Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Page 14

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The English Letters of Pastor Schrøter
The prospect of the enclosures around Thorshavn is now
really charming if compared with its wild aspect formerly.
I hope it will increase hastily. I suppose it is most of the
stones cleared away, and the land well drained.
In the last year of Schrøter’s life we read that 200 acres
(80 hectares) were under cultivation, and that the purchase
of this land by the smallholders was then under discussion.
The farming experiments carried out by Schrøter and his
friends in the last 20 years of his life, with the aim of
improving husbandry, make quite an impressive list. In 1836,
he sent to Shetland for seed potatoes. Next year, he planted
Shetland rhubarb with success. In 1842, he tells of successful
cabbage cultivation on the Shetland pattern, allowing two
seasons for growth, with turf ashes applied the first year, and
strong manure the second.
Schrøter was also keen on the improvement of the animals
of the Faroe Islands. In 1832 he imported a young ram from
Shetland, and in 1844 he was speculating on the idea of
introducing apalca sheep. That year, too, he and some of his
friends tried the method, recommended by Trevelyan, of
salting grass instead of making hay. Next year, Trevelyan sent
him some seeds of tussock grass from the Falkland Islands.
Schrøter remarks:
This is indeed very curious that I now in my old age
have had the fortune to plant grass from Isles hardly men-
tioned in our geographical books, when I was a boy.
However, he had the same difficulty with this grass as he
had with his cabbages — the sheep persisted in breaking into
his enclosure in winter and eating the plants. Schrøter also
had very good results with turnip and carrot seed sent him
by Trevelyan, and after the Irish potato disease appeared in
Faroe, he tried out Danish seed potatoes.
In the development of the fisheries, the decade 1841 to