Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it Part 4

Boil together, and let it be well skimmed; then, when cold, the meat to be well wiped and put into it. It will be fit to cook in ten days, but may be kept without injury for two months, when the pickle should be reboiled and well skimmed. The meat should be covered with brine and the pan have a cover.

We have put legs of mutton into this pickle, and can a.s.sure the reader it is an excellent mode of cooking this joint; and as it is one which frequently makes its appearance at table where the family is large, it is sometimes a pleasant method of varying the dish. It is the best way of any we know of, for curing tongues; it has the great advantage of being always ready for use, and you are not fearful of the carelessness of servants, who not unfrequently forget to look to the salting-pans.

We can recommend a dish not often seen at table, and that is a sirloin of beef put into this pickle for about a fortnight. It is infinitely superior either to the round or edgebone, and certainly not so extravagant as the last-named joint.

A friend has told us that we should procure some juniper-berries to put into our ham-pickle, but there were none to be purchased in our neighborhood, and as we were quite ignorant of the flavor they might impart, we did not trouble ourselves to get them. I am fond of old proverbs, and as our hams and bacon were always good, we determined to "let well alone."

CHAPTER X1.

OUR BREAD.

Any lady who thinks of trying a country residence, should see that it possess a small brick oven, for "home-made" bread ought always to be considered indispensable in the country. We did not discover that our new home was without one till after we entered it. We were laughed at by our landlord when we mentioned our want of this convenience.

"Why!" cried he, "there is a baker's shop not five minutes walk from the house."

"Never mind," said I, "how near the baker's shop may be; we mean to have all our bread made at home. It will be, we are sure, better to do so, both on the score of health and economy."

"But I really," said the gentleman, "cannot afford to build you an oven; it would cost me $100 at the least."

At this, H., who had resided for a short time in a house where the bread was made at home, laughed, and said, "Really, Mr. L., you need not fear that we wish to put you to so much expense, and it is perhaps but fair that we should meet you half-way in the matter; so if you will find labor we will find materials: or reverse it, if you please."

Mr. L. remembered that he had in some outhouse a quant.i.ty of "fire bricks," and it was arranged that we should pay for the labor of constructing a three-peck oven. This occasioned on our part an outlay of $10, and this small sum was the source of considerable saving to us yearly.

We were more fortunate with our bread than with our b.u.t.ter-making, for Mary was a capital baker; our bread was always made from the best flour. We all liked it much better than bakers' bread, and it was much more nouris.h.i.+ng. Indeed, when I was once in Kent during "hopping," and saw that the women who resided in the neighborhood always gave up half a day's work weekly for the purpose of going home to bake, I used to wonder why they did not purchase their bread from a baker in the village. I was informed by one of them to whom I put the question, "Lord, ma'am, we could not work on bakers' bread, we should be half-starved; it's got no _heart_ in it."

To a small family, perhaps, the saving might not be considered an object, but any one who has for a few months been accustomed to eat home-made bread, would be sorry to have recourse to the baker's; the loaves purchased are usually spongy the first day, and dry and harsh the second. It is not only that other ingredients than flour, yeast, and water are mixed in the dough, but it is seldom sufficiently baked; bread well made at home and baked in a brick oven for a proper time, is as good at the end of a week as it is the second day.

I have heard several persons say, "I should like home-made bread if it were baked every day, but I don't like eating stale bread four or five days out of the seven." If they stayed with us a day or two, they became convinced that bread which had been made three or four days did not deserve the epithet of "stale."

I will now proceed to show the reader how much flour was consumed in our household, consisting of thirteen persons.

We used to bake weekly twenty-eight pounds of flour, of the best quality; this produced _forty-two_ pounds of bread. I will give in the most explicit manner I can directions for making it, which I imagine any servant will be able to comprehend:

Place in a large pan twenty-eight pounds of flour; make a hole with the hand in the centre of it like a large basin, into which strain a pint of yeast from the brewer's; this must be tasted, and if too bitter a little flour sprinkled in it, and then strained directly; then pour in two quarts of water, of the temperature of 100', that is, what is called blood-heat, and stir the flour round from the bottom of the hole you have formed with the hand, till that part of the flour is quite thick and well mixed, though all the rest must remain unwetted; then sprinkle a little flour over the moist part, and cover with a cloth: this is called "sponge," and must be left half an hour to rise.

During this time the fire must be lighted in the oven with f.a.gots, and the heat well maintained till the bread is ready to enter it. At the end of the half-hour add four quarts of water, of the same heat as the previous two quarts, and well knead the whole ma.s.s into a smooth dough. This is hard work, and requires strength to do it properly.

It must be again covered and left for one hour. In cold weather both sponge and dough must be placed on the kitchen-hearth, or it will not rise well.

Before the last water is put in, two table-spoonfuls of salt must be sprinkled over the flour.

Sometimes the flour will absorb another pint of water.

When the dough has risen, it must be made up into loaves as quickly as possible; if much handled then, the bread will be heavy.

It will require an hour and an half to bake it, if made into four-pound loaves.

While the dough is rising the oven must be emptied of the fire, the ashes swept from it, and then well wiped with a damp mop kept for the purpose. To ascertain if it is sufficiently heated, throw a little flour into it, and if it brown _directly_, it will do.

