Part 6

100. In my next number I shall treat of the _keeping of cows_. I have said that I will teach the cottager how to keep a cow all the year round upon the produce of a quarter of an acre, or, in other words, _forty rods_, of land; and, in my next, I will make good my promise.

No. IV

MAKING BREAD--(CONTINUED.)

101. In the last number, at Paragraph 86, I observed that I hoped it was unnecessary for me to give any directions as to the mere _act_ of making bread. But several correspondents inform me that, without these directions, a conviction of the utility of baking bread at home is of _no use to them_. Therefore, I shall here give those directions, receiving my instructions here from one, who, I thank God, does know how to perform this act.

102. Suppose the quantity be a bushel of flour. Put this flour into a _trough_ that people have for the purpose, or it may be in a clean smooth tub of any shape, if not too deep, and if sufficiently large. Make a pretty deep hole in the middle of this heap of flour. Take (for a bushel) a pint of good fresh yeast, mix it and stir it well up in a pint of _soft_ water milk-warm. Pour this into the hole in the heap of flour. Then take a spoon and work it round the outside of this body of moisture so as to bring into that body, by degrees, flour enough to make it form a _thin batter_, which you must stir about well for a minute or two. Then take a handful of flour and scatter it thinly over the head of this batter, so as to _hide_ it. Then cover the whole over with a cloth to keep it _warm_; and this covering, as well as the situation of the trough, as to distance from the fire, must depend on the nature of the place and state of the weather as to heat and cold. When you perceive that the batter has risen enough to make _cracks_ in the flour that you covered it over with, you begin to form the whole mass into _dough_, thus: you begin round the hole containing the batter, working the flour into the batter, and pouring in, as it is wanted to make the flour mix with the batter, soft water milk-warm, or milk, as hereafter to be mentioned. Before you begin this, you scatter the _salt_ over the heap at the rate of _half a pound_ to a bushel of flour. When you have got the whole _sufficiently moist_, you _knead it well_. This is a grand part of the business; for, unless the dough be _well worked_, there will be _little round lumps of flour in the loaves_; and, besides, the original batter, which is to give fermentation to the whole, will not be duly mixed. The dough must, therefore, be well worked. The _fists_ must go heartily into it. It must be rolled over; pressed out; folded up and pressed out again, until it be completely mixed, and formed into a _stiff_ and _tough dough_. This is _labour_, mind. I have never quite liked baker's bread since I saw a great heavy fellow, in a bakehouse in France, kneading bread with his _naked feet_! His feet looked very _white_, to be sure: whether they were of that colour _before he got into the trough_ I could not tell. God forbid, that I should suspect that this is ever done _in England_! It is _labour_; but, what is _exercise_ other than labour? Let a young woman bake a bushel once a week, and she will do very well without phials and gallipots.

103. Thus, then, the dough is made. And, when made, it is to be formed into a lump in the middle of the trough, and, with a little dry flour thinly scattered over it, covered over again to be kept warm and to ferment; and in this state, if all be done rightly, it will not have to remain more than about 15 or 20 minutes.

104. In the mean while _the oven is to be heated_; and this is much more than half the art of the operation. When an oven is properly heated, can be known only by _actual observation_. Women who understand the matter, know when the heat is right the moment they put their faces within a yard of the oven-mouth; and once or twice observing is enough for any person of common capacity. But this much may be said in the way of _rule_: that the fuel (I am supposing a brick oven) should be _dry_ (not _rotten_) wood, and not mere _brush-wood_, but rather _fagot-sticks_. If larger wood, it ought to be split up into sticks not more than two, or two and a half inches through. Bush-wood that is _strong_, not green and not too old, if it be hard in its nature and has some _sticks_ in it, may do. The _woody_ parts of furze, or ling, will heat an oven very well. But the thing is, to have a _lively_ and yet _somewhat strong_ fire; so that the oven may be heated in about 15 minutes, and retain its heat sufficiently long.

105. The oven should be hot by the time that the dough, as mentioned in Paragraph 103, has remained in the lump about 20 minutes. When both are ready, take out the fire, and wipe the oven out clean, and, at nearly about the same moment, take the dough out upon the lid of the baking trough, or some proper place, cut it up into pieces, and make it up into loaves, kneading it again into these separate parcels; and, as you go on, shaking a little flour over your board, to prevent the dough from adhering to it. The loaves should be put into the oven as _quickly_ as possible after they are formed; when in, the oven-lid, or door, should be fastened up _very closely_; and, if all be properly managed, loaves of about the size of quartern loaves will be sufficiently baked in about _two hours_. But they usually take down the _lid_, and _look_ at the bread, in order to see how it is going on.

