Sheep farm

“ There are other and newer clearings beyond the ranges and out of sight, but here all that is visible is very much trimmer and neater in appearance than our farm.
Over three parts of the basin the plough has passed. About one-half is under wheat, maize, and other crops, while the grass on the remainder looks wonderfully rich, freed as it is from stumps, drained, and, to a measurable extent, levelled. Cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs are feeding in the paddocks.
We eye the scene with great admiration, and even envy. This is the sort of thing our farm ought to be, and will be. ”

“ In the structure of the barn, and in its interior accommodation, much will depend upon the branches of agriculture to which the farm is devoted. A farm cultivated in grain chiefly requires but little room for stabling purposes. Storage for grain in the sheaf, and granaries, will require its room; while a stock farm requires a barn with extensive hay storage, and stables for its cattle, horses, and sheep, in all climates which do not admit of such stocks living through the winter in the field, as is the case in the great grazing districts west of the Alleghanies. ”

“ In respect of cattle kept for all these purposes, which it is customary to feed in the barn yard, it should be added that you should keep as many and only as many as you need for carrying on the work of the farm, so that more easily you can secure diligent care of them from the servants whose chief care is of themselves. In this connection the keeping of sheep is preferable to hogs not only by those who have pastures but also by those who have none, for you should keep them not merely because you have pasture, but for the sake of the manure. ”

“ With an allowance of two acres per cow for summer pasture, and of one and a half acres of mowing-land for winter feeding, the cows it keeps number about a dozen. For team-work on the farm and for road-work and pleasure-driving, there are kept two horses and two oxen. In addition to these there will be a greater or less amount of young stock and the usual swine and poultry, and perhaps a few sheep. The farmer himself is the chief workman on the place, and he has the regular help of a hired man or a grown son. ”

“ For more than a century the wool trade had been waxing so profitable that great tracts of land which had formerly been subject to tillage were year by year turned into pastures for sheep. This process not only tended to raise the price of food, but it deprived many people of employment, since sheep-farming requires fewer hands than tilling the soil. Since the accession of [Pg 47] Henry VIII. there had been many legislative attempts to check the conversion of ploughed land into grassy fields, but the change still continued to go on. ”

“ We then built a log barn for our oxen, cow and horse and got pigs, sheep and chickens as fast as a chance offered.
As fast as possible we fenced in the cultivated land, father and uncle splitting out the rails, while a younger brother and myself, by each getting hold of an end of one of them managed to lay up a fence four rails high, all we small men could do. Thus working on, we had a pretty well cultivated farm in the course of two or three years, on which we produced wheat, corn and potatoes, and had an excellent garden. ”

“ So sheep farming, which had taken about 5% of the arable land, was supplanted somewhat by crop raising, and the rural population could be employed for agriculture. In some places, the threefold system of rotation was replaced by alternating land used for crops with that used for pasture. ”

“ The advantage is especially felt at the present moment, when sheep farms are very difficult to let. We believe that if it were not for deer forests, and if the present condition of sheep farms is prolonged, much of the land in the Highlands might be temporarily unoccupied, or occupied on terms ruinous to the proprietor. ”

“ The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted claim, I see (by an old record taken from the Tower of London) , of turning all live stock on the forest, at proper seasons, "bidentibus exceptis." [3] The reason, I presume, why sheep [4] are excluded, is, because, being such close grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder the deer from thriving. ”

“ Horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, thrive and fatten on it, and the millions of acres of exhausted and deteriorated lands, that descend as a profitless inheritance from generation to generation in the Eastern and Southern States, can be improved and kept fertile, with profit to the farmer during the process of renovation, without the aid of artificial fertilizers or imported manures, by feeding the tubers of the Jerusalem Artichoke to stock on the farm. ”

“ Then as the dry season came on and the barren waste came creeping back they also worked their way back toward the more settled farm lands, until autumn found them selling their wool to the nearby farmers and townspeople in exchange for wheat and barley and some of the other necessaries of life.
The Shepherd's Daily Life
Sheep-raising might seem at times a peaceful and even a somewhat monotonous business. The flocks found their own food, grazing in the pastures. ”

“ The high profit made from sheep-raising cannot be [Pg 107/263] explained by fluctuations in the price of wool. The price of wool fell in the fifteenth century. Sheep-farming was comparatively profitable because the soil of the ancient fields was too barren to repay the costs of tillage. Land which was in part already abandoned, was turned into pasture. The barrenness and low productivity of the common fields is explicitly recognised by contemporaries, and is given as the reason for the conversion of arable to pasture. ”

“ Still, they should be cultivated on every farm where cattle, hogs, or fowls, are kept. [Pg 315]
PASTURES.
These are very important to all who keep domestic animals. The following brief directions for successful pasturing are essential. It is very poor economy to have all your pasture-lands in one field, or to put all your animals together. Pasture fields in rotation, two weeks each, allowing rest and growth for six weeks: first horned cattle, next horses, then sheep. Horses feed closer than cattle, and sheep closer than horses; each also eats something that the others do not relish. ”

“ Where the farm is celebrated for a special breed of sheep, the great event of the year is the annual auction at home of ram lambs. Where the farm is famous for cattle, the chief occasion is the yearly sale of young shorthorns. And recently, since steam plough and artificial manure and general high pressure have been introduced, many large arable farmers sell their corn crops standing. The purchaser pays a certain price for the wheat as it grows, reaps it when ripe, and makes what profit he can. ”

“ There is on the ranch a large well built stone house, and also a fine sheep shed, with bins for 5,000 bushels of grain. This shed is covered with Florida Cypress shingles and affords protection for 2,000 head of sheep, and can be used just as well for other kinds of stock. Here can be bred and raised to maturity at a mere nominal cost, all kinds of cattle, horses, mules, and other stock, no feed in winter being required beyond the natural supply of grass. After the stock reaches maturity they can be shipped to the Illinois Farm ”

