Now we are in the month of June...perhaps in the year...1776....
As most citizens of the American colonies were living the agricultural life, we shall, again,
show mostly what life was like to live on a colonial farm.
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Picture taken on June 21st - the first day of summer, and that means summer's here and the time is right for caring for the farm crop and kitchen garden. Weeding? Yes, everyday. (click HERE) |
June in the 1770s is the month when farmers faced a period of relentless labor driven by the summer solstice. The month was nearly entirely consumed by heavy field cultivation, meticulous weed control, and preparing for the critical upcoming harvests, July into fall.
Since June is the month when the sun is at its zenith, the time of year with daylight being up to 15 hours long, summer is nigh. Even though the first three weeks of the month is still technically spring, due to its long and heat-filled days, June is considered a summer month.
In these late spring and early summer days we notice that every green thing on the farm grows very quickly.
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| Even though I am in the hot June sun, I'm still not over-heated. But if I find myself entering into unbearable extreme heat, I can always remove my frock coat~~~ |
As is written in The Complete Farmer and Rural Economist (authored by Thomas Green Fessenden and published in 1835): Summer made manure demands attention. Most farmers yard their cows at night through the summer; their manure should be collected into a heap, in some convenient part of the barn yard, to prevent its being wasted by the sun and rains.
We think of strawberry season in June, but the fruit didn't really take hold in America until the end of the 18th century. Instead the colonials were anxious for their early greens such as lettuce to continue to hopefully flourish. Radishes might be peaking up as well.
June saw meat poultry coming along nicely, though they may not be quite big enough to eat yet. But the laying hens are going like gang-busters.
Dairy cows and their calves came under the dominion of the housewife, with help from the child old enough and strong enough. Cows were an important "commodity" for the farm family, for they provided milk and offspring which supplied meat, tallow, horn, and labor. Women helped with calving, tended the cows when they were sick or injured, and were involved in their daily care. Cows were milked twice a day, and sometimes, during periods of high production, even a third time. Milking the cows was physically demanding and time consuming. The task required strong hands, wrists, and back, and milking could take as little as ten minutes or as much as a half hour.
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(This photo taken off Pinterest with no link of where it originated from - and no response from my queries about using it~) |
The yoke would have been used to carry milk to the house or water from the well to the garden and fields, for piping was almost unknown. Two buckets were easy to carry as one, because of the counterbalance of weight. Every farming household would have one or more neck yokes, similar to what is seen in the photograph below.
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| In June, the cows or goats are giving lots of milk. |
Little of the milk was consumed as a liquid. The dairy house, where the milk was processed into butter or cheese, was also the domain of the housewife. Sometimes the dairy was a room off the kitchen or a stand alone outbuilding. And then the milk needed to be strained by pouring it into shallow pans to allow the cream to rise, then skimming off the cream to churn it into butter or to make cheese.
The younger children, especially the daughters if there were any, would have watched their mother doing one task after another, each requiring practice to be performed properly. Lambing - which required a round-the-clock vigil, for this was when ewes gave birth to lambs - would have been one such chore. Also, there was the planting of the kitchen garden, which occurred over the spring season and even sometimes into summer. Then there was mending, spinning, sewing, dyeing, there may have also been the raising of ducks to sell in the city, a bit of schooling, the constant chopping of wood. In fact, the types and size of wood used for the different types of food cooked over the hearth, or for heating either the home or for work such as a fire for laundry or soap-making, was a valuable lesson to learn, as was knowing which plants in the kitchen garden were for eating, which were for medicinal uses, and which were for use as medicine, for dyeing, or in a variety of other ways.
This was not what we might call "busy work," but, rather, was imperative knowledge to have for survival.
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What was planted in the fields and in the kitchen garden in springtime have really take hold in later June - the kitchen garden is flourishing. It also needs constant care. |
From the Noah Blake diary, June 24, 1805:
"Worked in the garden today and pruned in the orchard. Found many of the apple and pear trees with insects."
Now, just how did one rid their trees of such insects without modern repellent?
Well, if we read on in the diary we can learn one way, for inside the original diary there were folded papers, including one with a recipe to destroy Insects on Fruit trees:
"Take a shovel full of soot, one of Quick Lime, mixed together; take some of this and put it windward of the tree, and sprinkle some water upon it, when a great quantity of Gas will be evolved, which ascending into the Tree will destroy Insects, without injury to the Plant, as it rather helps vegetable life."
Weeding was also a constant chore come June.
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| Anne pulling weeds where the asparagus is planted. |
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| My wife, Patty, coming in from weeding the kitchen garden. |
In the 18th century, gardeners generally disposed of pulled weeds by feeding them to livestock, composting them, or burning them. Because organic waste was highly valued, pulled weeds were routinely tossed into designated manure or "dung" heaps to break down into fertilizer, or given to chickens and pigs as supplemental feed.
