EFFORTS TO INCREASE FOOD RESOURCES 



in the East and North. It began with a small sailing vessel 

 that set out from Plymouth, England, stopping at Holland 

 and landing on the Massachusetts shore in 1620. The 

 passengers on the Mayflower are well known. What did 

 they bring with them? Planning to make this new world 

 their home, the Pilgrims did not come empty handed. Their 

 ship was small, and no farm animals were brought on that 

 first trip. But there were sacks of seed wheat and of barley; 

 and packet upon packet of the seeds of other foodstuffs. 

 In fact, practically the whole list of European garden 

 vegetables came over with the early New England and 

 Virginia settlers. 



How would these crops grow in the new soil and un- 

 familiar climate? was the question the anxious settlers 

 asked themselves. Would they ripen before the fall freezes? 

 What new insects and blights awaited these plants upon 

 which so much depended? Governor William Bradford 

 tells us the story. The English grain, when planted that 

 first anxious year, "came not to good, eather by ye badness 

 of ye seed, or lateness of ye season, or both or some other 

 defecte." Although the Mayflower passengers preferred the 

 grains to which they were accustomed, they were forced 

 by dire necessity to use an unfamiliar food — a strange- 

 looking cereal that grew on a tall stalk and carried its 

 seed on the side of the plant instead of at the top, as all 

 grains were carried in Europe. Indian corn kept the mem- 

 bers of the colony alive until they learned how to grow 

 their Old World crops under the conditions of a new 

 country. 



Planted in the fall, English wheat and barley, adapted 

 to a mild climate, could not withstand the cold of New 

 England winters. When planted in the spring, it blasted 

 and mildewed and would not ripen. Fortunately for the 

 early settlers, grass grew almost as luxuriantly, if not so 

 green, in the New World as in the Old; and the cattle and 



[321] 



