Here is the second of a twelve part series. Yes, it, once again, centers mostly on farming, for in the last half of the 18th century approximately 90 to 95% of the populace were farmers. I began with the month of March (last month - click HERE), and now we enter into April.
As I get further information, for I am in a constant state of research, I will continue to add to the months.
Now, let's get into...
The Month of APRIL
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| I snapped this photo of the Daggett house in mid-April a few years back. Sam Daggett not only built this house (in the early 1750s), he and his family lived in it well into the 1800s. He also farmed the land it sat upon. One can just imagine the preparation that would have been going on inside and outside this wonderful old home. |
We oftentimes think of April as a warm spring month. But, especially during the first half of the month, it can be as much "winter" as March or even late February, even in our modern times. But we must remember that during the 18th century, we were in a "little ice age." The Little Ice Age was a period of wide-spread cooling that lasted from the end of the Medieval Warm Period early in the 14th century until the present-day warming trend that started in the middle to late 19th century; a period of regional cooling marked by harsh winters, advancing glaciers, and crop failures, particularly in Europe and the North Atlantic.
So this should be remembered upon reading this post.
There are countless books written on colonial/early Republic daily life. Maybe over time I will be able to add bits and pieces of that information to these monthly posts and include some of urban life. But even urban folk knew how to farm or, at the very least, garden. There were many who lived in towns and cities who may have had only a backyard kitchen garden that would have been similar to our modern pharmacy, for there would have been medicinal plants for the many ills that invaded their daily lives. Plus there were the wonderful edible cucumbers, beets, asparagus, cabbage, beans, perhaps squash, maybe a couple of fruit trees, and the like. The men of these city households often worked outside the home as blacksmiths, silversmiths, tin smiths, wood workers, house wrights, wheel wrights, carriage and cart makers, coopers, staymaker, chandlers, rope makers, barkeeps and tavern owners, store proprietors, bakers, tanners, basket makers, gunsmiths, tailors, printers, lawyers...in fact, for whatever was needed, there were people to work at such things!
And the women may have cared for that all important garden. And some may have done extra work as dairymaids and seamstresses.
But the most popular of all occupations at that time was farming. Even our first seven Presidents were all farmers:
George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
and each man listed here continued farming after his Presidency.
No secret service.
No to becoming rich by touring and making speeches.
And, aside from John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, none listed here became career politicians.
And farmers lived truly by the seasons.
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| Usually associated with late February and March in our day, in colonial times maple sugaring was also done well into April, mostly due to the harsher winters caused by the mini-ice age of the 18th century. |
Some chores and activities usually occurring in the month of March often continued on into April, especially in the 18th century. For instance, Maple Sugaring. Many inland families used no sugar but that which they made themselves from the sap of the maple. Every farmer in the districts where these trees flourished wished to have his "sugar orchard and sugaring off." This was as much of the agricultural year as plowing or haymaking.
(From Diary of An Early American Housewife - as taken from the book, The Seasonal Hearth by Adelaide Hechtlinger): April 16, 1772 --
Josh and the boys are making sugar. They are spending the next five days in the maple woods back of our house and hope to get enough sugar to last us for the year. Perhaps there will be enough sugar to sell in Boston. If the weather holds out nicely as it is at this time, we might have some of our neighbors join the men in finishing the process of making the sugar. We have not had a party for some time now. It will be good to see the neighbors again now that the winter is ending. This winter was not good; there was too much snow to get around visiting.
As was written by diarist Noah Blake that first week of April:
April 1, 1805
Robert Adams came by in his Father's sleigh to take me to the Adams place. I shall help them for the week with maple sugaring.
April 2, 1805
Worked at the Adams place.
As long as the daytime and nighttime temperatures cooperated, there could be plenty more sap to gather for the making of syrup for Noah in this week leading up to Holy Week:
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| Tapping the maple trees. |
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| Boiling the sap down...this was a critical spring activity, serving as a vital source of sugar. |
And so a holiday - holyday - brought Noah Blake back with his family.
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| Here is an exact replication of an original 1733 New Testament Bible, as made by James Moore - Bibleman, setting upon a table inside a house that was built in the mid-18th century |
April 7
Palm Sunday. Went to Meeting with the Adams and returned home with Mother and Father. I earned a tub of sweetening for my week's work. It is good to be home again.
