Husbandry

“ Although he has been for many many years a farmer, and manages his farm as well as most men, yet, as he was bred up a gardener, he does not know, nor did he ever learn, how to perform many of the laborious parts of husbandry; and I shall, I am sure, convince you, from what occurred to him, of the absolute necessity of acquiring a knowledge of every minute operation belonging to the affairs of husbandry, before you will be able to manage your business with ease to yourself, and with satisfaction to your servants. ”

“ Such was the natural state of the country, which was cultivated, as we may well believe, by true husbandmen, who made husbandry their business, and were lovers of honour, and of a noble nature, and had a soil the best in the world, and abundance of water, and in the heaven above an excellently attempered climate. ”

“ The Britons received the knowledge of husbandry from the Romans; the foot and the acre, which we yet use, is the nearest to them. In our west country, (and I believe so in the north,) they give no wages to the shepherd, but he has the keeping so many sheep with his master’s flock. ”

“ Then it was proposed to send out twenty men and their families, who should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or at least capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and cultivating of land, breeding and feeding cattle, and the like. ”

“ A good farmer takes care of his implements of husbandry. Instead of leaving them scattered all over the farm, they are carefully gathered together, properly cleaned and greased to defend them from rust, and put in a safe place until they are wanted. ”

“ A chief servant in husbandry, which can eire (plough) , sow, mow, thresh, make a rick, thatch and hedge, and can kill and dress a hog, sheep, and calf, by the year 40s., and 6s. for his livery.
A common servant in husbandry, which can mow, sow, thresh, and load a cart, and cannot expertly make a rick, hedge, and thatch, and cannot kill and dress a hog, sheep, or calf, by the year 33s. ”

“ Because this sturdy soldiery was largely composed of tillers of the soil, of pioneer farmers who understood good land, good husbandry, good crops, and the stern privations necessary to wrest a single rod of land from the iron jaws of the wilderness. ”

“ Thus, on every hand we see evidences of this wise legislation in the enlarged and modernized farms, increased acreage of land under cultivation, the scientific planting of fruit-trees, and the more general use of modern implements of husbandry. ”

“ It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are called, of hunters, shepherds, or even of husbandmen in that rude state of husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures and the extension of foreign commerce. ”

“ Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our Cattle-shows and so called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. ”

“ Agriculture is daily extending its benefits; the land has become more valuable; and considerable alterations for the better have taken place, with respect to the implements of husbandry, and the general modes of cultivating the farms. ”

“ The ploughman who fastens his plough to the tails of his cattle, will not own that there is any other mode equal to his. An agricultural people will be in the neighborhood of other communities, who have made the greatest progress in husbandry, without advancing in the slightest degree. ”

“ Indeed cheerfulness and affability are two of the leading characteristics of our nation.
Our tillage is exercised in a large plain or common, some hours walk from our dwellings, and all the neighbours resort thither in a body. They use no beasts of husbandry ”

“ Every person in the Farm Colony will be taught the elementary lesson of obedience, and will be instructed in the needful arts of husbandry, or some other method of earning his bread. The Agricultural Section will learn the lesson of the seasons and of the best kind of seeds and plants. ”

“ My dear, could you be trusting yourself to me in the great new land, for the farming is in the very marrow of my bones. Would you be grieving for your own folk, and your own hills, in that new land, where the cattle would be grazing knee-deep in grass, and the horses roaming in herds, long-tailed and with great tangled manes—roaming on the great pastures? ”

“ While the bleating of sheep and the bellowing of cattle reminded us of cultivated fields behind us, the whirring of the pheasant, the drumming of the partridge, and the whistling of the quail among the rocks and lofty evergreens around betokened the uncultivated wilderness. ”

“ The Family on the Farm.—The best environment in which to study the family is the farm. There the relations and activities of the larger world appear in miniature, but with a greater simplicity and unity than elsewhere. There the family gets closer to the soil, and its members feel their relation to nature and the restrictions that nature imposes upon human activity. There appear the occupations of the successive stages of history—hunting, the care of domesticated animals, agriculture, and manufacturing; there are the activities of production, distribution, and consumption of economic goods. ”

“ Everything they owned is in the heap of ashes that marks the spot where the little thatched cottage once stood. Thousands and thousands of human beings are herded together like cattle, with no means to feed themselves, and, unlike cattle, with no one to feed them. ”

“ They drift aimlessly up and down the street; they loiter in the post-office or lounge in the grocery store or hotel bar-room,—no comfort to themselves and no use to the world. With what longing they must look upon the farmers that drive in to get a horse shod or to do a little trading and then drive briskly away! How the vision of the farm, the cattle, the sheep, the barn, the growing crops, the early morning, the sowing, the planting, the harvesting must haunt them! ”

“ The chief of these goods is, of course, food; that is to say, in a primitive state of civilization, success in hunting, whether of berries, mussels and ‘witchetty grubs,’ or of more elusive and difficult game; and later, when hunting ceases to be the mainstay of existence, the continued fertility of the flocks and herds, which form the support of a pastoral race, and of the cornfields and orchards which in their turn come to supplement these, on the appearance of agriculture. Food once supplied, the little tale of primitive man’s limited conception of the desirable is soon completed. ”

“ Domesticated Animals.— When man emerged from his savage state on the earth, one of the first signs of the beginning of civilization was the domestication of animals. The dog, the cow, sheep, and especially the horse, mark epochs in the advance of civilization. Beasts of burden are used the world over, horses almost all over the world, certain cattle, as the water buffalo, in tropical Malaysia; camels, goats, and the llama are also used as draft animals in some other countries. ”

