Welcome back to our daily Agriculture Week blog post! Have you been wondering how our hardworking Talbot Settlers would manage to pull through? Well don’t worry, your good friend Stephen is here from the Backus-Page House Museum to tell you about farming from the 1850s-1880s.
The industrial revolution sweeping across the continent had a significant impact on the settlers living in rural areas such as the Talbot Settlement. Before the 1850s, the only farming machines most Canadians had access to were discarded or outdated American reapers such as the McCormick reaper mass produced in the late 1840s.
Elgin County’s close proximity to the American border gave farmers early exposure to the rapid advancement of farm equipment in the United States. By the 1870s and 80s, farmers had specialized tools to help them overcome the unique challenges outlined in the first blog post of this series.
The “stumping machines” of the 1880s offered a much easier alternative to removing tree stumps than waiting for the roots to decompose then digging them up. Some settlers specialized in going from farm to farm and uprooting tree stumps, a necessary service in the densely forested southern Ontario.
A variety of ploughs were developed, each with their own specialty, and every southern Ontario farmer would have several. Mechanized seeders and cultivators appeared in the 1870s, further streamlining the farming process.
The spread of technology to rural communities can in part be accredited to the provincial government’s subsidizing of county agricultural societies in 1851. Soon every county in Ontario had their own society which would host discussions about farmers’ experience with their new farm equipment.
Coming off of the economic depression in 1850, southern Ontario developed an extreme fixation with agricultural fairs. Across the province, competitions took place comparing crops, clothes, and livestock among others. Being a farmer in Elgin county (which separated from Middlesex county in 1851) would have been more exciting in this time period than before. Sure, most workdays were filled with back breaking labor, but with the upcoming events and emerging technology, there was at least a little more to look forward to.
The enthusiasm for fairs sweeping southern Ontario is best exemplified by the plough races that would be held between farms (or in some cases, even counties). Two teams of farmers would each get an ox and plough, then try to plough a portion of land before the other team.
Gradually from the 1850s to the end of the 19th century, agricultural fairs slowly grew larger in spectacle, introducing pipe organ music and spectator’s sports such as “steeple chasing”, otherwise known as horse racing, which was seen as a more gentlemanly sport to bet on than plough racing.
Quite frankly I’m a little sad plough races aren’t in style anymore, but one thing I am glad is not as prominent anymore is the practice of wheat mining, which we’ll talk about next week.
References
Guillet, Edwin C. The Pioneer Farmer and Backwoodsman: Volume Two. University of Toronto Press, 1963.
Jones, Robert Leslie. History of agriculture in Ontario 1613-1880. University of Toronto Press, 1946.
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