maintaining the full capacity of horse-power on the farm was to breed,
or buy at six months old, two colts, and sell off two of the oldest
horses every year. As two colts could be bought for forty or fifty
pounds at that age, and the two old horses sold for a hundred and
twenty pounds or thereabouts, a good balance was left on the
transaction, while the full strength of the teams was maintained.

Jim had sufficient foresight to view with alarm the gradual dispersion
of most of the oldest and best farmers in the neighbourhood, and the
conversion to grass of the arable land, owing to the unfair and
dangerous competition of American wheat. When we discussed the subject
and foretold the straits to which the country would be reduced in the
event of war with a great European Power, he concluded these
forebodings with the habitual remark, "Well, what I says is, them as
lives longest will see the most." A truism, no doubt, but, as time has
proved, by no means an incorrect view.

There was always plenty of employment for an estate carpenter on my
farms, as I had a vast number of buildings, including four separate
sets of barn, stable, sheds, and yard, away from the village, as well
as those near the Manor House, and many repairs were necessary. There
were, too, very many gates, repairs to fences, hurdle-making, and odd
jobs, to keep a man employed for months at a time. The building of
three hop-kilns, with the necessary storerooms for green and dried
hops, as the hop acreage increased, the preparation of hop-poles, and
the erection of wire-work on larger poles, which gradually superseded
the ordinary pole system, all demanded a great deal of regular work.

I was most fortunate in obtaining the services of a man living in a
neighbouring village, not only as estate carpenter, but as a skilled