The Prince Consort's Farms; An Agricultural Memoir - John Chalmers Morton

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 Excerpt: ...per acre may be the cheaper of the two. The whole subject of deep drainage and thorough tillage, to which reference has thus been made, has received admirable illustration in the fields of the Prince Consort's Flemish Farm; and we now return, therefore, to our work of description. In the Map of this Farm on a following page the numbered fields are arable, and the others are pasture. The stone roads are represented by shaded lines, the green rides by dotted lines. Thus every field is in either way easily accessible. The buildings are centrally placed. The cropping is this year (1862) as follows: --Nos. 1 and 5 Wheat, about 34 acres; No. 8 Beans, about 15 acres; Nos. 3, 4, 10, 11 and 12 Oats and Barley, about 80 acres; Nos. 2, 6, and 9 Turnips, Mangold Wurzel and Fallow, about 50 acres; No. 7 Clover, 11J acres. The rotation is a four-course, modified in both the ways which have been recommended; namely, by taking beans instead of clover over one half of the clover break, and by taking barley after a corn crop in place of after the roots or fallow. The whole arable land amounts to about 190 acres, and there are rather more than 200 acres of pasture-land and wood-land, the wliole occupation including-nearly 400 acres. It is for the most part a very stiff soil, and has been greatly improved by its regular division into fields, its tile drainage four feet deep and seven yards apart, its admirable buildings, and its thorough tillage. Fowler's three-furrow steam plough, with a 12-horse engine, has been at work for the last two years. Mr. Brebner informs us that in the autumn of 1861 it ploughed 158 acres from eight to ten inches deep in thirty-nine and a half days, including all the time lost in stoppages and in removals from field to field. The wages paid during th..