Thanks gents. I didn't think this was such a mystery. Sheesh, Yoga (who understands more about the universe and astrophysics than ancient farming methods)!
How did the pioneers clear the land?
- Thread starter Yoga Face
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Thanks gents. I didn't think this was such a mystery. Sheesh, Yoga (who understands more about the universe and astrophysics than ancient farming methods)!
Interestingly to some of the points being made, surprisingly not that great an amount of lumber was shipped to Great Britain from North America in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and early Nineteenth Centuries. In the case of pre-Confederation New Brunswick (which Graeme Wynn famously titled his book about Timber Colony: A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick lumber was principally part of the triangular trade, local shipping took lumber to the West Indies and returned with sugar and molasses (largely used to make rum) or took that sugar, molasses & rum to Great Britain and returned with manufactured goods.
Good point about the sturdiness of stumps but are you sure these stump fences are that old ??? If so, there should be many thousands of stumps. Where are they?? There should be a lot more stump fences leaving me to think that I am right on this one. As well, I suspect they would rot faster if left in the ground but I am guessing
I thought of that but the pioneers did not plow nearly as deep as we do today and quite often just racked the soil to get rid of other growth then scattered the seed
Remember the soil was very fertile back then. We have destroyed it and now need to plow deep and use fertilizer
As far as I know, but I could be wrong there were no well maintained road, suitable for heavy transport arounds the rapids. stagecoach travel was very rough and dangerous anywhere in the early 19th century, basically on military roads built for marching and light transport, but even of there were it would need loading the timber/lumber on the lake ships or barges in TO, unloading the timber/lumber at the rapids and then loading them on again, very time consuming for the distance travelled, just ask a wilderness canoeist, and therefore expensive. I include lumber, but it is still the least likely product transported for already explained reasons.
You did a lot more than tie a team of horses to break the huge tap root of a big stump
A lot of chopping
Then some pulling
Then more chopping etc
Very, very hard work
Plus the cost of the team and feeding them etc
Fuck that
Why bother
A slow smolder every year on the stumps with pitch then let them rot into fertilizer
There must have been a road around the rapids
Think about it
It is a short flat distance so what is the big deal here in building a road? We need to get a lot of stuff from Europe over here, military and other wise, so i suspect they had the road and means to load and unload the vessels
First thing they did was build this bypass is my conjecture
Ah and here we thought you were talking of pioneers who would have had no roads unless they built them. Nor any maintenance on the road unless the gouged the traffic for tolls. Roads are yet another reason for pulling stumps. Not only was there never a one size fits all solution, but there never was a time when every one did anything the same. Everything evolves, leaving some behind the time and others doing it first. But the first guys hauled as little as possible anywhere, and figured better ways where they could.
While much of Europe was deforested for farming in pre-Roman times, they learned to build with other materials, from wattle and daub for the poor, to stone for rich folks' castles. The Romans in colonial Britain built mostly of brick, and with imported Italian and French (Gallic) roof and heating tiles, and after they went home even the backward natives eventually figured out brickmaking again, though it took them centuries.
Toronto's a city of brick because it was surrounded by rich farmland, the trees were weeds and so the wood ran out very early. As blackrock says raw wood's a local resource by it's nature, the farther you have to ship it the better whatever is already at the destination looks. We only ship what we do now because it's plentiful where we can cheaply machine the hell out of it and reduce it to ready-to-use little sticks and sheets. And we still buy more than we ship.
Some time after the last war, one of the old colleges at Oxford that was established in Tudor times discovered wood rot in the ceiling beams of its Great Hall. Theses were massive timbers several feet thick spanning a great width in one piece. They were already a couple of centuries old when they were cut for the Hall, and now the engineers and wood experts said they had only a decade or so left. While the engineers pondered mechanical fixes and the College Council pondered rebuilding entirely, underlings were tasked with seeing just how far the College would have to go to find any trees at all of that size.
They'd pretty much narrowed it down to an expedition to an east asian rainforest, when they got a call from the forester of the New Forest in England. He apologized for not answering the enquiry as he'd been been away, but yes, he did have some oaks of the size and age that were wanted. Trouble was they weren't actually party of the New Forest so, "You'll have to ask the actual owners, it will be a bit tricky digging out the actual records, because no one's needed to know exactly who to contact in the three hundred or so years since they were planted. They belong to some Oxford College who realized eventually they'd need to replace their roof beams, so they'd better have a plan". There are stories about Japanese forest management that are very similar, since they started managing their forests about the same time so they'd always have the wood they need.
Although we're doing better now than in the past, it's because we're learning from the Europeans and others how to manage a resource that isn't just some unwelcome growth to be burned off, or even cash-cropped by clear-cutting. It's only those pioneers who can be excused for looking at the trees and seeing weeds to cut not a valuable forest to preserve.