106. And what is there worthy of the name of _plague_, or _trouble_, in all this? Here is no dirt, no filth, no rubbish, no _litter_, no _slop_. And, pray, what can be pleasanter to _behold_? Talk, indeed, of your pantomimes and gaudy shows; your processions and installations and coronations! Give me, for a beautiful sight, a neat and smart woman, heating her oven and setting in her bread! And, if the bustle does make the sign of labour glisten on her brow, where is the man that would not kiss that off, rather than lick the plaster from the cheek of a duchess.

107. And what is the _result_? Why, good, wholesome food, sufficient for a considerable family for a week, prepared in three or four hours. To get this quantity of food, fit to be _eaten_, in the shape of potatoes, _how many fires_! what a washing, what a boiling, what a peeling, what a slopping, and what a messing! The cottage everlastingly in a litter; the woman's hands everlastingly wet and dirty; the children grimed up to the eyes with dust fixed on by potato-starch; and ragged as colts, the poor mother's time all being devoted to the everlasting boilings of the pot! Can any man, who knows any thing of the labourer's life, deny this? And will, then, any body, except the old shuffle-breeches band of the Quarterly Review, who have all their lives been moving from garret to garret, who have seldom seen the sun, and never the dew except in print; will any body except these men say, that the people ought to be taught to use potatoes as a _substitute for bread_?

BREWING BEER.

108. This matter has been fully treated of in the two last numbers. But several correspondents wishing to fall upon some means of rendering the practice beneficial to those who are _unable to purchase_ brewing utensils, have recommended the _lending_ of them, or letting out, round a neighbourhood. Another correspondent has, therefore, pointed out to me _an Act of Parliament_ which touches upon this subject; and, indeed, what of Excise Laws and Custom Laws and Combination Laws and Libel Laws, a human being in this country scarcely knows what he dares do or what he dares say. What father, for instance, would have imagined, that, having brewing utensils, which two men carry from house to house as easily as they can a basket, _he dared not lend them to his son, living in the next street, or at the next door_? Yet such really is the law; for, according to the Act 5th of the 22 and 23 of that honest and sincere gentleman Charles II., there is a penalty of 50_l._ for lending or letting brewing utensils. However, it has this limit; that the penalty is confined to _Cities_, _Corporate Towns_, and _Market Towns_, WHERE THERE IS A PUBLIC BREWHOUSE. So that, in the first place, you may let, or lend, in _any_ place where there is _no public brewhouse_; and in all towns not _corporate or market_, and in all villages, hamlets, and scattered places.

109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive answer without reading about _seven large volumes in quarto of taxing laws_. The best way would be to _try it_; and, if any penalty, pay it by _subscription_, if that would not come under the law of _conspiracy_! However, I _think_, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated; for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London.

110. Another correspondent recommends _parishes to make their own malt_. But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the _malt and salt tax_! Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50_l._ a year each in salt tax. How, then, are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of labourers, living "in _unkent places_," making their _own malt_, even now! Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.) and then you put it upon stones or bricks _and keep it turned_, till the root _shoots out_; and then to know when to _stop_, and to put it to dry, take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through the skin of it. You will see the _spear_, that is to say, the shoot that would come out of the ground, pushing on towards the _point_ of the barley-corn. It starts from the bottom, where the root comes out; and it goes on towards the other end; and would, if _kept moist_, come out at that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you have got the _root to start_, by soaking and turning in heap, the spear is _on its way_. If you look in through the skin, you will see it; and now observe; when the _point of the spear_ has got along as far as the _middle of the barley-corn_, you should take your barley and _dry it_. How easy would every family, and especially every farmer, do this, if it were not for the punishment attached to it! The persons in the "unkent places" before mentioned, dry the malt in their _oven_! But let us hope that the labourer will soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to punishment as a _violater of the law_.

KEEPING COWS.

111. As to the _use_ of _milk_ and of that which proceeds from milk, in a family, very little need be said. At a certain age bread and milk are _all_ that a child wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day for children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to _drink_. In the making of puddings, and in the making of _bread_ too, how useful is it! Let any one who has eaten none but baker's bread for a good while, taste bread home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with water; and he will find what the difference is. There is this only to be observed, that in _hot weather_, bread mixed with milk will not _keep so long_ as that mixed with water. It will of course turn _sour_ sooner.

