TO CONTINUE with the essay of Thomas Todd of The Green, Lambrigg, north of Kendal which he wrote in 1870 entitled Essay on the best mode of cultivating a dairy and stock farm of 200 acres in the Kendal or Lonsdale wards.

"A farm never looks well with the fences neglected and great attention should be paid to the gates seeing that they are well hung and painted every three years as they then last for a long time.

The best season of the year to lay hedges is in February or March.

Take a hack and spade and straighten up the dyke before you begin to lay the hedge and, if there are any dead gaps, plant some quick thorns in them with fresh soil and manure. If a fence be an old bad one, grub it up and raise a new one. I would never attempt to raise a new thorn fence on an old dyke unless it was a boundary fence.

The best way to raise a new thorn fence is to take a plough and a pair of horses and open out the same as ploughing for corn, go four times about but the two dead furrows are included, two of the furrows then laid up on each side, that making the new dyke three times about.

Then spread on a good covering of farmyard manure and fill up the middle with solid from each side, planting two rows of thorn quicks five in the yard in each row.

If you have any hares and rabbits, do not cut off the tops but plant them whole as then the rabbits cannot injure them, but if you have no rabbits nor hares I would cut the tops off.

The best time to plant young hedges is in March.

If it be good land and the thorns well protected and cleaned, they will make a good fence in four years.

I have several young fences that I have laid in the manner aforesaid on my present farm and in four years they have made very good turnable fences.

The thorns will grow much faster when the ground has been ploughed over.

Where the new fence is in the same direction as the old one, I would make the old fence as good as possible and let it remain instead of railing till the new fence gets up and then grub up the old one.

Great care should be taken to keep clean the young thorns. There is also a great saving of land by grubbing up the old fences. The water-courses require a great deal of attention and all the little streams should be covered if they could be made to carry the water at all times.

An open gutter through the middle of a field causes great waste of land but we must have watering places for the cattle.

If there is any wet land on the farm, it should be drained, but I cannot give any statement as to the depths of the drains as it depends upon the nature of the ground but one of the most particular points is to have plenty of fall.

I have put down upwards of 3,000 roods of drains on my present farm varying in depth from 3 to 7 feet deep and 5 12 yards apart."

Dialect word: Kalied meaning drunk Thought for the day: Nature seems determined to make us work. The less hair we have, the more face we have to wash.