Farm Life

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Farm Life

A New World. Beginning with the first English settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, settlers relied on the natives for food and knowledge of agricultural methods. The Pilgrims learned to fertilize the soil with small fish. The land was so plentiful, however, that many farmers did not bother to fertilize; when the soil gave out, they would clear more land. The first colonists did not use plows, but hoes, spades, and sturdy sticks. After 1650 more farmers used wooden plows with an iron plowshare, a blade that cut deep into the soil. Plowing depended on the soil and surrounding vegetation. Hard and stony soil where the white oak grew required plowing. Land dominated by beech, maple, and birch denoted a rich soil that would grow corn without plowing. Pine grew in a sandy soil that, though often not needing the plow, lost its fertility within a few years. Plowed soil required a harrow (a large tree branch dragged by a team of horses or oxen) to break up clods of dirt. Colonists used iron sickles to harvest crops.

WATER MILLS

Successful living in early America depended on harnessing the environment to one’s benefit. A necessity in the colonial community for grinding grain or cutting wood was the water mill. Wind powered some early mills, but the most efficient mills were driven by the force of a falling stream or river. Some colonists built horizontal mills, where the waterwheel lay parallel to the water. This was a quick and inexpensive way to build a mill. More efficient were mills where the water-wheel was perpendicular to the water. Undershot waterwheels rotated clockwise as water rushed onto the blades; overshot waterwheels rotated counterclockwise as water fell from above, hitting the blades and turning the wheel. As the wheel turned, it transferred power to a shaft that rotated gears connected to another shaft that rotated the millstone. Since the water rarely ceased, the mill could operate indefinitely, except during prolonged drought. Farmers from the surrounding region brought their grain or lumber to the mill. There they talked to neighbors and turned the produce of the land into flour for baking bread or boards for building shelters.

Sources: Alan Marcus and Howard Segal, Technology in America: A Brief History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989);

Edwin Tunis, Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginnings of American Industry (Cleveland: World, 1965).

Girdling. Before one could farm, trees had to be removed. Some farmers chose to cut them down during June after the planting was done. Later in the summer the farmer burned the dead branches. Stump and root removal required the combined effort of animal and human strength. The easiest method of clearing trees was girdling, which colonists learned from the Indians. The prospective farmer could girdle dozens of trees in one day. All that he required was a sharp knife or ax. The farmer cut a deep incision that penetrated the bark into the wood. The incision encircled the trunk near the base. In time the vegetation of the tree died, and its branches

became brittle. Eventually the tree would fall in a windstorm. Girdling was best on land that did not need plowing. The farmer walked in and about the dead trees, digging small holes into which he dropped corn seeds. What had been a forest became a cornfield.

Sap to Syrup. It was rare in early America to find a farmer not wearing a homespun item of clothing, using an ax handle that was not carved from local ash, eating a dinner that was not the product of one’s own land, or living in a house not made of wood cut into boards at a local sawmill. The colonist relied on neighbors as much as possible, but often farm life required self-sufficiency. In some cases what was homemade was superior to products imported from anywhere in the world. Early each year New England farmers placed wooden troughs around the maple trees of the forest. Farmers made these troughs by hand, using an ax; an experienced individual could make three dozen troughs in a day. In March, when the winter nights were cold but the days were sometimes mild, the farmer cut a circular incision an inch or two in diameter in the maple tree to allow the sap to drip into the trough. Some maples gave two to three gallons of sap per day. After the farmer collected the sap in barrels, he brought it to a large outdoor fire over which hung large kettles. Women tended the kettles and boiled the liquid to a heavy maple syrup; repeated boiling produced sugar for candies and cakes.