NOVEMBER - Daily 18th Century Farm Life

As we make our way through the month of November,  let’s consider our lives,  most likely on a farm,  250 years ago:  numerous activities,  chores,  and necessities are carried over from month to month,  especially in Autumn.  And many of our English traditions continued in the colonies.

If Lammas Day,  which is celebrated in early August,  is about the opening of the harvest,  Harvest Home is about celebrating the end of this season.  It’s the conclusion to the year’s efforts and sees communities coming together to thank,  and or pay,  those involved.  This festival would usually include music,  dancing and other entertainment as well as a substantial meal,  which was a particular highlight for the poor who would be able to feast to capacity. 

Harvest Home can be in later October or anytime in November --- pretty much traditionally at the end of the grain and crop harvest season.   Also,  the festivities for Home Harvest take place at varying times around the end of the season,  depending on the local trade.  For example,  those communities dependent on cereal crops might celebrate in August,  while those who work predominantly with fruit or vegetable growing experience later harvests so their celebrations often took place in September.  Those involved in herding livestock would have gathered in October.  Of course,  there could be a gathering when all the harvest was in and ready,  whether grain,  animals,  fruits,  and vegetables,  and even root crop,  which oftentimes were not ready until November.

It stands to reason that the term  ‘Home Harvest’  (or 'Harvest Home')  may have also been referred to by alternative terms,  but essentially a gathering, or reunion, of communities to celebrate the end of harvest was historically experienced by all sorts of harvesting communities.

Wood chopping - a very important chore any time of the year,  but in Autumn most of all~~

However,  little was more important than having your wood chopped and ready.  This would have been a constant chore,  for one could never have enough wood,  especially for those of us living in the northern climate where snow could easily begin to fall as early as October and especially in November and the few months following..  

On average  (remember,  I wrote  “average”),  most Colonial homes would have needed at least 40 cords of wood for heating and cooking over the course of a year.

It would not only be just one variety of wood – depending on the cooking being done:  baking or frying or...there would be different varieties used for cooking food in the hearth,  such as birch,  hickory,  maple,  ash,  beech,  oak,  and elm.    As for the types of wood used for heating the home during the cold months:  given the choice,  they may have chosen oak,  black locust,  and/or maple,  should these tree varieties be accessible.  It was the hardwood that gave off the best and longest-lasting heat.

There is also the process of butchering some of the livestock that would be taking place.  The colonists did not waste any part of the animal.  They smoked ham and used the fatty sections of the pig for bacon.  The small and large intestines were used as casings for sausage,  and they made sausage from the leftover scraps of meat,  as well as from liver and lungs.  Fat made good lard for baking.. The meat from the heads and feet of pigs was chopped very fine to make head cheese. They cut steaks from their beef cow.  They made spare ribs and backbones.   And then there’s tallow - the rendered form of beef or mutton suet melted down and made into candles.  Candles were not only made from beeswax.

Many rural families had a smokehouse on their land to help preserve their meat,  including their ham and beef.  After rubbing the ham or bacon with a salt mixture and letting them set for a few weeks,  the meat would then be hung from the rafters in the smokehouse.

The smoke was created directly below the hanging meat by a fire in the floor of the structure and was made from aromatic woods such as hickory or apple,  and sometimes even corncobs,  which flavored the meat and created a crust that prevented its ruin by flies or other pests.

I am going to repeat a story here told in a recent previous month.  It very aptly describes daily life in a very real manner and deserves to be repeated.  I did make slight changes,  including the character names:

A Colonial Meal:  A Description by James E.  McWilliams  (taken from the book  "A Revolution in Eating - How the Quest For Food Shaped America")

On a warm Autumn afternoon in 1775,  Anna Daggett stepped out of her garden,  moved into her home where she began to cook at the hearth.   In Connecticut,  where the Daggett family had lived was becoming well known for its open land for pioneer farmers to grow wheat,  barley,  pumpkins and other squash,  green beans,  corn,  apples,  abundant garden vegetables,  and a healthy supply of meat.   And much of that combination,  as it did on most days,  would make up the evening meal.   Anna had started soaking corn kernels at the crack of dawn to soften them for pounding,  an exhausting task made necessary by the lack of a local gristmill.   She knew that she needed about four cups of cornmeal to feed her husband,  three children,  and herself.   So for the next couple of hours,  Anna and her two daughters dutifully hunched over a large mortar,  took wooden pestles in hand,  and reduced a tub of white corn kernels into a gritty heap of meal.

