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
The brush should be carefully piled and laid all one way, by which
means it packs closer and burns better. The regular price for
underbrushing hard-wood land, and cutting up-all the old fallen
timber—which is always considered a part of the underbrushing—is one
dollar per acre, and board. Rough land and swamp vary from seven
shillings and sixpence to ten shillings. Your under-brush should be all
cut and piled by the end of November, before the snow falls to the
depth of four inches, for after that it would be both difficult and
tedious.
The chopping now begins, and may be followed without any interruption
until the season for sugar-making commences. The heads of the trees
should be thrown upon the heaps or wind-rows. A skilful chopper will
scarcely ever miss a heap when felling the timber, besides it saves a
great deal of labour in piling the limbs.
The trunks of the trees must be cut into lengths, from fourteen to
sixteen feet, according to the size of the timber. Now and then a large
maple or beech, when felled, may be left without cutting up, with the
exception of the top, which is called a plan-heap, and is left to log
against: this is only done when the tree is too large to be cut through
easily with the axe.
All timber fit for making rails should be left in double and treble
lengths, as it is less likely to burn.
A good axe-man should be able, with fair chopping, to cut an acre in
eight days after the under-brushing is done. The regular price of
chopping is five dollars per acre, with board, or six without.
The emigrant should endeavour to get as much chopping done as possible
during the first three years, because after that time he has so many
other things to attend to, such as increase of stock, barn and
house-building, thrashing, ploughing, &c., which, of course, give him
every year less time for chopping, particularly if his family be small,
in which case fifty or sixty acres are enough to clear at first, till
his boys are old enough to give him assistance.
Clearing up too large a farm, when labour is so high, is not wise, for
it will not answer to disburse much for hire, at the present prices.
If, therefore, you are not able to cultivate what you have cleared
properly, it will grow up again with raspberries, blackberries, small
trees, and brush, and be nearly as bad to clear as it was at first.
The size of the farm must, however, depend on the resources of the
emigrant, the strength and number of his family, and the quantity of
acres he may possess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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