Making Hay While the Sun Shines: Farm Life in August

By: Garet Livermore, Vice President for Education

Summer Farm Scene, Old New England Illustrated

One of the realities of farming is that it is outdoor work requiring the farmer to work in conditions as varied as the blizzards of January and the heat of summer.  This is especially true during the hot, sunny days of July and August when farmers need to go out into their fields make the hay that will feed their animals throughout the year.  Even, like in the illustration above, the farmers’ cows have the good sense to find a cool shaded section of stream to stand in, the farmer and his family must toil in the sun and heat to cut, dry and gather the hay to store in the barn for colder weather.  Haymaking was demanding work that required whole families and communities to work together to successfully bring in the crop.

Cutting Hay, Old New England Illustrated

Despite the perception amongst some that cutting hay is simply a large mowing job, haymaking is a very critical process that requires much planning and knowledge of the crop and local weather conditions to be successful.  The old adage “making hay while the sun shines” was a vital fact of life for 19^th century farmers.  They needed to cut whole fields of hay with scythes and allow for drying time.  Scything was best done in a group so that whole rows could be evenly cut at a time. Neighboring farmers helped out and competed with one another as to both the speed and the quality of the cutting.  Jared Van Wagenen described a typical 19^th century cutting party in Schoharie County:

“Always they laughed and gossiped and chaffed a little .  Then the man whose turn it was to lead struck three sharp taps on his stone with his scythe, a sound that was both a signal and a challenge, and they were off.  If someone lagged in his stroke, the fellow literally at his heels cried out the jocular warning: “Get out of my way or I’ll cut your legs off.”

 A talented man with a scythe was hard to find and a valuable addition to the haying crews.  It was said that the best men could cut an acre of hay a day by hand.  This was soon superseded by the horse drawn mowers of the 19^th century that could easily cut 15 or more acres per day.

Bringing in the hay, by Charles Fredrick Zabriskie (1848-1914), Cyanotype photograph, PH 19634.  Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York.

Cutting the hay was just the beginning of the process. The farmers then had to dry the hay before it could be put in the barn.  Hay needed to contain less than 22% moisture to avoid spoilage or, worse, causing a barn fire through spontaneous combustion. Drying was managed by raking the hay into long windrows and then periodically “tedding” or fluffing the hay with a rake or other device to completely dry the stalks in preparation for storing the hay in the barn.

Woman Driving Hay Rake, Unidentified photographer, ca. 1907-1915. F0014.2011(08). Plowline: Images of Rural New York.

In the 19^th century, hay dried in the field then was brought in bulk on a haywagon to the barn for storage in the attic, or hayloft. This required forming a chain with many people moving the hay into the loft with pitch forks, a very labor intensive process in the heat. By the early 20^th century new machinery had been invented that more efficiently compressed the hay into bales into the field which could then be stacked in the barn.

Gathering Hay for Storage, Pierstown, NY, by Charles Fredrick Zabriskie (1848-1914), black and white photograph, PH18830.  Fenimore Art Museum, Coopertown, New York. 

Midday meals brought out to the fields, called “dinner” in the rural Northeast until fairly recently, were a welcome respite from the hot, dusty work of haymaking.  Typically haymakers, wives, sisters and daughters brought hampers of cold meats, bread, cheese and pie to the fields and layed out blankets under nearby shade trees.  The favored drink of the season was switchel, a thirst quenching beverage made from cold well water, honey or maple syrup, apple cider vinegar and ground ginger. The taste of switchel has often been compared to a combination of lemonade and ginger-ale.  Here is a recipe to try on a hot day:

Switchel, or Haymaker’s Punch

1 cup Honey or Maple Syrup

1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

1tablespoon ground ginger

2 quarts water

Mix together the evening previous store in the refrigerator and enjoy.

Chase hay Pressing, by Arthur J. Telfer (1859-1954), dry collodion negative, 5-07492.  Smith and Telfer Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York. 

Hay Wagons on Main Street, by Arthur J. Telfer (1859-1954), dry collodion negative, C-508332.  Smith and Telfer Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York.

Faces of The Farmers' Museum: Ted Shuart

By: Garet Livermore, Vice President for Education

Ted Shuart, Printer, The Farmers' Museum. June 2011.