112. Whether the milk of a cow be to be consumed by a cottage family in the shape of milk, or whether it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk, and buttermilk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that has no child, or only one, would, perhaps, find it best to make _some butter_ at any rate. Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food enough for any children's breakfast, even when they begin to go to work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of _six_, helping his father to _reap_, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was _something_. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before him; and when he came up to the place, he found a _sheaf_ cut; and, those who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an age when "young masters" have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses' bellies. Was not this father discharging his duty by this boy much better than he would have been by sending him to a place called a _school_? The boy is in a school here; and an excellent school too: the school of useful labour. I must hear a great deal more than I ever have heard, to convince me, that teaching children to _read_ tends so much to their happiness, their independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to _reap_. The creature that is in _want_ must be a _slave_; and to be habituated _to labour cheerfully_ is the only means of preventing nineteen-twentieths of mankind from being in want. I have digressed here; but observations of this sort can, in my opinion, never be too often repeated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot, for what is falsely called _educating_ the people, and when some would do this by a _tax_ that would compel the single man to give part of his earnings to teach the married man's children to read and write.

113. Before I quit the _uses_ to which milk may be put, let me mention, that, as mere _drink_, it is, unless perhaps in case of heavy labour, better, in my opinion, than any beer, however good. I have drinked little else for the last five years, at any time of the day. Skim-milk I mean. If you have not milk enough to wet up your bread with (for a bushel of flour requires about 16 to 18 pints,) you make up the quantity with water, of course; or, which is a very good way, with water that has been put, boiling hot, upon _bran_, and then drained off. This takes the goodness out of the bran to be sure; but _really good bread_ is a thing of so much importance, that it always ought to be the very first object in domestic economy.

114. The cases vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down rules for the application of the produce of a cow, which rules shall fit all cases. I content myself, therefore, with what has already been said on this subject; and shall only make an observation on the _act of milking_, before I come to the chief matter; namely, the _getting of the food for the cow_. A cow should be milked _clean_. Not a drop, if it can be avoided, should be left in the udder. It has been proved that the half pint that comes out _last_ has _twelve times_, I think it is, as much butter in it, as the half pint that comes out _first_. I tried the milk of ten Alderney cows, and, as nearly as I, without being very nice about the matter, could ascertain, I found the difference to be about what I have stated. The udder would seem to be a sort of milk-pan in which the cream is uppermost, and, of course, comes out last, seeing that the outlet is at the bottom. But, besides this, if you do not milk clean, the cow will give less and less milk, and will become dry much sooner than she ought. The _cause_ of this I do not know, but experience has long established the fact.

115. In providing food for a cow we must look, first, at the _sort of cow_; seeing that a cow of one sort will certainly require more than twice as much food as a cow of another sort. For a cottage, a cow of the smallest sort common in England is, on every account, the best; and such a cow will not require above 70 or 80 pounds of good moist food in the twenty-four hours.

116. Now, how to raise this food on 40 rods of ground is what we want to know. It frequently happens that a labourer has _more_ than 40 rods of ground. It more frequently happens, that he has some _common_, some _lane_, some little out-let or other, for a part of the year, at least. In such cases he may make a different disposition of his ground; or may do with less than the 40 rods. I am here, for simplicity's sake, to suppose, that he have 40 rods of clear, unshaded land, besides what his house and sheds stand upon; and that he have nothing further in the way of means to keep his cow.

117. I suppose the 40 rods to be _clean_ and _unshaded_; for I am to suppose, that when a man thinks of 5 quarts _of milk a day_, on an average, all the year round, he will not suffer his ground to be encumbered by apple-trees that give him only the means of treating his children to fits of the belly-ache, or with currant and gooseberry bushes, which, though their fruit do very well to _amuse_, really give nothing worthy of the name of _food_, except to the blackbirds and thrushes. The ground is to be _clear_ of trees; and, in the spring, we will suppose it to be _clean_. Then, dig it up _deeply_, or, which is better, _trench_ it, keeping, however, the top _spit_ of the soil _at the top_. Lay it in _ridges_ in April or May about two feet apart, and made high and sharp. When the weeds appear about three inches high, turn the ridges into the furrows (_never moving the ground but in dry weather_,) and bury all the weeds. Do this as often as the weeds get three inches high; and by the fall, you will have really clean ground, and not poor ground.