Meanwhile,  out in the barn,  Samuel Daggett and his son,  Isaiah,  contemplated a decision:  pork or beef?   The fact that they even had a choice reflected Sam's preparation as a husbandman.   Recently,  when the weather began to cool,  he had slaughtered two piglets and a calf.   The pigs were about seven months old,  the age when their muscle density was low,  fat content high,  and stringy connective tissue still pleasantly soft to the palate.   The calf was around two years old and similarly primed for consumption and preservation. Slaughtering a piglet was a turbulent task.  It began with a rapid cut to the beast's throat,  followed by a prolonged period of squealing and bloodletting.  The beast was then scalded in a vat of boiling water to loosen its sharp and wiry bristles so they could be easily brushed off.  Samuel gathered the offal  (the word literally denotes the  "off fall"  after the slaughter)  from the barn floor to make sausage.  He then hacked the corpse into two large chunks,  called flitches,  and placed them aside.  The cow met a similar brutal fate,  but its slaughter took longer,  resulted in a louder and deeper death rattle,  and required greater precision.  Samuel had to not only kill it but also find its joints and dissect it into clean cuts of chucks,  ribs,  loins,  and rounds.  For all the commotion and mess that ensued,  however,  the slaughter was the easy part. 

Isaiah and his father managed the more physically taxing jobs of smoking the pork and pickling the beef.   Smoking pork was a procedure dating back to the Middle Ages that sealed in fat and protected freshly cut meat from spoilage.   The two tossed the pork flitches in a large tub of salt,  turning them over repeatedly,  and then hung the coated slabs on metal hooks in order to air them out.   After a day or two,  they hauled the salted pork to the chimney,  which served as a substitute for a smokehouse.   

With the pork hanging in the shaft,  the wood smoke clogged the chimney and slowly coated the meat's surface,  enhancing its flavor while extending its shelf life.  Pickling beef involved submerging the cuts in a brine and vinegar solution that the boys prepared with salt,  spices,  and saltpeter.   The process took place in large wooden barrels and didn't so much impart flavor as give the acid in the vinegar time to kill the enzymes that decomposed meat.   The boys secured the barrels and rolled them to the corner of the barn.   With the girls and Anna still pounding the corn in the kitchen,  the Sam and Isaiah stood in the barn,  considered their inventory,  and made their decision.  They chose beef.

After placing three pounds of meat in a warming pan over the kitchen fire,  Anna had her eldest daughter,  Asenath,  who was well-trained in dairy,  quickly fetch some milk and butter.   The young lady has spent the entire morning in the kitchen,  scalding milk pans,  trays,  pots,  and churns in an eighteen-gallon copper pot.   Whatever did not fit into the cauldron had to be cleaned individually.   A colonial dairy had to be pristine.   Any residual milk that dried on the surface of a container or shelf might carry bacteria that would result in not only in a soured product but very possibly in widespread and potentially fatal illness.   Asenath could milk a single cow in about ten minutes.   Out in the barn,  after cleaning her equipment,  she did just that to seven of their milk cows.   She allowed the warm milk to cool in a tub and then strained it through a sieve concocted from a hollowed-out wooden bowl covered in a linen towel.   The strained milk rested in earthenware milk trays for several hours,  giving the cream a chance to coagulate at the top.   She then skimmed the thick cream with a slotted wooden paddle,  leaving behind the thinner milk that her mother had requested.   

I found this sketch on-line on THIS page.
I'm sure it's ancient - 200+ years.

