The Appalachian Frontier by Caruso Dr. John A.;

Author:Caruso, Dr. John A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Papamoa Press
Published: 2017-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

The typical settler was a small farmer who lived with his wife and a swarm of children on a big tract of wooded land. He rarely cleared more than forty of his large number of acres. Though he seldom possessed a dollar in specie, he was never in want. The extraordinary fertility of the soil in Kentucky and Tennessee early brought him wealth, though he started with a small capital. Save for corn and wild clover, his livestock needed no provender during the greater part of the year. After the second year he could well afford to feed them, for the cleared and quickly cultivated land yielded fifty to sixty bushels of corn in the first year and seventy to one hundred and fifty in the second year.{364}

With a little attention, his garden produced all the vegetables he needed. His domestic animals increased; he had plenty of meat. By the third and fourth years he could build a better home which would cost him little more than the labor of his family and his servants. He could furnish his new home by bartering or selling a part of his farm produce. After the second year of improvement the value of his estate increased nearly thirty per cent. If he desired to move westward to cheaper lands, he could easily sell his farm at a handsome profit to an immigrant who sought a ready supply of animals and corn for his family.

The pioneer usually cleared his land by burning. In early spring he would set fire to the dead grass on the meadows to reveal the young green grass to the cattle and other stock. He would belt or gird trees by chopping a ring around each of them with an ax. After they died he could fell them, cut them into logs, roll them into piles and burn them. He also burned the stumps to the ground and sometimes dug them out. Sometimes the fire would get beyond control and would destroy a large area of forest lands which thereafter became known as barrens.

The farmer chopped the cane with his ax and dug out the roots with his mattock. He cultivated his farm with the plow, the hoe and the harrow. With his crude moldboard plow he broke up the ground which needed no deep digging into the rich, new soil. He gave all his attention to breaking up the difficult virgin soil with his plow while a small boy usually rode the horse to guide it. This was no easy task, for the horse was frequently lean and lazy and the hours long and hot under the summer sun. The plow would repeatedly snag under a root, giving the rider a savage jolt in the stomach. The farmer broke the clods of earth by dragging over them a narrow wooden harrow or a brushy limb of a tree. He planted all his grain by hand.

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