Cork Agriculture

The tillage, except on the demesnes of resident gentlemen, presents rather unfavourable features, owing in a great measure to the want of skill and adequate capital, the too minute subdivision of farms, and the superabundant population of the arable districts. The crop of the greatest importance, and cultivated with the greatest care, is that of potatoes, which constitute the staple food of the small farmers and the labourers: it is succeeded in the more fertile districts by wheat, for which the ground is not unfrequently manured with lime, and this is followed by one or two crops of oats. The ground is rarely levelled, properly cleared, or sown with artificial grasses, except by a few of the more opulent farmers on calcareous soils in the west and south parts of the county; barley and oats are more generally cultivated.

The land held by the small farmers, or cottiers, presents an impoverished appearance, and is rarely left to recruit its productive powers by means of rest, until first exhausted by over-cropping. The cabins occupied by this class of tenants are for the most part of a wretched description. A considerable portion of the northern part of the county is appropriated to dairy farms, and is but thinly inhabited; but the land there is in good condition, and the farm-houses more comfortable than in the tillage districts. Some of the principal landowners have corrected the abuses of the cottier system, and adopted for the improvement of their estates, and the amelioration of their tenantry, the practice of letting sufficiently large farms to occupying and working tenants, and providing them with comfortable dwelling-houses and farm-offices suitable to the extent of land and the condition of the holder.

The substances generally employed as manure are, common dung, lime, earth collected from the ditches, sea-sand, and sea-weed. As the beds of limestone are situated in the northern and eastern parts of the county, the farmers in the south-west are precluded from using this material, but find an abundant substitute in the calcareous sea-sand driven upon the shore, which is partly composed of pulverised marine shells in various proportions, and of which the coral sand of Bantry bay, being wholly calcareous, is most esteemed: some kinds of a red colour are also in great esteem; those of a dark blue colour seem to be composed chiefly of the fragments of muscle shells. Spade labour is generally preferred to the use of the plough, of which the prevailing kind is of very rude construction, having short and thick handles, a low beam, and the coulter and sock placed obliquely, so that in working, the mould-board is raised out of the ground; the Scotch swing plough has been introduced by the gentry and wealthy farmers in the neighbourhood of Cork and other places.

Formerly hay and corn were brought from the fields on slide cars or crooks, both of which are still used in the west; but the general improvement of the roads has introduced the wheel car, which, however, is of very rude construction, consisting of little more than a pair of shafts connected by a few cross bars, and resting upon a wooden axletree fixed into small solid wheels of ash plank, and turning with them; in all the low districts the cart, or "butt," has become general. The fences contribute to the general naked appearance of the surface, being commonly formed of banks of earth dug from trenches on each side, and faced with sods or stones; they are frequently planted with furze, and occasionally with white thorn and forest trees. The cattle of the south and south-west are small, seldom weighing more than 3 ½ cwt.; formerly they were all black, but at present the breed is mixed, and of various colours; they generally yield abundance of milk.

In the baronies of Duhallow, and Orrery and Kilmore, forming the north-western portion of the county, the Leicester breed, or, as they are here commonly called, the Limerick heifers, form the stock of some of the rich dairy farms; lands of inferior quality are stocked with a mixed breed of these and the old native black cattle. Indeed the cattle of the great northern vale are altogether superior in size and form to those of the more southern and western districts; and the same may be observed of all other kinds of live stock. The Holderness, Devon, Durham, and Ayrshire breeds have also been partially introduced. There are no large flocks of sheep, except in gentlemen's demesnes; the Leicester is the prevailing breed on good soils, and the common and half-bred Irish on inferior soils.

Horses, mostly black, are, in the northern portion of the county, universally employed by the common farmers: in other parts are kept great numbers of mules of a small size, which are occasionally employed in draught, but chiefly for back loads; and being easily fed, very long lived, and able to endure great fatigue, are well adapted to the purposes of a poor peasantry in a rough country.

Of the extensive woods with which this county was once adorned, numerous vestiges are found both above and beneath the surface. Although now so denuded, the oak, birch, alder, fir, and yew, and even the ash and poplar, appear to be indigenous, and of shrubs and underwoods there seems to have been a still greater variety. The former growth of firs in this part of the island is also traced by their existence in the bogs, in which they greatly exceed in number all the rest. The mountain lands, covered with little but heath and sedgy grass, form extensive tracts of comparative waste: the bogs and marshes are chiefly confined to these elevated regions, being elsewhere of very small extent. The scarcity and dearness of fuel are in many parts very disadvantageous; the maritime towns and the richer inhabitants generally obtain coal from England; while the mass of the people are compelled to seek for peat, which in many places has been exhausted; furze is often planted to supply this grievous deficiency.