412 



JfEW EN'GLANI) FARMED, 



FARMING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 



Though farming is one of the oldest employ- 

 ments in which men have ever been engaged, the im- 

 provementa in it have been very slowly intrcxlueed. 

 Tlie approaches to perfection which have been 

 attained in its operations have been made by short 

 steps, and those taken at long intervals. It is 

 indeed a great art. Were all that is known of 

 its varied progresses blotted out of memory to- 

 day, it is doubtful if, with all our modern appli- 

 ances, the study of a century would suffice to give 

 it its present position. It is only )ry looking 

 back upon the past that we are able to note its 

 improvements ; for grown sciences and well de- 

 ve|j^ed art arc old oaks, — they seem to stand from 

 yea^' to year without change, adding nothing to the 

 diameter of their trunks, and their branches main- 

 taining only their old size. A score of years make 

 their mark through ; and when the tree is cut 

 down, each year shows its own ring. 



Farmers in this country a hundred years ago 

 could hardly be expected to pride themselves on 

 the good condition of tlieir farms, the excellence 

 of their stock, or the yield of their crops. The 

 stumps of the first forests stood in their wheat 

 fields, and were not rotted in their oldest pasture 

 grounds. The Indians were barrassing them on 

 the frontier, and political questions of the gravest 

 import would h ive disturbed their problems of field 

 culture, had any such problems bt^en presented. 

 And yet our Yanlceo farmers of the morn of the 

 eighteenth century were nearly the counterpart 

 of the farmers of England. In neither country had 

 much notion of iuiprovoment taken root. Ambi- 

 tious men were not in their i-anks, and to do things 

 as they had l>een done was es-teemed the peirfec- 

 tion of farming . 



The good farmer lived just where his father 

 lived , in the same old>unpainted house. He plant- 

 ed just as many acres of corn as his father planted. 

 lie made the hills just four fijet apart, put into 

 each hill a crab or two, dropped in four kernels 

 of corn, and made each hill a foot or more ab-ove 

 the surface ; planted bean^ in the corn- field l)ut 

 not pumpkins ; for hard as it rs to believe, the time 

 was when pumpkins were not kno\vn even in Con- 

 necticut. He sowed just as many a(;res of rye as 

 his father did, and in the same lot. He plowed 

 with just as many yoke of oxen, and with the 

 simo heavy, unweildy plow, "Cast steel" was 

 just tlien (1750) made for the first, but it was a 

 Sheflield secret. And the I^est sg^de, hoe, shovel 

 or plow-share, he could find, was either of east 

 iron and exceedingly brittle, or of such soft iron 

 tliat a few days' work with it made it as dull as 

 the next dulirr thing than a hoe. His oxen were 

 small, ungainly, feeble things, compared with the 

 fat fellows who now move ofif vrith the heaviest 

 loads, as if they enjoyed a ton or two to ballast 

 them. Very poor mutton it must Iiavc l>een that 

 Oliver Goldsmith invited Samuel Jon.vsoN to 

 dine on ; and the roast boef that Hixiarth was 

 always painting, we suspect was a thin, lean ar- 

 ticle, after all. Farmers then did not spend their 

 earnings studying how to make the most manure, 

 tliough now how to get rid of its accumulation in 

 their yards trout)leil them not a little. When the 

 old barn fell to pieces-, you may l>e sure it was re- 

 built upon a new site. It was deemed a good 

 opportunity to be rid of a nuisance. Nobody 

 went sea-weeding then, and there were no seines 



hauling along the shore full of rich shoals of glit- 

 tering fish . Compost was a thing unknoATn , and a 

 lecture on the subject would have been as amusing 

 as a prophesy that their grand-children would 

 sail round Cape HoiTi, and l^ing home from the 

 Peruvian Islands something to make their corn 

 and beans yield more abundantly. The ashes that 

 gathered in tlieir great fire-placca went to swell 

 the ash-heap ))y the back-door, and the pyramid 

 of clam-shells along-side rivalled it in size and de- 

 formity. The cattle were left to ramble in the woods- 

 through the Fall and Spring, aad went uncovered 

 through the vfinter to toughcB them. The pigs 

 rooted at liberty on the village green, unless they 

 broke into the parson's garden, when rings were 

 put into their snouts to check theix mischievous 

 propensities. When they were gathered into pens, 

 the pens were by the roadside, where every boy 

 that went to school had a pull at their ears, and 

 the fragrance of their cleanly quarters regaled 

 all passers-by. Such a thing as rotation of crops 

 had not been proposed. Where he plaited corn 

 last year when the walnut leaves were just the 

 size of a squirrel's ear, he planted it again thi& 

 year. Where he sowed rye then "in the old of 

 the moon," he sowed it again this year, and the 

 same corner was kept for the potato-pateh years- 

 together. When wheat would no longer grow ic 

 the exhausted field, he left it for grass to come 

 in. And when the old pasture grounds utterly 

 failed, they wei-e left for briars, bushes, and 

 such forest trees as could, to struggle up. Sow- 

 ing pine seeds, or planting a forest, would have 

 seemed simply ridiculous. There were a few or- 

 chards cultivated, but they produced neither choice 

 nor luscious fruit. Their principal object was 

 the cider-barrel, for which a very poor species of 

 fruit answered very well. When the old fields de- 

 clined to surrender their profits enough to pay for 

 their cultivation, the more enterprising pulled up 

 stake, and pushed out into nevf settlements. It 

 was a great undertaking, but some of them pene- 

 trated into the Far West, ev/in as far as the banks- 

 of the Hudson. But the more ambitious sons of 

 a family eagerly embraced o.ny opportunity that 

 offered, to adopt the life of a mechanic, sailor, or 

 particularly that of a tradesman — employments- 

 that were honorable Ijccause they were more profit- 

 able ; and, by following them, they sooner attained 

 to independence. 



It was slow work for Agriculture, ei-eeping out 

 from so debased a condition. There were learned 

 Englishmen laboring, however, for its im})rove- 

 mont and their labors were early appreciated here.. 

 The writings of Sir John Sinclair and Young, and 

 tlie experiments of Bakewell, gendered a new in- 

 terest in the subject, and societies for the promo- 

 tion of agrieultui;al science l>egan to be formed on 

 both sides of the ocean. A clergyman. Rev. Jared 

 Eliot, published the results of his experiments at 

 farming in Con5>ecticut, as e?riy as 1747, with 

 marked advantage to the people. There was a 

 Philadelphia Society for the promotion of agricul- 

 fure established in 1785. and one in Massachu- 

 setts in 16'J2, Premiums and exhibitions soon 

 eame in vogue. The embargo of 1807, which 

 blighted so severely the commerce of the Eastern 

 towns, gave farming a new impulse. And though 

 since then thousands of obst;>,cles have inter- 

 posed, and fields which then first began to de- 

 velop their fertility and strength have since been 