How did you get involved in museum work? 
You could say that I was born into it.  My whole family was in the antiques business, and I even slept in a rope trundle bed as a small child.  When the centennial of the Civil War came around in the 1960s, it really stimulated my interest because I read everything I could about the units and the battles. Eventually I became involved in reenactments and helped to start a local group of reenactors who traveled to schools and historical societies to do presentations.  My day job as a graphic artist at a local newspaper gave me some of the basic skills that I continue to practice here in the Printing Office.  I came here as a Museum Teacher twelve years ago to get a foot in the door of the museum and eventually became the printer when that job opened up.

What did it take to learn the craft of Letterpress printing?
The first thing I did was review the notes and books of the museum printers who had worked here for more than sixty years; they are a treasure trove of information.  After that I started working with other museum printers, including staff from the Shelburne Museum and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  They helped me understand the finer points of printing from typesetting through inking and on to printing pressure and press mechanics.

What is your favorite object in the Middlefield Printing Office?
It would probably be the Robert Hoe Washington Hand Press.  It was made in 1828 and is one of the oldest presses of its kind in America.  It was used by the Freeman’s Journal here in Cooperstown for many years.  A few years after the paper bought it, they moved to a larger page size that required a new press.  Most small town presses were used intensely, and the surviving presses are suffered and are difficult to use, but this press was put in storage for many years until it came to The Farmers’ Museum in the late 1940s. As a result it is a pristine piece of equipment in wonderful condition that is great to work with.

What is your next big project?

I’m presently setting up a children’s book based on one printed by Elihu Phinney here in Cooperstown in the nineteenth century.  That edition will run to 1,000 copies and will use the original illustrations.   Also, since this is the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, I am researching and reproducing recruitment posters from the early years of the war.

Why do you think it is important for people to understand early printing techniques?

Letterpress printing is the basis of all of our graphic arts today.  Books, magazines and newspapers all had their start in printing offices like this. Even the basic terms of printing – like font, typestyle, upper and lower case – all refer to letterpress techniques that have carried over to digital printing. Many of the visitors who are most interested in the shop are modern designers and printers who have become interested in letterpress printing not only because it is the roots of the current industry, but also because the quality of work printed on presses like these has yet to be duplicated digitally.

A Note about the Faces of The Farmers' Museum series: This series of blog posts combines staff portraits made in the style of nineteenth-century occupational photographs using film-based photography. The idea came for this when I found a box of long-expired film in a museum storage area. Using the film from the early 1990s, a fifty-year-old Rolleiflex camera and ancient photographic chemicals gave a reasonable facsimile of the images of farmers, tradesmen and community leaders that were popular 150 years ago.

Thanksgiving

by: Garet Livermore, Vice President for Education

THANKSGIVING DAY.--When shall it be? The last Thursday in November falls on the 29th. We petition each and all the State governors to appoint that day for our national rejoicing. Then all the land will be glad together, and union among the people would be a sure pledge of heart-thankfulness to God, who has given to us, as a nation, such wonderful prosperity, such universal blessings.  -- Sarah J. Hale, Editor, Godey’s Lady’s Book, October 1855.

Fall thanksgiving celebrations have been a part the American experience since colonial days. The celebration at Plymouth Plantation by the Pilgrims in 1621 is only the most famous example. Celebrating at harvest time with a feast and games was a common practice in all of the colonies, including New York and Virginia. Each location marked the successful harvest with its own traditional foods and activities. It was not until a public relations campaign spearheaded by Sarah J. Hale, the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book, in the middle of the 19th century that the holiday became a national event. The date was first fixed as the final Thursday in November by the proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and later adjusted to the fourth Thursday in November in a law signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Apparently, Roosevelt felt that in the country would benefit from the extra week of Christmas shopping in those years when November has five Thursdays.

The Turkey as National Dish
The centerpiece of most Thanksgiving meals, the turkey, has an interesting history of its own. Although many people know the story of Ben Franklin’s proposal to make the bird our national symbol, fewer know why it is the almost universal choice for our Thanksgiving meals. When early settlers came to Massachusetts, they were pleased to find fish and game in abundance. They were particularly fond of the bird they called the “Turkey Fowl” because of the belief that it was related to the guinea fowl then being imported to Europe from the Middle East.

