a sort of shed, with top, back, and ends, to give additional protection in winter; though in summer hives may be kept _too hot_, and in that case the bees become sickly and the produce becomes light. The _situation_ of the hive is to face the South-east; or, at any rate, to be sheltered from the _North_ and the _West_. From the North always, and from the West in winter. If it be a very dry season in summer, it contributes greatly to the success of the bees, to place clear water near their home, in a thing that they can conveniently drink out of; for if they have to go a great way for drink, they have not much time for work.

163. It is supposed that bees live only a year; at any rate it is best never to keep the same stall, or family, over two years, except you want to increase your number of hives. The swarm of _this summer_ should always be taken in the autumn of next year. It is whimsical to _save_ the bees when you take the honey. You must _feed_ them; and, if saved, they will die of old age before the next fall; and though young ones will supply the place of the dead, this is nothing like a good swarm put up during the summer.

164. As to the things that bees make their collections from, we do not, perhaps, know a thousandth part of them; but of all the blossoms that they seek eagerly that of the _Buck-wheat_ stands foremost. Go round a piece of this grain just towards sunset, when the buck-wheat is in bloom, and you will see the air filled with bees going home from it in all directions.

The buck-wheat, too, continues in bloom a long while; for the grain is dead ripe on one part of the plant, while there are fresh blossoms coming out on the other part.

165. A good stall of bees, that is to say, the produce of one, is always worth about _two bushels of good wheat_. The _cost_ is nothing to the labourer. He must be a stupid countryman indeed who cannot make a bee-hive; and a lazy one indeed if he _will_ not, if he can. In short, there is nothing but _care_ demanded; and there are very few situations in the country, especially in the south of England, where a labouring man may not have half a dozen stalls of bees to take every year. The main things are to keep away insects, mice, and birds, and especially a little bird called the bee-bird; and to keep all clean and fresh as to the hives and coverings. Never put a swarm into an _old hive_. If wasps, or hornets, annoy you, watch them home in the day time; and in the night kill them by fire, or by boiling water. Fowls should not go where bees are, for they eat them.