Lark Rise

I've dived straight into a Christmas present, Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford.

"Lark Rise" (≈Juniper Hill) was in NE Oxfordshire, near Bicester. It was wheat country on clay. It's the 1880s.

Boots were often bought with the extra money the men earned in the harvest field. When that was paid, those lucky families which were not in arrears with their rent would have a new pair all round, from the father's hobnailed dreadnoughts to little pink kid slippers for the baby. (p. 31)

The name "Dreadnought" originated with an Elizabethan war-ship, the start of a long naval tradition. Another of its many later uses was to describe weatherproof working clothes; a dreadnought coat, or dreadnought boots. (Lawyer Pleydell wears a "dreadnought-coat" in Scott's Guy Mannering (1815), and the mounted farmer wears "dreadnought overalls" in the opening paragraph of The Black Dwarf, 1816.) In 1899, the early days of motoring, the "Dreadnought" was a new design of durable tyre; actually "tire", it was American. 

Hobnail boots lasted longest in the military and aren't used for muddy land work today. (But I did see a bunch of guys wearing them in the public bar of a remote East Sussex pub in the 1990s.)  

It was no hardship to her to be obliged to keep to the greensward, for flowers strange to the hamlet soil flourished there, eyebright and harebell, sunset-coloured patches of lady's-glove, and succory with vivid blue flowers and stems like black wire. (pp. 35-36).

"Succory" is Chicory (Cichorium intybus). "Lady's-glove" is best-known as an alternative name for Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), but here it means Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus); recorded from nearby Northamptonshire in Britten and Holland's Dictionary of English Plant-names. Thanks to the Facebook Wild Flower group for helping with that one! 

Of different fields at the farm:

... and was the soil easily workable or of back-breaking heaviness or so bound together with that 'hemmed' twitch that a ploughshare could scarcely get through it. (p. 52)

Twitch or Common Couch (Elymus repens) was a significant plant when daily life depended on manually breaking the soil. The web of wiry rhizomes near the soil surface was difficult to chop out and the species re-grows from small fragments. You must never compost twitch, so the roots were burnt; then they had a rather nice fragrance (and were once used as a kind of palo santo incense). FT mentions "the light blue haze and the scent that can haunt for a lifetime" (p. 53). Twitch also grew in the vegetable plots of the hamlet cottages:

Often, on moonlight nights in spring, the solitary fork of some one who had not been able to tear himself away would be heard and the scent of his twitch fire smoke would float in at the windows. (p. 63)

The vegetable gardeners, men after a day of field work, 

considered keeping the soil constantly stirred about the roots of growing things the secret of success and used the Dutch hoe a good deal for this purpose. The process was called 'tickling'. (p. 62)

Singing at the 'Wagon and Horses'

The pop songs of the day: "Over the garden wall", written by Harry Hunter for the London-based Mohawk Minstrels in c. 1879. https://folksongandmusichall.com/index.php/over-the-garden-wall/  . It's remained popular (the Carter Family did a great version)... I've even sung it myself. 

"Tommy, Make Room for your Uncle". Naughty comic song first published in 1876, written by T.S. Lonsdale and popularized by W.B. Fair. https://folksongandmusichall.com/index.php/tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle/ .

"Two Lovely Black Eyes". Charles Coburn's parody of "My Nellie's Blue Eyes", sung to the same traditional Italian melody, first published in 1886. About "the demon politics", as Scott puts it. https://folksongandmusichall.com/index.php/two-lovely-black-eyes/ .

An outlandish knight, all from the north lands,

   A-wooing came to me,

He said he would take me to the north lands

   And there he would marry me. ... (p. 74)

A once-popular ballad in many variants (Child 4), belonging to an even larger and older tradition throughout Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Isabel_and_the_Elf_Knight . FT says that songs like this had gone out of fashion, and old David was only asked to sing it from politeness.