was from the fireplace, over Which all the cooking was done. Chimneys were first made of wood, for brickmokers were scarce and bricks ex— pensive. Often the lower part was stone, and the upper part made of wood covered with a mixture of clay and straw. In later years the original log cabin became a woodshed or sheep-pen and the second and better dwelling perhaps became a barn, and the family would have a one and a half storey shingled home.

FENCES

First fences were made of poles and zigzagged, they were known as snake fences.

EARLY AGRICULTURE

The older settlers’ first iob was to clear some land. This was done by axe, and a good axeman, tis said, could clear an acre in eight days. He firs-t grubbed out the brush and gathered it into piles, then cut down the trees and sawed them into lengths. These were rolled together and piled with the brush. The leaves and brush dried and helped to burn the green logs. In the small clearing which he made, the settler ploughed among the stumps with a short one-handled plough, share and coulter strongly locked

together. The single wooden plough had no wheels to regulate the depth,

so ploughing was a great art, and the farmer took pride in making long, straight, even furrows. Potatoes were a first crop, and were as important to the pioneer as they are to the farmer today. When the soil was ready for grain, the pioneer sowed theseed from a sack hung from his shoulders, casting the seed by hand over the ground. When the sowing was finished a wooded toothed harrow was dragged over the field. Later the wooden teeth were replaced with iron ones. Grain was harvested with a sickle, the grain being severed near the roots and handfulls laid ready for those who followed raking and binding. The invention of the ’cradle’ to cut grain was a great improvement. This was a wooden framework which gathered the grain together. It was fastened to a scythe and could cut a swath from four to six feet wide. Expert cradlers cut three or four acres a day. After being dried in the sun, the grain was hauled on a home made drag sleigh to the threshing floor which was the bare clean ground, or sometimes a large flat stone. Here the sheaves were unbound and the grain spread out. A flail (two long pieces of hardwood fastened together by leather) was used to thresh the grain. The straw was then raked up and the grain and chaff gathered up. The grain was cleaned by someone standing in the wind and pouring it from one vessel to another. It was then ready to be taken to the nearest grist mill to be ground into flour. By l835 the flail had largely given way to the horse power threshing machines, and by the year 1900 the gasoline engine had replaced the horses in threshing. The ’reaper’ replaced the ’cradle’, dropping the sheaf unbound. Nlost members of the family helped with the binding. Next came the ’binder’, still used today.

58

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