“ This great difference may perhaps,' says Mr Stephenson, and I think truly, 'be accounted for by the practice of sheep cropping the grass much closer and oftener than cattle, and which, of course, prevents its growing so rapidly with them as with cattle.'"
The treatment of farm horses in winter is under the direction of the ploughman, whose duties are first described, after which the system of management and feeding of farm and saddle horses is discussed at a length of thirty pages. ”

“ The plain is formed by alluvial deposits, covered with rich pasture, and capable of supporting races of large sheep, as the Leicesters.
Sheep are the only kind of live-stock which ought to be kept in mountainous districts, especially when green crop cannot be cultivated. Sheep-farming must necessarily prevail in the Highlands, where there are few tracts suited for the pasturage of black cattle: The value of its adaptation to the natural circumstances of that district is proved by the rapid progress which it made, and the profits which resulted to the individuals with whom it originated. ”

“ Then followed the more profitable occupation of the hill pasture under sheep stock, and the introduction of sheep-farming. The farms held by the tacksmen were very generally converted into sheep-farms, and new ones were created, as opportunity offered, by throwing the townships occupied by the joint tenants into larger farms, and adding extensive ranges of hill pasture to them. So far as the latter was concerned, the placing under sheep of extensive ranges of hill country which had previously either lain waste or been occupied as deer-forests, had no effect upon the population ”

“ Systematic enclosure for the purpose of sheep-farming on a large scale was but the final step in a process of progressively less intense cultivation which had been going on for centuries. The attention of some historians has been devoted too exclusively to the covetous sheep-master, against whom contemporary invective was directed, and the process which was going on in fields where no encloser was at work has escaped their notice. ”

“ For there is no work for husbandmen when there is no arable-farming. One shepherd and herdsman will suffice for a pasture-farm, which, while under tillage, [Pg 385] employed many hands. Corn has in the meantime been made dearer in many places by the same cause. Wool, too, has risen in price, owing to the rot amongst the sheep, and now the little clothmakers are unable to supply themselves with it. For the sheep are falling into few and powerful hands ”

“ But the time is rapidly approaching when all this may be changed; for sheep-farming may be looked upon from its double advantage of their increasing popularity for food purposes and their value for the extension of a system of animal manuring, and thus supplying, by feeding off crops, one of the great wants of the country. ”

“ The smaller size of the flocks and the breeding of sheep for meat rather than for wool, the cultivation of English grasses and of extensive crops of turnips and other roots on which to fatten sheep and lambs, all tend to change sheep-farming from the mere grazing of huge mobs on wide, unimproved runs held by pastoral licences. ”

“ They have ten men on the farm, who have put in 155 acres of wheat, 50 of corn, 20 of cane, 10 of lucern, 5 of oats, 5 of potatoes, 18 of orchard, and 15 of other vegetables. They have 25 brood mares, 7 colts, 15 horses; also 200 cows, 150 calves, 70 oxen, 280 young stock; also 700 sheep, and 500 lambs. They have 40 wagons, a blacksmith and wagon maker. ”

“ Perchance the golden fields are waving in the sunlight, and the old gable-roofed farmhouses stand out in a sort of comfortable solitude, surrounded by their stacks and their barns. Down in the meadows, by the stream which waters the landscape, cattle are grazing; while afar off, on the uplands which shut in the horizon, flocks of sheep feed among the shadows. ”

“ In spite of the standing stumps, the rough ground, and the mere surface-sowing, our grass will carry four sheep per acre all the year round; some of it more. It is not all fenced in—that would be too much to expect—but most of it is; and what is not gives the milch cows plenty of feed, and so keeps them from wandering off. The clearings are not all in one piece. They are divided off into paddocks, and there is a good deal of standing bush among them, some of which will eventually come down, and some of which will be left. ”

“ Where a farmer keeps a small flock of sheep as merely an extra source of profit, and chiefly for his own consumption, he cannot do better than sow a small field of rape for their winter feed, as in most climates it is ready for cutting by June, and a good crop sown, as I have suggested, will feed from 25 to 35 sheep per acre. ”

“ In my judgment, when the land is not designed for immediate cultivation, sheep would be found the most effective and economical agents for preparing the soil for tillage. The course to be pursued in this system would be to cut off the trees and large bushes, pile and burn the refuse material, and enclose a field, its size being determined by the number of sheep, by a secure fence. ”

“ As much of the pasture-land as could be sown with wheat, rye, and barley, was brought into cultivation again, and the sheep still further reduced in number, by being transferred to the villagers, as they could buy them with their labour. Several farms had been let on the old rental to the old tenants or their sons—Miles stipulating that the old people should be provided for by the young farmer, if the hard life of the woods had made them incapable of work for themselves. ”

“ Four young porkers in the front row uttered shrill squeals of disapproval, and all four of them sprang to their feet and began speaking at once. But suddenly the dogs sitting round Napoleon let out deep, menacing growls, and the pigs fell silent and sat down again. Then the sheep broke out into a tremendous bleating of 'Four legs good, two legs bad!' which went on for nearly a quarter of an hour and put an end to any chance of discussion. ”

“ III. Almost every farmer, at least in the old States, finds some part of his land infested with bushes and briers, which seem to flourish by cutting, if he finds time to cut them, and which the ruggedness of his soil precludes his exterminating by the plow. In every such case, Sheep are his natural allies—his unpaid police—his vigilant and thorough-going assistants. Give them an even start in Spring with the bushes and briers; let their number be sufficient; and they are very sure to come out ahead in the Fall. ”