I think I have stated every particular necessary to enable a novice to make a "batch" of good bread. I will sum up the articles requisite to produce forty-two pounds of the best quality:

Flour, 28 pounds.

Water at 100', 12 or 13 pints.

Two table-spoonfuls of salt.

Yeast, 1 pint.

Bake one hour and a half.

The quant.i.ty made was ten and a half quarterns, or four-pound loaves; and, as I have said, supplied our family of thirteen persons for the week. For the same number, when we were residing in town, the baker used to leave _thirteen_ quarterns weekly.

One day, in the country, when, from the accidental absence of the bread-maker, we had to be supplied from the baker, we were surprised to hear that at the nursery-breakfast the children (six) and nurse consumed more than a two-pound loaf, and then were complaining of being "so hungry" two hours after. I thought of the words of the Kentish hopper, "that there was no heart in bakers' bread."

The servant who has the management of the oven should be instructed to take care that the wood-ashes are not thrown into the dust-hole with the ashes from the grates. They are always valuable in the country; and, as I have mentioned, the wooden articles used in the dairy should always be scrubbed with them. Should the water which is used in the house be hard, and any was.h.i.+ng done at home, they should be place in a coa.r.s.e cloth over a tub, and water poured over them several times to make lye, which softens the water, and saves soap much more than soda, and is likewise better for the linen.

The brick oven will often prove a source of great convenience, independent of bread-making. It is just the size to bake hams or roasting pigs, and will, when dinner-parties are given, frequently prove much more useful to the cook than an extra fire.

The f.a.gots are sold by the hundred, and the price is usually $6 25 for that quant.i.ty.

CHAPTER XII.

OUR KITCHEN-GARDEN.

As I wish to make this little work a complete manual to the "farm of four acres," I must insert a few remarks on the management of the kitchen-garden. Ours consisted of an acre; and, large as our family was, we did not require more than half of it to supply us with vegetables, independent of potatoes.

We strongly advise any one who may have more garden than they may want for vegetables, to plant the surplus with potatoes. Even if the "disease" does affect part of the crop, the gain will still be great, providing you keep animals to consume them; for they must indeed be bad if the pigs will not thrive on them when boiled. Poultry, likewise, will eat them in preference to any other food.

We had something more than half an acre planted one year when the disease was very prevalent; the crop suffered from it to a considerable extent, but the yield was so large that we stored sufficient to supply the family from September till the end of April, and had enough of those but slightly affected to fatten four pigs, beside having a large bowlful boiled daily for the poultry. The worst parts were always cut out before they were boiled, and neither pigs nor poultry were allowed to touch them raw.

It is much the best plan to consume all the potatoes you may grow, rather than save any of them for seed. It will be but a slight additional expense to have fresh kinds sent from quite a different locality, and they will thrive better, and not be so liable to the disease.

They should always be dug before the slightest appearance of frost, and place on straw in a dry place, where they can be conveniently looked over once a fortnight, when any that show symptoms of decay should be removed and boiled at once for the pigs. By this method very few will be wholly wasted; instead of eating potatoes you will eat pork, that is, if you have plenty of skim-milk. I do not at all know how pigs would like them without they were mixed up with that fluid.

We have tried, with great success, planting them in rows alternately with other vegetables. When they are all together, the haulms in wet seasons grow so rankly that they become matted together; and then, as the air is excluded from the roots, it renders them liable to disease.

We have tried cutting the haulm off to within a few inches of the ground; but this, the gardener said, proved detrimental to the roots.

We afterwards tried a row of potatoes, then cabbages, then carrots, and then again came the potatoes. We once planted them between the currant and gooseberry bushes, but it was as bad, or worse, than when a quant.i.ty of them were by themselves; for when the trees made their midsummer shoots the leaves quite shut out air and light from the potatoes, and when dug they proved worse than any other portions of the crop.

We always found that the deeper the sets were placed in the ground the sounder were the roots: We tried every experiment with them; and as our gardener was both skilful and industrious, we were usually much more fortunate with our produce than our neighbors.

Carrots rank to the "small farmer" next in value to the potatoes; not only pigs and cows are fond of them, but likewise horses. The pony always improved in condition when he was allowed to have a few daily.

Our arable acre was a model farm on a very small scale. We grow in it maize for the poultry, tares for the pigeons, lucerne for the cows, and talked of oats for the pony. This our gardener objected to, so the surplus bit of ground was sown with parsnips, which turned out very profitable, as both pigs and cows liked them.

We have told the reader that we reared the calf of the Strawberry cow, and it cost us hardly anything to do so, for it was fed in the winter with the roots we had to spare. The first winter it had to consume the greater part of the ton of mangel-wurzel we had bought "to keep our cows together." Some we had boiled with potatoes for the pigs, and they liked it very well.

An acre of land may appear a laughably small piece of ground to produce such a variety of articles, but if well attended to the yield will astonish those who are ignorant of gardening. The one important thing to be attended to is, to see that all seed-crops are well thinned out as soon as they are an inch above the surface. In very few kitchen-gardens is this attended to, and for want of this care a dozen carrots, parsnips, or turnips, are allowed to stand where one would be sufficient. The one would prove a fine root; the dozen are not worth the trouble of pulling, as they can get neither air nor room to grow.

To be well done they should be thinned by hand, and that being a tedious "job," gardeners seldom can be induced to perform the work properly.