Initially, the birds were so numerous that they were a reliable food source for early settlers. Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader, described hunting the birds for the first Thanksgiving meal: “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.” With this kind of unsustainable hunting the birds quickly became scarce, and wild turkeys almost disappeared from New England in the 18th century.

Farmers developed domesticated breeds of turkey to raise for meat and eggs. Although never as popular as chickens or even geese for family meals and holidays, the turkey benefitted from its traditional connection with Thanksgiving and became a specialty animal for farmers to raise and bring to market in the fall. Most of these breeds had strong regional connections, like the Narragansett in the Northeast and the Bourbon Red in Kentucky. The Farmers’ Museum raises a small flock of Narragansett turkeys here in Cooperstown as it was the most common breed of turkey in our region.

Driving Turkeys to Market
Just like today, the demand for turkeys was highly seasonal in the 19th century. Farmers who raised the birds had to drive them to market for the profitable holiday season. “Driving” turkeys in the 19th century consisted of getting the whole flock to walk, sometimes more than a hundred miles, to market under their own power. The flock was led by a wagon filled with grain that a boy sprinkled in front of the group and it was followed by men with long “switches” or sticks that could be used to poke and prod reluctant turkeys along the way. The process had several challenges, including birds’ instinct to roost in trees, on roofs and in the rafters of covered bridges that they encountered. “Turkey trots” were often held up for days while the drovers climbed in trees and on buildings, poking at the birds to get them down on the ground and walking to market again.
Thanksgiving at The Farmers’ Museum
The Farmers' Museum will reopen its doors on the Friday and Saturday following Thanksgiving to offer visitors a glimpse of how Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1845. Visitors will get a chance to see a turkey drive and help the Farmers move our turkeys to market across the museum grounds. You will see our staff prepare a traditional Thanksgiving meal at Lippitt farmhouse and watch the blacksmith forge trivets and fireplace tools. At the Middlefield Printing Shop you can print a traditional Thanksgiving recipe to take home for your own use. Come join the fun and explore the museum!

Make Your House Tight & Snug: Preparing for Winter, Part I

By: Garet Livermore, Vice President for Education

“Chill November's surly blast makes fields and forests bare and old man Winter with his frosty beard will soon be upon us.” - The Cultivator, Journal of the New York Agricultural Society, December, 1860.

Today we have the luxury of dealing with the change of seasons by simply turning up the thermostat and laying in a stock of snow-melt and other winter necessities of the 21st century. In the middle of the 19th century – the focal period of The Farmers’ Museum’s Historic Village – anticipating winter was a much more demanding, higher stakes activity that took up a good part of people’s times throughout the year, not just in the few weeks of Fall between the times of the leaves having fallen and the first significant snowfall. This blog entry is the first in a three part series, “Preparing for Winter.” In this series I will look at getting the house tight and ready for winter, laying in a supply of wood to keep the house warm and building and keeping the home fires necessary to get you through a long northern winter.

Planning for winter began right when farms were laid out, to simplify and manage the extremes of our northern climate. Farmhouses were placed close to roads to ease access and snow clearing issues, while barns and barnyards were set to shield humans and animals from the worst of the weather while maintaining an efficient work area. In extreme northern locations, farmers would actually build their houses, barns and outbuildings in a single, connected structure so they would always be sheltered during storms. The danger of fire taking out an entire farm was too great to do this in most of the Northeast.

Most early settlers in rural New York came from New England and were used to dealing with long, cold winters. The designs of their houses reflected this experience. Predominant forms were Cape Cod, salt boxes and federal styles well adapted to the climate. They featured large centrally massed chimneys which provided for several fireplaces and large amounts of brick to hold heat, steep roofs to shed heavy snow loads and relatively small rooms with low ceilings to conserve heat. Visitors to the Lippitt House at The Farmers’ Museum often comment on those rooms and ceilings, believing that their size is because “people were shorter back then”. Actually it is simply one example of a New England saltbox house built to conserve heat during the upstate winters.