“ By the faint cackling in distant barns, I judge that dame Nature is interested to know how many eggs her hens lay. The Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat meadows. ”

“ Each stage in the progress of the conquest of nature to meet human wants, from the gathering of wild fruits, through hunting and fishing, domestication of animals, herding, and tillage of permanent fields, to the manufacture of universal comforts and tools, and to general commerce, has made more important the welfare of neighbors. ”

“ That was all there was to see, except the herds of cattle and horses and an occasional horseman galloping over the plain, and the sight at long distances of a grove or small plantation of trees, marking the site of an estancia, or sheep and cattle farm, these groves appearing like islands on the sea-like flat country. ”

“ The requirements of a population gradually increasing in numbers could only be met by a supply of food more regular and more abundant than could be provided by the chase. But the possibility of the change from the hunter to the shepherd or herdsman rested on the antecedent existence of animals suited to supply man with food, having gregarious habits, and fitted for domestication, such as sheep, goats, and horned cattle ”

“ Mile after mile of rustic loveliness, ever and anon the sea-limits blue beyond grassy slopes. White farms dozing beneath their thatch in harvest sunshine; hamlets forsaken save by women and children, by dogs and cats and poultry, the labourers afield. ”

“ There is no sign of agriculture. No animals had yet been domesticated; not even man's earliest friend, the dog. Certain implements, perhaps used as the insignia of office, suggest a rude tribal organization and the beginnings of the state. ”

“ The good man, like most of the ministers of that day, had a farm of eighty acres, kept a horse, sheep, three cows, and a yoke of oxen, and did considerable work himself, always feeding his own cattle. ”

“ Intense interest is aroused by its pictures of life in the cattle country at that critical moment of transition when the great tracts of land used for grazing were taken up by the incoming homesteaders, with the inevitable result of fierce contest, of passionate emotion on both sides, and of final triumph of the inevitable tendency of the times. ”

“ A hoard, collected from the simple productions of nature, or a herd of cattle, are, in every rude nation, the first species of wealth. The circumstances of the soil, and the climate, determine whether the inhabitant shall apply himself chiefly to agriculture or pasture ”

“ Yet even if we add neatherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen, in order that our husbandmen may have oxen to plough with, and builders as well as husbandmen may have draught cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces and hides—still our State will not be very large. ”

“ Whether he saw fields of wheat or of clover; a woman leading her cows by a rope to pasture them in the fields; a herd of cows belonging to a large farm; a shepherd keeping his sheep with the aid of his dogs, or putting himself at the head of the flock, and the dogs keeping the procession in order, watching meanwhile to see that none remained behind or went astray from the others — all these subjects fascinated him, and kept him constantly in an attitude of observation, of which he never tired. ”

“ Their habits are
simple; their wants few; nature rolls everything almost spontaneously into their lap. Their cattle, horses and sheep roam at large; not a blade of grass is cut, and none required.” They married young, and took no thought of birth control. Large families were the rule. ”

“ They led a wandering life tending their cattle on the hills, and living in tents. They paid their tribute in cattle, and received an allowance in grain from the king for clearing the land of wild beasts and birds which devour the seeds sown in the fields. ”

“ Oh, the country is the place for boys,—on a nice farm, where there is ploughing, and hoeing, and digging, and sowing, and reaping going on; where they can jump upon a horse, without any saddle, and ride him to water, with his mane for a bridle; where they can help build fences, and help make hay, and help milk cows, and drive them to pasture ”

“ Here we have, in some measure, regained the ancient dignity of our species: our laws are simple and just; we are a race of cultivators; our cultivation is unrestrained, and therefore everything is prosperous and flourishing. For my part I had rather admire the ample barn of one of our opulent farmers, who himself felled the first tree in his plantation, and was first founder of his settlement, than study the dimension of the temple of Ceres. ”

“ The native residents of these woods clear farms, and build and plant like their white neighbours. They rear horses, cattle, and sheep, and sow a sufficient quantity of grain to secure them from want. But there is a great lack of order and regularity in all their agricultural proceedings. ”

“ If a farmer should send his servant out into the field, when winter was approaching, telling him to put the sheep into the fold, that they might be protected from the wolves, and from the cold, it would be thought a strange thing if he should allow him to bring the sheep into the shelter of the fold, and leave the little lambs outside. ”

“ No one with a spark of sentiment for his own country could remain long indifferent. Well-fenced fields under perfect cultivation; splendid-looking grazing pastures, splendid-looking cows, horses, houses, barns. And in every barn, a Ford. ”

“ The whole plan and conception of human society is based on the rustic home and the needs and characteristics of the agricultural family. There have been gipsies, wanderers, knaves, knights-errant, and adventurers, no doubt, but the settled permanent rustic home and the tenure of land about it, and the hens and the 20cow, have constituted the fundamental reality of the whole scene. ”

“ This nation has no fixed place of abode, but shift their encampments from place to place, wherever they can find pasture and water for their cattle, on which they have their whole dependence, as they subsist entirely on flesh and milk. ”

“ So likewise herds of cattle in the field, flocks of sheep and horses, are all common store-houses- so that from the herds and flocks every family may fetch what they want for food or pleasure, without buying and selling. ”

“ We believe that, under the wiser and more enlightened management now developing itself, there is room enough in the Highlands for more Men, more Land under cultivation, more Sheep and more Shepherds, without any diminution of Sport in Grouse or Deer: that there is room enough for all—for more gallant defenders of our country in time of need, for more produce, more comfort, and more intelligence. ”