Cobbett's Cottage Economy

[Duncan MacIntyre]

This little book first published 1821/22 predates the arrival of the Dexter from Ireland, but makes fascinating reading. The man calculated that a family could produce much of the food it required on quarter of an acre, and each cow could be kept on a further quarter acre if the right crops were grown to feed her.

"For a Cottage, a cow of the smallest sort common in England is, on every account, the best"

"I suppose the 40 rods (quarter of an acre) to be clean and unshaded: for I am to suppose that when a man thinks of 5 quarts of milk a day, an the average, all the year round, he will not suffer his ground to be encumbered by apple trees that give only the means of treating his children to fits of the belly-ache, or with currant and gooseberry bushes, which, though their fruit do very well to amuse, really give nothing worthy of the name of food, except to the blackbirds and thrushes"

But his enthusiasm for home kept cows was nothing compared to his aversion to tea.

"The drink which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general, been tea. It is notorious that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutritious; that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, an in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It is in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards."

"It must be evident to everyone, that the practice of tea drinking mustrender the frame feeble and unfit to encounter hard labour or severe weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness, and effeminacy, a seeking for the fire-side, a lurking in the bed, and, in short, all the characteristics of idleness, for which, in this case, real want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea drinking fills the public house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrups boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to whom the gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel."

I have gone to the trouble of reproducing from the book just in the hope of saving one or two of you from tea drinking, and of course in the hope that you will all get a copy of the book and increase your stocking density to at least 4 cows to the acre.

Duncan.

[Saffy]

Hello Duncan,

Well what what a relief that I don't like tea! :;): Now what about coffee?

Stephanie

[debra wiltshire]

What would he have said about herbal or decaffeinated teas..its a great book in short bites. Very reasonable via Amazon..

[solburydexters]

Gosh now I know what my problem with life has been for nearly 68 years.Mothers milk sustained me in the early months I believe.I propose we ban tea at the Dexter Society AGM before things get completely out of hand