In the early 19th century open fireplaces were the predominant form of providing heat for comfort and cooking. The fireplaces of this time were heavily influenced by the work of Sir Benjamin Thompson (1753 – 1814), otherwise known as Count Rumford. Thompson was a scientist and inventor who is credited with inventing, amongst other things, the kitchen range, drip-coffee pot and thermal underwear. A Massachusetts born New Englander, it is fitting that his most influential work was the Rumford fireplace, which offered great improvements in fireplace efficiency and effectiveness in heating. His fireplaces were relatively shallow, to project more heat into the room and had a very narrow “throat” or opening into the chimney which increased the draw of the fire to reduce smoke and enhance combustion.

As anyone who has done a “gut restoration” can tell you, there are many interesting things to be found in the walls of an old house including shoes, skeletons of small animals and sometimes, for lucky renovators, coins and currency. One rarely finds insulation, though. This wasn’t because insulation wasn’t known at the time: it was. In fact, the concept of building insulation has been around for centuries, dating to at least Greek and Roman times. In early America, insulation was an expensive proposition and only used in buildings built in very exposed, windy locations. Sometimes the insulation consisted of loosely laid brick “nogging” placed between the vertical elements of buildings framed. Other times builders would tightly pack sawdust, wood chips or other material in the walls of houses creating a heat barrier similar to today’s fiberglass batting. Most often, farmers simply “banked” the house by piling straw, hay or other loose materials against the foundation to keep the cold winter winds out of their cellars. This helped keep their potatoes and other foods in the cellar from freezing and spoiling, and also helped keep the house a bit warmer. The illustration at the top of this blog post shows a house “banked” for winter.

In the latter part of the 19th century many entrepreneurial businessmen started recycling industrial by-products left over from textile mills and factories as insulation. These included wood fiber from lumber mills, animal hair from slaughterhouses and cotton and flax remnants from textile mills. Each of these shared the characteristic of being fibrous material that was well suited to make into batts or panels for placement in walls. Perhaps the most unusual insulation material in common use was eel grass, the “seaweed” that you see piled up in windrows along New England’s beaches. Its use in homes started in Colonial times and extended through the 1940s. Samuel Cabot of Boston created a product called “Cabot’s Quilt” in 1893 where he stitched compressed eel grass between two layers of Kraft paper. The insulation was on the market for many years and because of its sound deadening qualities, used in many theatres and office buildings, including Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Portraits from the Junior Livestock Show

By: Garet Livermore, Vice President for Education

One of the most important traditions of The Farmers’ Museum is its annual Junior Livestock Show. Established by Stephen C. Clark Jr. in 1947, the Junior Show has brought children from throughout Central New York to show their sheep, dairy goats, swine, dairy cattle and beef cattle to Cooperstown to participate in one of the largest events of its kind in the Northeast. The show is run cooperatively by the museum with the Cooperative Extension staff of the following counties:

• Otsego
• Delaware

• Schoharie

• Fulton/Montgomery

• Herkimer

• Oneida

• Madison

• Chenango

Through the more than sixty years of the show, much has changed in farming and the economy of our region. In Oneida County alone, there were more than 4,000 farms at the show’s inception and scarcely 1,000 today. But the Junior Show has remained a constant for farm families and 4-H members each summer. Because of rising interest in food and agriculture, the show remains healthy and continues to attract about 300 children and about 700 animals as participants. Many of whom are children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of exhibitors from years gone by. Many families find themselves drawn into the world of the show and after starting off as exhibitors, they become involved in starting and maintaining 4-H groups in their communities or even helping to organize the show itself.

The focus of The Farmers’ Museum Junior Livestock Show is the kids and their animals. The children spend countless hours in the months leading up to the show preparing themselves and their animals for the event. Many of the participants use the Cooperstown show as preparation for nationally recognized events like the New York State Fair and the All-American Dairy Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

This year, to document the relationship between the children and their animals, museum staff worked with photographer Richard Walker to create a series of portraits in a makeshift studio at the show grounds. The photographs illustrate the pride and hard work that goes into the show and the bond between exhibitor and their animal partners in the event. Here are a few of samples of Richard’s work on this project.

For more images in this series, click here.

All photographs by Richard Walker.