The weather that day was dry and warm,  so the churning of the cream into butter took only a couple of hours rather than several.   Once the butter had formed,  the young lady squeezed out the buttermilk and fed it to the hogs,  a practice that improved the taste of the meat.   As late afternoon set in,  she covered the bottom of a butter dish with salt,  spooned in the thick butter,  patted it down,  and sprinkled the top with another layer of salt.   She then carried a chunk of it over to her mother,  whose cornmeal awaited.

As Anna warmed the meat and folded the butter and milk into the boiling cornmeal,  Samuel sent his Isaiah out to the cider house,  a small structure adjacent to the barn,  where he and his father had spent several long afternoons mashing hundreds of apples gathered from the Daggetts'  orchard into a gloppy pulp of apple meal.  They placed the sweet mass of fruit in cider bags that the two daughters,  Asenath and Talitha,  had woven out of human and animal hair.   Isaiah then picked up the bags and proceeded to take them to the cider press on their property,  pressing the apple juice into a vat.  After bottling the apple juice in earthenware jugs and corking them,  they were placed in a cool dugout beneath the barn.  Young master Daggett now grabbed three of these bottles and rushed back to the house,  where the earthenware containers were set upon the table alongside the root vegetables that Anna had picked from her garden and roasted in the wide hearth.

Placing jugs of cider on a table was a fairly remarkable thing for Isaiah to do,  as there were a number of eighteenth-century families in colonial America that lacked such amenities as even a dining table and chairs.  The Daggetts had both.   The girls threw a worn tablecloth over the pine table,  and,  after Anna pulled a loaf of cornbread from the hearth,  the family carried their chairs  (they knew of some families who used tree stumps)  to the table.   They shared a few wooden and pewter and even bone utensils to serve their food into their trenchers and bowls.   Then everyone began to eat.   It was an event that would have made Miss Manner's head spin.   The Daggetts ripped the meat off the bone with their dirty hands and shoved it in their mouths.   Food scraps were soon scattered across the table.   Some families,  especially out in the wilderness,  had no forks,  spoons,  or individual cups or tankards,  though the Daggetts did.   The cider pots were passed upon request to the person who wanted a drink.   No napkins civilized the scene,  as the coarse wool that made the boys'  britches and the dark serge of the girls'  dresses served that purpose just fine,  as did the tablecloth.   

And so,  rapidly and with gusto,  the Daggetts consumed beef,  cornmeal with butter and milk,  corn bread,  carrots,  beans,  and cider.   As the sun descended,  as the shadows outside stretched across the farm,  and as the embers glowing in the hearth turned ashen,  Anna and the girls began to clean.

The Daggetts did not lack candles,  but used them sparingly,  and sleep beckoned. 

Here it is November,  and apple harvesting continues on!

As seen here,  I have done presentations
on heirloom apples.

Apple harvesting would be continuing to take place,  oftentimes beginning anytime from summer,  with such pre-fall varieties as the Hightop Sweet apples,  through late autumn.  These later apples,  many of which had fallen from the trees,  sometimes made the best tasting cider:

For instance,  in his diary from November,  Noah Blake wrote:

"November 10

Sunday.  Robert Adams will come over tomorrow to help with the apples.

November 11

Spent the day gathering apples.  Robert stayed over.

November 12

More work in the orchard.

November 13

Gathered cyder apples.  Will drive them to the village tomorrow and deliver Robert to his home."

All of this,  along with the vegetables,  would have helped to sustain the family over the coming winter and spring seasons.  The cellar would now have its  "winter smell of apples and preserves."

Notice he said  "gathered"  rather than  "picked."

And now we find ourselves at the end of our growing season.

The corn has now been cut and shocked,  grain has been thrashed,  all the hay is stacked,  and the labors of summer are over.

The harvest, for the most part,  is ended,  and only a few very late vegetables await.  

Maybe some cabbages,  brussels sprouts,  lettuce,  beets,  potatoes,  and possibly a 

few late carrots and turnips are all that's left to pick.

