Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West: The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)Strickland, Samuel
History
Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West: The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)
Strickland, Samuel
Ontario -- Description and travel
Fall-wheat should be sown between the first and fifteenth day of
September.[1] The sooner the better, in my opinion, because the plant
is stronger and better able to withstand the frost, and is decidedly
less liable to rust. Our fallow having been prepared in this manner,
and sown broad-cast with fall-wheat, the next object was to fence in
the field securely, which is done in the following way. Trees of a
straight growth and straight also in the grain are selected and cut
into twelve feet lengths, and are then, by the means of a beetle and
wedges, split into rails as nearly four inches square as possible. The
rails are then laid in a zigzag direction, crossing each other about a
foot from the end, making an angle of about six feet. Seven rails in
height, crowned by a stake and rider, complete the fence. The best
timbers for making rails, are pine, cedar, oak and black and white ash:
these kinds of timbers will last about thirty years. Bass-wood is more
commonly used for the first fences, because it is to be procured in
greater abundance, and splits more easily; but as it will not last more
than ten years, I would not recommend settlers to use it, if the other
sorts can readily be obtained.
[1] “Fall” is the term usually applied to wheat sown in the autumn by
the Canadian farmer, and will be used in this sense throughout a work
especially written for the service of the inexperienced settler.
In this country, hay-cutting commences about the first or second week
in July. Timothy-grass and clover mixed or timothy alone are the best
for hay, and the most productive. The quantity of seed required for new
land is six quarts of grass-seed and two pounds of clover to the acre;
on old cleared farms nearly double this seed is required. Timothy is a
solid grass with a bulbous root. If the weather is hot and dry, the hay
should be carted the second day after cutting, for there is no danger
in carting it at once into your barn, the climate being so dry that it
never heats enough to cause spontaneous combustion. We have other sorts
of grasses, such as red-top, blue-joint, &c.: these grasses, however,
are inferior, and therefore never grown from choice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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