Rural Economy in New England 325 



vated to some extent, and principally as a food for cattle. Although 

 indigenous in America, it seems not to have been well known until 

 the early part of the eighteenth century.^ By the end of the cen- 

 tury almost every farmer cultivated from one to four or five acres 

 of potatoes, not in a separate field but along the borders of the corn 

 or other grain fields. Occasionally we find turnips and carrots 

 mentioned^ but their cultivation had not become at all general. 

 A cheaper substitute for root crops which was used to some extent 

 for winter fodder was the pumpkin. Planted in the hills of corn, 

 it required no extra land to be cultivated and grew abundantly 

 without attention. In the fall after the corn had been cut and shocked 

 the pumpkins were easily gathered. Although they could not be 

 preserved as long as the root crops, yet while they lasted they fur- 

 nished a fairly good substitute. Hay remained throughout all this 

 period, however, the chief winter fodder for all sorts of live stock. ^ 



Flax was not a crop especially suited to New England at this time, 

 since it required an amount of labor and fertilization inconsistent 

 with the prevailing extensive system of cultivation. Yet flax was 

 necessary for the production of the homespun linen and tow cloth 

 and hence a small field, probably only a fraction of an acre, was 

 regularly sown. A part of the flax was allowed to ripen and although 

 this practice made the fiber less suitable for textiles, yet from the 

 seed thus secured linseed oil was obtained. This, as we have seen, 

 was in some regions a commercial product.* 



The smaller vegetables, such as peas, beans, onions,^ etc., were 



' Belknap, History of New Hampshire, II. 37, credits the Scotch-Irish families 

 who settled Londonderry, New Hampshire, in 1719 with the re-introduction of 

 this plant from Europe. 



^ As in Goodrich's Statistical Account of Ridgefield, pp. 5-6. 



' The best contemporary discussion of the methods of planting and preserving 

 pumpkins is found in Notes on Farming, pp. 20-21. Colonel Taylor, of Virginia, 

 considered pumpkins a much superior crop to either turnips or potatoes, in spite 

 of the advocacy of the latter in the English treatises with which he was familiar. 

 The results of his experiments he published in a series of essays entitled Arator. 

 (3 ed. Baltimore, 1817), pp. 115 ff. The bulk of this work was written before 1810. 



* Mass. Agric. Soc. Papers, II. 1807, 41-42. In Fairfield County, Connect- 

 icut, the export of flaxseed had assumed some importance, the surplus over con- 

 sumption amounting to about 20,000 bushels a year. The result of this outlet 

 was a considerable specialization in the crop. Dwight says: "A few years since 

 (ca. 1800) more flax was raised here than in the whole of New England beside." 

 Travels, III. 499-500. 



* The two towns which exported onions to any extent were Wethersfield, Con- 

 necticut, and Barnstable, Massachusetts. Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, p. 9; 

 Kendall, Travels, II. 129. 