Though New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating thanksgivings to thank God for blessings,  it wasn't until later in the 1700s that individual colonies would periodically designate a day of thanksgiving in honor of a military victory,  an adoption of a state constitution or an exceptionally bountiful crop.

Time to go a-fowling...

The piece I am holding is a brown bess smooth bore fowler,  used mostly for 

hunting fowl,  hence the name.

In North America,  land was readily available,  and possession of guns was universal,  as hunting with firearms was a primary means of survival.  Rural homes depended on arms to help feed their large families,  as well as to provide physical protection and fulfill local militia demands.  The heavily wooded terrain of the frontier provided a bounty of game ranging from turkeys,  geese,  ducks,  and game birds to the larger deer,  bear,  elk,  and moose.  In order to take advantage of this,  the frontiersman employed various combinations of ball,  buckshot,  or buck & ball in smoothbore flintlock fowlers which were the forerunners of today’s shotguns. 

Speaking of fowl,  I see a couple of good-size toms right in front of the house!

No,  Thanksgiving and Harvest Home are not the same thing,  though there is an agricultural connection.

No matter,  for either way we will have quite the harvest feast!

But preparations must come first:

cut off the head,  hang up by the legs,  as the meat will be more white and wholesome if bled freely and quickly.  In winter,  kill them three days to a week before cooking.  Scald well by dipping in and out of a pail or tub of boiling water,  being careful not to scald so much as to set the feathers and make them more difficult to pluck;  place the fowl on a board with the neck towards you,  pull the feathers away from you,  which will be in the direction they naturally lie  (if pulled in a contrary direction the skin is likely to be torn),  be careful to remove all of the pin-feathers with a knife or a pair of tweezers;  singe,  but not smoke over blazing paper,  place on a meat-board,  and with a sharp knife cut off the legs a little below the knee to prevent the muscles from shrinking away from the joint,  and remove the oil-bag above the tail.  Take out the crop,  either by making a slit at the back of the neck or in front  (the last is better),  taking care that everything pertaining to the crop or windpipe is removed,  cut the neck-bone off close to the body,  leaving the skin a good length if to be stuffed;  cut a slit three inches long from the tail upwards,  being careful to cut only through the skin,  put in a finger at the breast and detach all the intestines,  taking care not to burst the gall-bag  (situated near the upper part of the breast-bone,  and attached to the liver;  if broken,  no washing can remove the bitter taint left on every spot it touches).  Put in the hand at the incision near the tail,  and draw out carefully all intestines;  trim off the fat from the breast and at the lower incision;  split the gizzard and take out the inside and inner lining  (throw liver,  heart,  and gizzard into water,  wash well,  and lay aside to be cooked and used for the gravy).  Wash the fowl thoroughly in several waters  (some wipe carefully without washing),  hang up to drain,  and it is ready to be stuffed,  skewered,  and placed to roast.

(from the 1877 Buckeye Cookbook.  Food preparation and cooking,  for the most part,  had not changed greatly in these early American years).

Here is how to make stuffing and to roast your turkey the 18th century way,  from Amelia Simmons'  American Cookery  (aka The First American Cookbook)  from 1796:  

To stuff a turkey:

Grate a wheat loaf,  one quarter of a pound butter,  one quarter of a pound salt pork,  finely chopped,  2 eggs,  a little sweet marjoram,  summer savory,  parsley and sage,  pepper and salt  (if the pork be not sufficient,)  fill the bird and sew up.

The same will answer for all Wild Fowl.

To stuff and roast a Turkey,  or Fowl

One pound soft wheat bread,  3 ounces beef suet,  3 eggs,  a little sweet thyme,  sweet marjoram,  pepper and salt,  and some add a gill of wine;  fill the bird therewith and sew up,  hang down to a steady solid fire,  basting frequently with salt and water,  and roast until a steam emits  from the breast,  put one third of a pound of butter into the gravy,  dust flour over the bird and baste with the gravy;  serve up with boiled onions and cranberry-sauce,  mangoes,  pickles or celery.

