Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 1/Our farm of two acres: the poultry-yard
OUR FARM OF TWO ACRES.
THE POULTRY-YARD.
In order to make money by poultry, in any proportion to the attention given to them, the speculator should be either a capitalist who provides an extensive apparatus for the supply of fowls and eggs to a neighbouring community, or a cottager or small farmer who can rear fowls in a chance-medley way, on what they can pick up for themselves. As I am neither a professional breeder of poultry, nor a cottager, nor yet a small farmer in the ordinary use of the term, I cannot and do not expect to make money to any notable extent by our fowls and ducks. As I have already intimated, the object is security against famine, where a whole neighbourhood depends on the justice and mercy of one butcher. When I relate that at an inn not three miles off, forty-five couples of fowls Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/108 Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/109 Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/110 loss which M dreaded, but the destruction of her whole school of dependents, and the total discouragement which must have followed such a catastrophe. If the deluge had destroyed the colony that night, we should have had no more to tell of our poultry-yard. As it is, we have contemplated the proceedings of our hens and broods ever since with a stronger interest than ever before.
When a neighbour here and there said, “I would have let all the fowls of the air perish before I would have gone out on such a night,” we think these friends of ours have yet to learn the pleasure and true interest of a rural charge, like that of a poultry-yard.
This is an impression often renewed in regard, not only to the poultry-yard, but to all the interests involved in a genuine country life. The ladies of the Four Acre Farm tell us of a visitor of theirs who could not conceive that women who can make butter could care for books. She wondered at their subscribing to Mudie’s. This is, to be sure, the very worst piece of ignorance of country-life and its influences that I ever read of; but it is only an exaggeration of a sentiment very common in both town and country. Some country as well as town gentry may say to us miniature farmers, “What is the use of so much doing for so little profit? A few shillings, or a few pounds, or a certain degree of domestic comfort and luxury,—this is all; and is it worth while?”
“No, this is not all,” we reply. When we say what more there is, it will be for others to decide for themselves whether it is worth while to use small portions of land, or to leave them undeveloped. It is a grave and yet a cheerful consideration that the maintenance of our man and his wife is absolutely created by our plan of living; and it is worth something that the same may be said of several animals which are called into existence by it. As for ourselves and our servants, our domestic luxuries are the smallest benefit we derive from our out-door engagements. We should under no circumstances be an idle household. We have abundance of social duties and literary pleasures, in parlour and kitchen; but these are promoted, and not hindered, by our out-door interests. The amount of knowledge gained by actual handling of the earth and its productions, and by personal interest in the economy of agriculture, even on the smallest scale, is greater than any inconsiderate person would suppose; and the exercise of a whole range of faculties on practical objects, which have no sordidness in them, is a valuable and most agreeable method of adult education.
Whoever grows anything feels a new interest in everything that grows; and, as to the mood of mind in which the occupation is pursued, it is, to town-bred women, singularly elevating and refining. To have been reared in a farm-house, remote from society and books, and ignorant of everything beyond the bounds of the parish, is one thing; and to pass from an indolent or a literary life in town to rural pursuits, adopted with a purpose, is another. In the first case, the state of mind may be narrow, dull, and coarse; in the latter, it should naturally be expansive, cheery, and elevated. The genuine poetry of man and nature invests an intellectual and active life in the open universe of rural scenery. If listless young ladies from any town in England could witness the way in which hours slip by in tending the garden, and consulting about the crops, and gathering fruit and flowers, they would think there must be something in it more than they understand. If they would but try their hand at making a batch of butter, or condescend to gather eggs, and court acquaintance with hens and their broods, or assume the charge of a single nest, from the hen taking her seat to the maturity of the brood, they would find that life has pleasures for them that they knew not of,—pleasures that have as much “romance” and “poetry” about them as any book in Mudie’s library. “But the time!” say some. “How can you spare the time?” Well! what is it? People must have bodily exercise, in town or country, or they cannot live in health, if they can live at all. Why should country folk have nothing better than the constitutional walk which is the duty and pleasure of townsfolk? Some times there is not half-an-hour’s occupation in the field or garden in the day; and then is the occasion for an extended ramble over the hills. On other days, two, three, four hours slip away, and the morning is gone unawares: and why not? The things done are useful; the exercise is healthful and exhilarating,—in every way at least as good as a walk for health’s sake; and there is the rest of the day for books, pen, and needle. The fact is, the outdoor amusements leave abundance of time, and ever-renewed energy for the life of books, the pen, and domestic and social offices of duty and love.
Let those ladies whose lot it is to live in the country consider whether they shall lead a town or a country life there. A town life in the country is perhaps the lowest of all. It is having eyes which see not,—ears which hear not,—and minds which do not understand. A lady who had lived from early childhood in a country-house politely looked into my poultry-yard when it was new, and ran after me with a warm compliment. “What a beautiful hen you have there;—what beautiful long feathers in its tail!”
“Why, S,” said I, “that is the cock.”
“O—oh—oh!” said she, “I did not know.”
Mr. Howitt tells us somewhere of a guest of his who, seeing a goose and her fourteen goslings on a common, thought it must be very exhausting to the bird to suckle so many young ones. To women who do not know a cock from a hen, or green crops from white, or fruit-trees from forest-trees, or how to produce herb, flower, root, or fruit from the soil, it would be new life to turn up the ground which lies about them. Miniature farming would, in that very common case, not only create the material subsistence of the servants employed, but develop the mind and heart of the employer. This, and not the money made, is the true consideration when the question arises,—What shall a woman do with two or four acres?