The Farming Year
Month | Work that needed to be done | Weather the farmers wanted |
---|---|---|
January | mending and making tools, repairing fences | showers |
February | carting manure and marl | showers |
March | ploughing, manure and marl spreading | dry, no severe frosts |
April | spring sowing of seed, harrowing | showers and sunshine |
May | digging ditches, first ploughing of fallow fields | showers and sunshine |
June | haymaking, second ploughing of fallow field, sheep | dry weather |
July | haymaking, sheep-shearing, weeding of crops | dry early, showers later |
August | harvesting | war, dry weather |
September | threshing, ploughing, pruning fruit trees | showers |
October | last ploughing of the year, autumn sowing of seed | dry, no severe frosts |
November | collecting acorns for pigs | showers and sunshine |
December | mending and making tools, killing animals | showers and sunshine |
Average rainfall per month in Britain (in inches)
month | inches | month | inches | month | inches | month | inches |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
January | 2.3 | April | 1.9 | July | 2.5 | October | 6.5 |
February | 3.5 | May | 1.9 | August | 3.0 | November | 3.0 |
March | 2.1 | June | 1.9 | September | 3.8 | December | 3.1 |
Primary Sources
(1) John Brown, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1828)
A girl named Mary Richards, who was thought remarkably handsome when she left the workhouse, and, who was not quite ten years of age, attended a drawing frame, below which, and about a foot from the floor, was a horizontal shaft, by which the frames above were turned. It happened one evening, when her apron was caught by the shaft. In an instant the poor girl was drawn by an irresistible force and dashed on the floor. She uttered the most heart-rending shrieks! Blincoe ran towards her, an agonized and helpless beholder of a scene of horror. He saw her whirled round and round with the shaft - he heard the bones of her arms, legs, thighs, etc. successively snap asunder, crushed, seemingly, to atoms, as the machinery whirled her round, and drew tighter and tighter her body within the works, her blood was scattered over the frame and streamed upon the floor, her head appeared dashed to pieces - at last, her mangled body was jammed in so fast, between the shafts and the floor, that the water being low and the wheels off the gear, it stopped the main shaft. When she was extricated, every bone was found broken - her head dreadfully crushed. She was carried off quite lifeless.