Depending on your denomination, Palm Sunday may have been celebrated in different ways, or in a few cases, not celebrated at all by some Christian denominations, such as those directly descended from the puritans: Congregationalists and Baptists. Strong practitioners of these two sects, unlike the Catholics and Lutherans, for example, would more than likely not have celebrated Easter, Good Friday, or Palm Sunday, for I've found that Congregationalists and Baptists of that period believed that only the Sabbath was ordained by scripture, making Easter (along with Christmas and saints' days) an unnecessary and, what they may have considered to be, an ungodly tradition.
I've also learned that even though they may not have celebrated, they could/might have, at the very least, acknowledged the day, perhaps in a prayer.
In the 18th century, Palm Sunday was celebrated as the start of Holy Week, just like it is in our modern times, marked by blessing palm branches (or local greenery) and hosting solemn processions. In the 18th century, Dutch and German immigrants often used eggs to celebrate Easter and Pentecost. One of the most famous observations of Easter eggs in the 18th century comes from Thomas Anburey, an officer captured at Saratoga while staying in Winchester, Virginia, in 1780.
"At Easter holidays the young people have a custom, in this province, of boiling eggs in logwood, which dyes the shell crimson, and though this color will not rub off, you may, with a pin, scratch on them any figure you think proper. This is practiced by the young men and maidens, who present them to each other as love tokens. As these eggs are boiled a considerable time to take the dye, the shell acquires great strength, and the little children divert themselves by striking the eggs against each other, and that which breaks becomes the property of him whose egg remains whole."
"To impress the minds of his children with there glorious struggle for independence, as they term it, the Colonel (Col. Beattie) has an egg, on which is engraved the battle of Bunker's Hill. This he takes infinite pains to explain to his children, but will not suffer them to touch it, being the performance of his son gone to camp, but now being slain, he preserves it as a relic. The Colonel favoured us with a sight of it, and, considering the small space, the battle is very accurately delineated."
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Traditional Hot Cross Buns |
Another Easter tradition during the 18th century was the baking of Hot Cross Buns, though the first name for these buns were Good Friday Buns or Cross Buns. Since before medieval times, marking baked goods (like breads, buns, and cakes) with the sign of a cross was a common thing for a homemaker or a baker to do. The cross was said to ward off evil spirits which could affect the bread and make it go moldy.
While specifically associated with Good Friday, Hot Cross Buns were often eaten throughout the Easter weekend, including Easter Sunday.
The Christian traditional preparation for Easter Sunday consisted of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. So Good Friday, and the food consumed on this day (Good Friday Buns / Hot Cross Buns) are also traditionally a part of Lent fasting.
In the 18th century, Easter Sunday was celebrated, depending on your religious practice, with a mix of solemn church services following the end of the 40-day Lenten fast, making it a time for breaking fasts and celebrating the resurrection. Celebrations often included eating special foods like tansy puddings and cakes.
Other traditions saw clergy often leading processions while parishioners sang hymns, sometimes processing from a churchyard or nearby location to the church entrance to symbolize Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.
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| Easter fell in the month of April more often than March in the 18th century, therefore that's why I included it as such in my post. |
In some areas, Easter Monday was marked by lively, sometimes rowdy, games and traditional hunts.
Then it was back to work.
According to the book, The Complete Farmer and Rural Economist by Thomas Green Fessenden, April is a great month for ground preparation, for near the back of the book is a section/chapter called FARMER'S CALENDAR, and it tells us what should be done month by month. For the month of April it lets us know that plowing (spelled ploughing in the book) is one of the chores of the month, as is sowing certain barley ("as soon as the ground is sufficiently dry"), oats, and rye. Many of these cereal grains are normally planted in the fall. Potatoes can be sowed as soon as the ground can be worked, usually mid-April. The same with peas, as well as flax, and hemp.
Late March, April, and May were the leanest months of the year - I've heard it called "starving time" - with food supplies running short. With March and April signaling the end of the winter season, the colonial family would most likely be using up things in the root cellar. By the time springtime arrived, people were nearing the end of their winter storage of the food from last fall's harvest and were looking forward to the growing season.
Caring for the pregnant farm animals was also a top priority, for this would ensure continued generations of cattle, pigs, sheep, horses...all necessary to run a farm.
In a lot of ways spring is the perfect time for baby animals to be born. Mother mammals usually need better, richer food to produce quality milk for their babies to nurse. For grazing animals like cattle, sheep, and horses, the fresh green grass and other plants on pasture in spring and early summer are rich in nutrients. These plants can have a higher percentage of protein and ‘total digestible nutrients.’ This can lead to better milk production for the babies. Most calves are born between January and May because of this reason. Also it was a good time because the days became longer along with the temperatures rising.
