Rural Economy in New England 323 



it surely dependable/ and its general utility to man and beast, this 

 crop was peculiarly adapted to a region in which labor was expensive. 

 The system of planting in hills at the corners of a four or five-foot 

 square, which the colonists had learned from the Indians, rendered 

 cultivation by cross-plowing feasible and so reduced the necessity 

 of hand hoeing.- This is probably the reason why this crop was 

 given more careful cultivation than any other. Besides rye which, 

 combined with Indian corn, furnished the flour for bread, oats, bar- 

 ley, and buckwheat were regularly sown in small amounts. Both 

 the oats and barley were recognized to be poor crops,^ but still they 

 were necessary, and therefore, under the self-sufl5cing system of 

 agriculture, they had to be grown. The buckwheat was a useful 

 crop in many ways. Its value in cleaning the fields of weeds was 

 already recognized and it was also occasionally ploughed under to 

 serve as a "green" fertilizer. The blossoms furnished food for the 

 farmer's bees and the grain was used as a food for poultry ."* 



Why the Wheat Crop Failed. 



Wheat could not be successfully grown except in a few favored 

 regions in New England, such as the valley of the Connecticut River 

 and the western portions of Massachusetts and Connecticut, in 

 Berkshire and Litchfield Counties.^ Other grains, as we shall see, 

 yielded poor enough results, but the results of wheat cultivation 

 were so disappointing that it was early abandoned in most regions 



' In the answers received from the farmers in reply to its questions, the Massa- 

 chusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture printed the following: "From Wor- 

 cester, it is remarked, that the crop of Indian corn is the most uniform, and the 

 one on which the farmer can most securely rely; and it is alleged, that it is the only 

 one well cultivated in our country, and that for all these and other reasons it is 

 thought the most useful." Papers, II. 18. 



- See Livingston, American Agriculture, p. 335. He says further: "Ten acres 

 of corn are hoed with less expense, than one of beans or turnips, . . ." 

 The practice of sowing pumpkins in among the rows of com, to which this writer 

 in another passage refers, would have interfered somewhat with the cultivation 

 of the corn. 



' Of oats and barley the author of Notes on Farming says, p. 18: "I have not 

 mentioned oats, because in this country it is a contemptible crop and scarce worth 

 raising; barley being far better even for the feed of horses." The author of this 

 thirty-eight page pamphlet, printed anonymously in New York in 1787, was Hon. 

 Charles Thompson, a member of the first Continental Congress and of the Phila- 

 delphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. 



■• See Livingston, American Agriculture, p. 334. 



° Salisbury, in Litchfield County, was especially noted for the successful cul- 

 tivation of this grain. Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, p. 258. 



