Agriculture, Etc – Though some parts of the parish have been measured, there is no regular survey or map of the whole. It is believed, however, to contain about 6000 acres. Of these, from 1500 to 2000 may be under cultivation. But the whole produce will seldom exceed 5000 bolls, for among the tenants here, farming is only in the state of infancy. It has emerged but little from the rude practice of their forefathers, a hundred years ago. Their horses, in general, are miserable ponies or garrons, bought at from 3L to 5L Sterling, each. Their cattle are a little better in proportion, but few of their sheep are worth above 5s per head. So bleak and bare, indeed, are the hill tops and muirs, that this parish is very little calculated for sheep pasture. Their implements of husbandry are equally poor, except with a few more careful and industrious men, who, having got better garrons, begin of late to use the light chain plough, with curved mold board, and perhaps a coup-cart or two, or a small wain for oxen on their farm.

Their utensils are coarse, being commonly made by the tenant’s own hand, with the help of scarcely any other instrument but the ax and adze, which some of them can use very dextrously.

There is no wheat raised in this parish. The prevailing crops are oats and pease, sown in April, and bear, or bear and barley intermixed, which they commonly sow in May. Since the year 1782, when the crop of oats in this parish failed so much, that scarcely any of them were fit for sowing again, early oats of the Blainsley kind have been sown for the most part on the late farms, particularly by the tenants of Auchterflow, where they answer so well, that farmers in similar situations, over all this country, purchase from them for feed. The harvest begins in general about the 20th August, and ends in October, sooner of later, according to the drought or wetness of the summer, and the exposure of the farms. But on some grounds near the shore, the seasons are perhaps as early as in any corner of Scotland. For here a few tenants sow barley the first or second week of April, and reap it frequently in the end of July, or beginning of August. On these light grounds, a very simple rotation is practised, of barley and a green crop alternately. The green crop is pease or potatoes, for turnips, though a better preparative for barley, have not yet been introduced by the tenantry here.
In the higher and deeper grounds, no regular rotation of crops is followed, except on the heritor’s own farms, where a good many of the modern improvements are practised with success.

The great aim of the country tenants, is to raise as much bear and barley as possible, which, finding a ready market with the highland distillers in Ferrintosh and Redcastle, turns out to be most profitable crop. Most of those tenants raise also a little flax. But, as they seldom have ground in proper heart for it, it answers poorly, nor is there a mill in Ardmeanach for dressing it. About 50 years ago, the culture of hemp was practised, to the extent of from 30 to 40 acres in this parish. But since the importation of that article has become more frequent, they do not now sow a third part of the former quantity. More than 100 acres are now planted yearly with potatoes, which, besides preparing the land for barley, are exceedingly useful in their families. Clay is much used over all this country as a manure. They mix it with dunghills in the summer, and spread it out on their light grounds intended for barley in the spring. They imagine it has good effect in keeping out the summer heat and drought from hurting the roots of the corn. It may thus in some measure correct the soil, but the kind of clay used by them, can add little to the vegetable food of plants. But the chief error of these tenants is that they rest little of their grounds, and these only when quite worn out, nor do they sow any grass seeds. This obliges them to send off most of their cattle to remote highland glens for the summer, where they lose many of them, and their growth is much retarded. What a loss must it also be to their farms, to be deprived of the dung of those cattle for about five months of the year?

Such extreme backwardness in the state of farming here is occasioned partly by the tenants’ own obstinacy, that they will not follow good example set before them by the gentlemen farmers, partly by their poverty, as a few of them can afford to purchase good utensils or grass seeds, but chiefly by the highness of their rents, the scarcity of servants, and the shortness of their leases, which in few cases exceeds 7, 8 or 15 years. Another bar to improvement is the neglect of winter herding. For from the end of the harvest to the middle of April the tenants’ cattle pasture in common. And a man whose farm lies in a warm situation, and being in proper heart produces good foggage, cannot have the benefit thereof to himself, without either perpetual watching or enclosures, which he is not able to afford, but gets almost the substance eaten out of his grounds, by the neighbours’ cattle. Until these obstacles, or at least some of them, be removed, there can be little hope of seeing agriculture prosper in this district.

The number of horses in the parish, including garrons, may be about 250, of cattle 480, and sheep nearly 600.