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| Mary Moss grabbed this wonderful picture of a newborn lamb with its mother. |
With the warmer weather it is easier for the calves and other baby animals to survive. And because spring is such a good time of year for these babies, many animals evolved to accommodate such natural cycles.
(From THIS page)
From mending fences and tools to tapping the trees for syrup, the next big job a farmer has is hauling manure from the manure pile in the barnyard to the field where he will later plow, harrow, and plant.
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| Manuring (photo courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg) |
The gutters behind the cows are cleaned daily and the mixture of straw and manure becomes an ever-growing pile in the barnyard. No matter how much one may love cows and horses, I can almost guarantee they will simply despise having to shovel manure onto a horse-drawn cart or into a wheelbarrow and then haul it back to the manure pile. And then, once spring planting preparations begin, the farmer again will have to haul the pile, load after load, out to the planting field. This is a back-breaking ordeal, for carrying a heavy load of manure through the crevice-filled field is no easy task.
Then comes the duty of spreading the manure...I would venture to guess this was probably the worst job in a farmer's year.
It was in April where a diary entry reads... "The three horses carting manure from the yard to Field Number 2 and covering it with the drill plough, Seven workers, including one woman, were spreading the manure..."
Usually by mid-to-late April, the snow had melted, maple sugaring completed, Easter over, and the sun shining bright giving strong hints that warm weather was here to stay, and with warmer weather came thoughts of plowing, harrowing, and sowing/planting, which would have been on most farmer's agenda at this time, especially later in the month when the thermometer would begin to show even higher and steadier temperatures.
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| Harrowing - breaking up the clods of dirt while helping to mix the dirt and manure together. |
Of course, the grains listed here can, and often are, planted in May as well. Same with flax and hemp. Planting (or sowing) depends on what part of the country the farmer resided in. In fact, at the cabin where we have a large kitchen garden, we do nearly all of our planting in May. However, at Greenfield Village's Daggett kitchen garden, the ladies who work there oftentimes plant in April. Of course, we live in the cooler climate of southern Michigan. So we will save more of our planting information for next month. The following in italics, taken directly from the book, By The Seasons by Kathryn M. Fraser (with some slight modification from me), tells us:
Spring arrives abruptly, and with it comes the chores that keeps the family out-of-doors from morning's light until nightfall. It is the planting season, which all the family pitch in for the work is hard and back-breaking.
It's this time when you would plant tomatoes and peppers and beans and corn and squash and pumpkin and melon and cucumbers and whatever else your little heart desires to put into the ground.
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| A warm mid-April: the kitchen garden being prepared. |
However, some of the stored winter vegetables have begun to rot, and the apples are getting soft. Mushy potatoes will be made into starch, and the winter's accumulation of fat needs to be made into soap before it turns rancid.
For vegetables, there are the last of the potatoes, winter squash, carrots, onions, and dried beans, though it would not be long before some fresh greens will hopefully be sprouting.
Pickled items of all sorts would be on the pantry shelves as well.
For fruit you would have jellies, jams, and the last of the cellar apples.
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| Growing hops to be ready for fall beer brewing time. |
Clearing land, repairing fences, and planting early cool-weather crops like peas and oats as the ground thawed kept the farm family quite busy. The main sowing season, which included all of the ground preparation mentioned already, continued on. This critical, labor-intensive time involved preparing small, diversified subsistence farms for the coming season, and relied on hand tools like hoes and plows to ensure a good growing season. Tool making and repairs, and bucket-soaking was imperative.
Soaking a wooden bucket in water is a traditional method used to stop leaks by causing the dry wood to expand, closing the gaps between staves. The process involves submerging the bucket or filling it with water, oftentimes for several days until the wood swells and the container became watertight.
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| Ed Davis captured buckets being soaked. No, that's not ice (lol) - that's reflections. |
All this is part of the springtime preparation to make sure every tool, including buckets, were in good working order. So much to do...and all by hand.
"Farm life offers the complete satisfaction of knowing that each day's work has been truly productive, a joy scarce in present times. In the old days, whether you were a blacksmith, a butcher, a carpenter, a politician, or a banker, you were also a farmer. Before setting out for the day, there were chores to be done that often took as much time as a complete day's work for the average man of today."
Eric Sloane~
Next up in this particular series: 18th century life in the month of May will be featured!
Until next time (next Friday), see you in time.
Click HERE for part one in this series: March
To lean more about colonial-era crafts and trades, please click HERE
To learn more about early farming practices, please click HERE
To learn about watching wonderfully accurate historical farming on TV, click HERE
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