118. There is the ground then, ready. About the 26th of August, but _not earlier_, prepare a rod of your ground; and put some _manure_ in it (for _some_ you must have,) and sow one half of it with Early York Cabbage Seed, and the other half with Sugar-loaf Cabbage Seed, both of the _true_ sort, in little drills at 8 inches apart, and the seeds thin in the drill. If the plants come up at two inches apart (and they should be thinned if thicker,) you will have a plenty. As soon as fairly out of ground, hoe the ground nicely, and pretty deeply, and again in a few days. When the plants have six leaves, which will be very soon, dig up, make fine, and manure another rod or two, and prick out the plants, 4000 of each in rows at eight inches apart and three inches in the row. Hoe the ground between them often, and they will grow fast and be _straight_ and strong. I suppose that these beds for plants take 4 rods of your ground. Early in November, or, as the weather may serve, a little earlier or later, lay some manure (of which I shall say more hereafter) between the ridges, in the other 36 rods, and turn the ridges over on this manure, and then transplant your plants on the ridges at 15 inches apart. Here they will stand the winter; and you must see that the slugs do not eat them. If any plants fail, you have plenty in the bed where you prick them out; for your 36 rods will not require more than 4000 plants. If the winter be very hard, and bad for plants, you cannot _cover_ 36 rods; but you may the _bed_ where the rest of your plants are. A little litter, or straw, or dead grass, or fern, laid along between the rows and the plants, not to cover the leaves, will preserve them completely. When people complain of _all_ their plants being "_cut off_," they have, in fact nothing to _complain_ of but their own extreme carelessness. If I had a gardener who complained of _all_ his plants being cut off, I should cut him off pretty quickly. If those in the 36 rods fail, or fail in part, fill up their places, later in the winter, by plants from the bed.

119. If you find the ground dry at the top during the winter, hoe it, and particularly near the plants, and rout out all slugs and insects. And when March comes, and the ground _is dry_, hoe deep and well, and earth the plants up close to the lower leaves. As soon as the plants begin to _grow_, dig the ground with a spade clean and well, and let the spade go as near to the plants as you can without actually _displacing the plants_. Give them another digging in a month; and, if weeds come in the mean-while, _hoe_, and let not one live a week. Oh! "what a deal of _work_!" Well! but it is for _yourself_, and, besides, it is not all to be done in a day; and we shall by-and-by see what it is altogether.

120. By the first of June; I speak of the South of England, and there is also some difference in seasons and soils; but, generally speaking, by the first of June you will have _turned-in cabbages_, and soon you will have the Early Yorks _solid_. And by the first of June you may get your cow, one that is about to calve, or that has just calved, and at this time such a cow as you will want will not, thank God, cost above five pounds.

121. I shall speak of the place to keep her in, and of the manure and litter, by-and-by. At present I confine myself to her mere food. The 36 rods, if the cabbages all stood till they got _solid_, would give her food for 200 days, at 80 pounds weight per day, which is more than she would eat. But you must use some, at first, that are not solid; and, then, some of them will split before you can use them. But you will have pigs to help off with them, and to gnaw the heads of the stumps. Some of the sugar-loaves may have been planted out in the spring; and thus these 36 rods will get you along to some time in September.

122. Now mind, in March, and again in April, sow more _Early Yorks_, and get them to be fine stout plants, as you did those in the fall. Dig up the ground and manure it, and, as fast as you cut cabbages, plant cabbages; and in the same manner and with the same cultivation as before. Your last planting will be about the middle of August, with _stout plants_, and these will serve you into the month of November.

123. Now we have to provide from _December to May inclusive_; and that, too, out of this same piece of ground. In November there must be, arrived at perfection, 3000 turnip plants. These, _without the greens_, must weigh, on an average, 5 pounds, and this, at 80 pounds a day, will keep the cow 187 days; and there are but 182 days in these six months. The greens will have helped put the latest cabbages to carry you through November, and perhaps into December. But for these six months, you must _depend_ on nothing but the Swedish turnips.

124. And now, how are these to be had _upon the same ground that bears_ the cabbages? That we are now going to see. When you plant out your cabbages at the out-set, put first a row of Early Yorks, then a row of Sugar-loaves, and so on throughout the piece. Of course, as you are to use the Early Yorks first, you will cut every other row; and the Early Yorks that you are to plant in summer will go into the intervals. By-and-by the Sugar-loaves are cut away, and in their place will come Swedish turnips, you digging and manuring the ground as in the case of the cabbages: and, at last, you will find about 16 rods where you will have found it too late, and _unnecessary_ besides, to plant any second crop of cabbages. Here the Swedish turnips will stand in rows at two feet apart, (and always a foot apart in the row,) and thus you will have three thousand turnips; and if these do not weigh five pounds each on an average, the fault must be in the _seed_ or in the management.