2.  Others omit sweet herbs,  and add parsley done with potatoes.

3.  Boil and mash 3 pints potatoes,  wet them with butter,  add sweet herbs,  pepper,  salt,  fill and roast as above.

Fowl being roasted in the reflector oven.

Favorable events,  such as the sudden ending of a drought or pestilence,  might inspire a thanksgiving proclamation.  It was like having an extra Sabbath during the week,  for fasts and thanksgivings never fell on a Sunday. 

A harvest Thanksgiving dinner

But,  as the century wore on,  over time it gradually turned more into a festive celebration as much as it was a holy day  (or holiday).  Often,  men devoted the thanksgiving/harvest morning to go hunting or participate in turkey shoots,  like the one in 1783 in Warren,  New Hampshire,  where hens and turkeys were tied to stakes and men paid four and a half pence to shoot a hen at a distance of eight rods,  or nine pence to shoot a turkey from ten rods.

Usually the birds were killed before being mounted on the stakes.  If a man hit the bird,  it was his to take home.

The celebration of  Thanksgiving over the course of the 18th century evolved into a holiday celebrated around the dinner table - celebrating for a bountiful harvest.  As New England became more densely settled and the good farmland all locked up,  its residents started heading west,  and they took their social traditions with them,  including their annual Thanksgiving holiday,  as well as continued to celebrate and give thanks for a good harvest crop.

Another harvest Thanksgiving dinner.

And yet there is still another harvest chore that must be done for the colonial farm family:

candle making.

Artificial light in the 18th century was truly a luxury.  People were used to working by daylight while indoors,  so lighting a candle when the sun was up was rare.  It was customary for folks to move from room to room to get the most out of the day's light.  Generally,  candles were lit only during the nighttime hours,  and sparingly so,  due to the lengthy candle-making procedure.

As we have seen,  most 18th century homes were as self-sufficient as they could be and those who lived in them did their best to produce as many things needful to life as they could,  and this did include candles.  As part of their domestic work,  colonial women usually were the ones who carried the entire candle making process from start to finish,  though many times the children,  and even the men at times,  would help out as well.

Though it could be done any time of year  (as long as there were supplies),  the usual period for making candles was in early-to-mid November.  It had to be just cold enough for quick hardening,  and followed shortly after fall hunting,  where the collected waist fat from the butchered animals was used to make tallow for dipping.  Tallow candles were very popular in the 18th century,  and due to the idea that rendered lard was many times easier to obtain than beeswax,  it was very common,  especially out on the farm  (city folk could purchase their candles from the chandler --- while rural folk generally made their own candles,  city dwellers swarmed local shops to stock up on cheap tallow candles made from rendered animal fat and oil to fight off the up to 15 hours of daily darkness).

It's here that we can quote Susan Blunt,  a woman from the early 19th century,  who remembered her 18th century mother candle dipping:

"Mother used to dip candles in the fall,  enough to last all winter.  When a beef was killed in the fall,  she would use all the tallow for candles.  On the evening before,  we would help her prepare the wicks.  The boys would cut a lot of rods and she would cut the wicks the length of a candle and then string them on the rods.

"...in the morning she would commence her day's work..." 

Of course,  farms would also have bee hives on their property and,  thus,  be able to obtain the wax from the hive,  as well as the honey for a sweetener.  Where tallow had a pungent odor,  beeswax had more of a sweet smell.

Either way,  both types were popular in the 18th century.

Living in darkness...and cold...

Immersed in 18th century darkness

With darkness king of the 24 hour day,  it dictated daily activities.  Along with the bitter cold,  being buried in the dark shadows of nighttime reduced the once family-sized home into a single room in many cases,  for many families closed off the parlors to decrease the amount of warming space.   With a dim glow,  life centered around the hearth or stove for warmth and possibly a candle or oil lamp to give little enhancement any of the limited activities of which they may have partaken.  This low level of candle light created only pockets of brightness,  leaving most of the room in darkness.  Forget about the Hollywood movies  (or the History Channel) showing people enjoying a pleasant winter's eve reading by candlelight - I've tried and it's pretty darn difficult to do for any length of time.  As Laura Wirt wrote in 1818,   "writing by a dim firelight.  I can scarcely see."