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| Anne pulled quite a few weeds herself from the Daggett kitchen garden. |
Later June and into July are the times for haying for the colonial farmer. The alfalfa, clover, and timothy hay mixture reaches its knee-high height about now, and just as the clover and alfalfa plants begin to flower, it's time to cut the hay.
Normally done by hand with a sickle or a scythe, the farmer and his hands headed to the hay field.
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| The grass sickle was typically used for cutting grass for hay or harvesting cereal crops. The inside of the curve is the cutting edge, and is serrated. The farm-hand swings or chops the blade against the base of the crop, cutting through the stems with a sawing action. |
One of the most well-known early farm and household tools that is rarely used in the U.S. today is the scythe. Considered in our modern times as an accessory for horror movies or Hallowe'en costumes (the Grim Reaper or the 4th of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse comes to mind), this all important tool was used for cutting (or reaping) grain, stalks, grass and other crops.
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Scythes...they have not changed much at all from the early ancient days of farming into the 18th, throughout the 19th, and continued into the early 20th centuries. |
The design of scythes allowed farmers to stand upright and cut large, sweeping swaths of hay close to the ground, replacing the more strenuous, bending motion of the earlier hand sickle.
So it was by hand with a scythe or sickle, the farmer headed to the hay field.
Help was often needed for haying. Many of the men from town would help in haying as necessary. Through this work many debts could be paid off. As noted in the book, Tidings From the 18th Century by Beth Gilgun: "Someone might pay the cordwainer for his new shoes or the tailor for a new great coat by the labor of mowing the fields. And besides the mowing there is the raking and hauling---for surely the hay must be brought into the barns if it is to be used for winter feed.
Before starting to cut hay, and often during the mowing, the men must whet (sharpen) the scythe blades to keep them sharp. Many of the men carried stones with them (which are) kept clean and rinsed in a horn containing water. The horn is slung over their shoulder and rides at the waist. The blade can then be sharpened whenever necessary."
Ms. Gilgun has done a splendid job in her wonderful book in describing haying and mowing, so I shall like to continue with her description, for I feel it helps the reader to in an immersive sense:
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"Sometimes, even in the midst of the hard work of haying, someone will take it into their head to call for a contest. If there is a friendly rivalry between men as to who is the better mower, a contest is one way to resolve the question." |
The old saying, "Make hay while the sun shines," is very true, for there was around a three week window from start to finish to make hay. So if the day was sunny and warm, what was cut in the morning could be raked by mid-afternoon.
Then came the tedious task of "making hay." Using a pitch fork, the hay would be piled into about four-foot high and wide stacks, and these bundles would be carefully constructed so they would shed rain and stand up to strong wind.
After a day or two of drying in the field, these bunches would then be hauled to the barn by hay wagon to be unloaded and stored.
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The hay would have been made into a rick although some of it would have gone into the loft of the stable for horses. A hay rick, by the way, is a stack of hay used as a covering or thatching for protection from the weather. Many farmers would bank their homes with hay during the fall to help insulate it from the winter's cold. (That is not a rick of hay in this photo, by the way) |
There was always the danger of spontaneous combustion should the hay contain moisture, so drying it out properly once cut was of great importance.
The hay was nearly always stored on the second floor of the barn, if the barn had one, making it easier to drop it down to the bottom as needed.
Haying season would sometimes stretch into July---even late July, allowing a week or two to catch up on chores that had been overlooked. For instance, even though farmers would mend their fences before the planting season, the wood barriers always needed attention. This could very well include new fence posts along with the labor of digging post holes, which was a very difficult task.
But then, haying season, should it go deep into the following month, could also force the farmer into extra labor with the summer wheat harvest.
It is interesting how farmers used to work in what we now call darkness. Many present-day scientists insist that the early countrymen had extraordinary eyesight, keener than the average eyesight of today. Farmers frequently did their haying well into the night, using the moon or stars for illuminations, and taking advantage of the coolness of the summer night.
To maximize nutritional value, crops for hay are cut while they are still green and immature, before they flower or set seed. This generally occurs earlier in the summer than a grain harvest.
Since we are in 2026, let's take a break from farming and look at the important occurrences of the month of June 250 years ago:
June - 1776
June 7: Richard Henry Lee presented a formal resolution for independence, famously declaring that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States".
June 11: The Continental Congress formed a "Committee of Five"—comprising Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston—to draft the Declaration of Independence.
June 12: The Virginia Revolutionary Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a historic document drafted by George Mason that heavily influenced the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
June 28: The Committee of Five formally presented their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress for debate
So, of course, you know what's coming next.
But I will be commemorating the Declaration of Independence in a different manner next week on this blog-----I hope you will return and check it out.
This monthly daily life series will be a year in the making.
To check out my first three 'chapters' in this, please check out the links below.
For the month of March, please click HERE
For the month of April, please click HERE
For the month of May, please click HERE
To learn about ancient farming practices, please click HERE
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