"Sledding Wood and Killing Hog(s)" - A Snapshot of Farming in Lexington

Although several families had lived in Lexington for generations, most of the population was made up of newcomers, seeking to exchange their lives in Boston, Newbury or Salem for better ones in Lexington. From the 1640’s onward, Lexington’s population grew by one hundred people per decade. This population “boom” had a direct impact upon the natural and social environment of the town. As new residents moved in, more woods were cleared, fields cultivated and rich peat swamps harvested. This process continued for over a century until the French Wars of the 1750’s, when immigration virtually stopped. By 1775, Lexington was inhabited by over one hundred families that included seven hundred and fifty people, five slaves and four hundred cows.

According to research conducted by Mary Babson Fuhrer, many of the townsmen subscribed to “mixed husbandry” farming, which encouraged farmers to produce a variety of items necessary for survival. Such items included vegetables and fruit, meat and wood for fuel and shelter. To generate such supplies for the long term, Lexington farmers needed approximately sixty acres of land. According to research conducted by historian Mary Babson Fuhrer, approximately two to four acres of land was allocated to an orchard and home. The average Lexington family burned about an acre of wood per year. As a result, an additional twenty to thirty acres of land was set aside as a “wood lot”. Another six acres were designated as “tillage”, which was designed to generate grains for bread and flax for linen. However, to remain productive, tillage needed to be fertilized with cow manure.

Of course, cows needed to be fed. At least fifteen acres of land was usually set aside as grazing fields while another fifteen acres was designated for hay to feed cows and other livestock during the winter Naturally, cows and other livestock also served as a valuable source of meat, dairy and hides.

On the eve of the American Revolution, farmers in Lexington had roughly allocated ten percent of their lands as tillage, twenty-five percent as pastures and hay fields and forty percent as wood lot. More specifically, according to a 1771 tax valuation of Lexington land, l5.1 acres of land for tillage, 12.5 acres of land for pastures, 14.7 acres of land for hay fields, 21.5 “unimproved acres” or woodlots, and 32.3 acres of “improved acres”.

Life on colonial Lexington farms was very much guided by the changing of the seasons. In the winter months men felled, hauled and chopped firewood. Because farmers had to feed precious hay to any animal they hoped to “winter over,” November, December, and January were a time of slaughtering; the cold helped preserve the fresh meat until women had a chance to salt it or turn it into sausages. 

In April, farmers began their season by turning gardens and plowing their tillage land. The onerous task of gathering the winter’s manure and ashes and carting them to the tillage field to be spread and plowed into the soil as fertilizer. In May and June, while farmers plowed, sowed, and weeded, Lexington women turned to the work of the dairy. Women continued cheese making until the heat of July impeded their work. In July and August, all available men turned their hands to the hay and grain harvest. Women did extra loads of laundry and cooked extra meals for hired harvest help.

In autumn, men worked to bring in the harvest of fruits, vegetables, root crops, and squashes, while women preserved them by canning or making barrels of applesauce, apple vinegar, and apple molasses for sweetening. Cider mills ran non-stop turning as men produced barrels of that most essential colonial beverage.

The Reverend Jonas Clarke’s diary entries between 1766 and 1775 highlight some of the daily and monthly the undertook to maintain his farm.. In January he would retrieve “wood from the swamp, blowsing logs, sledding wood [and] killing hog(s).” In April Clarke “began to garden, making soap.” In June the minister was weeding and performing odd jobs. “Weeding corn . . . moving dung to yard; carting dung and ashes . . .fishing . . . building/making wall . . . began to mow.” In October, Clarke was “getting in cider/making cider . . .gathering corn.”

Yet despite the practice of mixed husbandry, the town was not a collection of self-sufficient farms. There was a great interdependence among the residents of Lexington. Cooperation and mutual welfare were common customs in Massachusetts towns and villages. Residents assisted each other with a variety of tasks and in a number of emergencies: preparing meals, building homes, plowing, felling timber, caring for one another when ill or injured or simply offering counsel and advice.