Yes,  there was reading,  writing,  sewing,  mending,  and other necessities done as best as one could by such low light,  but on these long winter nights there was also socializing,  singing,  storytelling,  bible recitations,  games,  journaling,  family history lore,  and other ways to pass the time.  The glow of the hearth was sufficient enough for any of these activities,  thus saving on candles and fuel.

This image shows just how dark even a small cabin can be with a fire in the hearth and three  (!)  candles burning.  Of course,  we would not have any more than the hearth lit - we would not waste candles in this manner.
However,   we are celebrating harvest time / Thanksgiving...so we can make an exception.

Emily Barnes tells of her grandmother telling stories,  and  "how eagerly we sought our places in the sitting room around the low-cushioned chair,  which was placed in the warmest corner,  the room all aglow with the bright,  blazing fire.  'There is no need to light the candles,'   she would say;  and we were glad to avoid the interruption occasioned by snuffing them,  especially when so unfortunate to snuff them out."

(Snuffing in the old days meant to trim the wick rather than putting out the flame as we know it to mean today.)

Low level of light - - - 

A solitary candle to light the night - 

anymore than that could be considered wasteful. 

Then there is soap making.  Early spring and late fall on the farm were the times for soap-making.  But since soap was made mostly from the same grease and fat used to make candles,  November's butchering-time made autumn the more popular season for the chore.

It would also be in late November or early December when the farmer would bank his house,  when the north sides of homes were stacked with hay,  leaves,  corn stalks,  or maybe sawdust as protection from the upcoming winter's blast,  just as Noah Blake wrote on December 2:

"Banked the house with cornstalks and pompion  (pumpkin)  vines."

Yes,  a thick matting of cornstalks around the bottom of the house will keep some of the winter cold and wind out.   Even in cities like Philadelphia and Boston relied heavily on incoming shipments of sea-coal and wood for warmth.  November was considered the deadline to fill cellars before heavy snow blocked roads or iced over rivers.

Without central heating,  even rich city townhouses were drafty and freezing.  November meant hanging heavy fabric curtains around beds to trap body heat,  wearing multiple layers of heavy wool petticoats,  using fingerless mitts indoors,  and sliding brass bed-warmers filled with hot coals under the sheets.

So next month we head into December.  I wonder how warm we will be.

Will we celebrate Christmas?

Let's find out...

Until next time,  see you in time.

So...I plan to continually update this post as I gather more information.

If you are liking my month-to-month daily 18th century living posts,  here are a few more to check out:

For the month of March,  please click HERE

For the month of April,  please click HERE

For the month of May,  please click HERE

For the month of June,  please click HERE

For the month of July,  please click HERE

For the month of August,  please click HERE

For the month of September,  please click HERE

For the month of October,  please click HERE

To learn about ancient farming practices,  please click HERE

To learn about more 18th century fall traditions,  please click HERE

The information here came from a variety of sources.

Other sources include:
Seasons of America Past by Eric Sloane
Holidays and Celebrations in Colonial America by Russell Roberts
Early Farm Life by Lise Gunby
The American Farmer in the 18th Century by Richard Lyman Bushman  (though not nearly as much of this book is actually about farming practices of the time as I had hoped...it is a bit of a let down)
Diary of an Early American Boy by Eric Sloane
Diary of Mary Cooper

Reliving History Magazine

The New England Historical Society

Family Life in the 17th and 18th Century America by James and Dorothy Volvo

Much of the Harvest Home information came verbatim from THIS site

Some information came from my presenter friends at Historic Greenfield Village as well as Colonial Williamsburg 

I do not hide the fact that much of what you have read came,  word for word in some cases,  from the above sources.

Feel free to see more of these chores HERE

To check out wonderful documentary dramas about historic life and farm life,  click HERE

Sources:
The Complete Farmer and Rural Economist - Thomas Green Fessenden

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