Rural Economy in New England 331 



was a psychological luxury in which he did not feel he could afford 

 to indulge. The farmers of Litchfield and Berkshire and of the 

 Connecticut Valley had no more knowledge of the scientific princi- 

 ples involved in the action of gypsum as a fertilizer than had their 

 contemporaries in the hills of Worcester or Tolland, but they had 

 learned somehow that gypsum produced bigger crops. They wanted 

 bigger crops because they had a market. Hence they were willing 

 to invest their money and labor and make the experiment. Hence 

 their progress in the science of agriculture. 



The Farm Equipment — Buildings, Tools and Implements. 



It was this lack of a market which explains to a large extent the 

 small investment of capital in agriculture at this time, either in per- 

 manent improvements, such as drains and buildings, or in tools and 

 implements. A house and barn were necessary and these were in 

 general conveniently and substantially built. The latter had a 

 threshing floor in the middle and stables for horses and cows on 

 either side. Some of the hay was mowed away above the stables 

 and the remainder was stacked near the barn in sheds, open at the 

 sides and covered with a thatched or shingled roof. A corn-crib 

 was always in evidence, set up on stilts as now, as a protection against 

 mice and dampness. Of the tools and implements used on the farm 

 we shall have occasion to speak in another connection.^ They 

 were few and ill-contrived. One writer says that the farmer of 

 this period could have carried them all, except the cart and harrow, 

 upon his back.2 They included a plough, a hoe, a pitchfork, a ma- 

 nure-fork and a shovel, all of which were clumsily constructed of wood, 

 often by the farmer himself, and plated with strips of sheet iron, 

 perhaps by the local blacksmith; a flail for threshing grain and a 

 a fan and riddle-sieve for winnowing. The practice of treading out 

 the grain from the straw by driving cattle over it, which had per- 

 sisted since the days of the ancient Israelites, was still to be found 

 in some of the Middle states, but seems to have been superseded 

 in New England.^ The sickle, the most ancient of harvesting im- 



' See infra, pp. 364-365. 



^ Flint, Charles Louis. Progress in Agriculture. In Eighty Years' Progress 

 of the United States. Hartford. 1867. p. 24. 



^ See American Museum, V. 379; and Deane, New England Farmer, p. 283. 

 A day's work with the flail yielded from four to six bushels of wheat and from six 

 to twelve bushels of barley, according to the size of the grains. Ibid. Indian 

 corn was sometimes threshed with a flail but a more efficient method was to scrape 

 the grains from the cob by rubbing the ear across the edge of a spade. Mass. 

 Agric. Soc. Papers, II. 1807, 25-26. 