The team will be cared for regardless if you don't use them to pull roots. You don't need to pull the whole tap root just the top part below the surface, since you're only clearing the land to sowing or building. Horses also give you fertilizer, heat in a pinch, and food if you really have to.
An unattended slow smouldering fire can turn into a nasty surprise if stuff happens, especially in a boreal forest. It could go underground and smoulder for years waiting for a dry spell then oops. Underground fires can continue through the winter
There may have been a 'road', but as said earlier it was probably not suitable for transport of heavy loads and more likely a trail and far from flat or onsoft ground, hence the rapids It's short by todays standards but the five miles of rapids had to be bypassed by the same, if you could do it in a straight line, if not more. Again the biggest problem is the time to load and unload and time was money.
The latest farming methods are low-tillage or no-tillage based. Farmers aren't plowing as much as they did 20 years ago. Less soil compaction, less gas consumed.
As others have mentioned, working around stumps is a royal pain in the ass, and stumps don't rot fast. They would be motivated to make nice plowable fields. Hell, they would have removed a lot of rocks as well - and still do now as rocks surface.
Look at how wood is treated in cottage country. There's so much of it, felled trees are just dragged into crown land to slowly rot. Hardwoods might be cut by locals for firewood.
Kinda what I was thinking. I was also thinking that the so-called "Historian" must be a fake Historian or he dumber than a sack of hammers.
Because
1 It is half the work my way and any way to save work must be seriously considered. As far as going back and forth you live on the land so you are right there
2 Best reason by far is safety. With no hospitals and insurance like today safety is paramount
A falling tree is dangerous as it can twist on you and you get struck by branches. My way there is no danger as it falls when you are not there.
It was not all sweat as a lot of it was ingenious thinking and this is what this thread is about
The historian was the guide at Scadding house who had written a book on that period but knew nothing about the methodology they used to clear the land
I have not noticed less plowing of farm land but I will take your word for it as it would save on equipment and gas as plowing is the most time consuming thing a farmer does
I still say if you take the stump out all you got is a hole in the ground and stump removing is dangerous and very hard work and time consuming
Where are all these removed stumps go?
Thee must be ten of thousands of them
sitting around where are they?
Through smoldering of them and rotting they disappear eventually and are left to become fertilizer
but that is just my opinion I could be wrong
You don't get caught up on the trees as you should clear the ones which might catch you. It's the easiest way to get to the trunk that you intend to cut Failing that you walk away from the tree's fall line. That's away from the branches for the layman. Do people get killed, yes. Does it happen a lot, no.
Stumps can be burnt once removed as well, so the mystery should not trouble you. The holes can be easily levelled - they are not that deep in the big picture of farming.
I worked at clearing land when I was younger. We pulled the smaller stumps, blew the larger ones with dynamite, piled them up with excess brushwood and burnt it all. The cleared land was levelled and tilled. (We had less patience than those in the 1850's though, and more resources available.)
Regarding plowing declining in popularity, here's some info from the source. Dramatic changes since 1991, driven quite a bit by fuel savings.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16-002-x/2008003/article/10688-eng.htm
Conventional tillage becoming less conventional
Between 1991 to 2006, the total area prepared for seeding in Canada using the conventional approach dropped by 60% or 12 million hectares—an area over 2.5 times the size of Switzerland. By 2006, conventional tillage had lost its status as the number one tillage option, and was the second most popular system behind no-till—only slightly more popular than conservation tillage.
No-till gaining popularity
Nationally, the proportion of land prepared for seeding using no-till practices increased from 7% to 46% from 1991 to 2006 (Table 1). The largest gains in no-till occurred in Saskatchewan and Alberta, but no-till seeding also increased rapidly in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. In Saskatchewan, the use of no-till increased from 10% of the total area prepared for seeding in 1991 to 60% in 2006, while in Alberta it rose from 3% to 48%.
they are in 1750
Even today you blow them up. They had no tractors. chain saws etc and no dynamite . Waaaaaaay too much work to pull a large stump
what do they do instead??? Disc the field ??? use more fertilizer??????? Plant grass like alfalfa then let the fields go fallow ?
I cleared two fields, that used to be an old (70+ years) apple orchard. I used my trusty old backhoe, and made a pile as big as a house every day for a month. Taking these big stumps up with digging, horses and winches would have been quite a job.
my point exactly
no way did they remove all the stumps
i am guessing they smoldered them with charcoal or pitch eventually getting them below ground level then let them rot into fertilizer
I wonder why they do not use this method still as you do not need to take the whole stump out
Then you got a hole in the ground and a stump to deal with
That was not my point, though. I believe they took the stumps out, at least where I live (market gardening for Hamilton). There are lots of big stumps still in the boundaries of my bush, actually that is how I know how far my land goes. I have seen pictures of a tripod made out of 3 large logs, and winches, that was used to take up the stumps. I cannot find a picture online.
https://www.vaughan.ca/services/vau...anDocuments/PIONEER LIFE GRADE 3 WORKBOOK.pdf
