Ontario Agriculture Week: Wheat Mining

 Hey again history buffs, I’m Stephen here with the Backus-Page house museum, and today I wanted to take a brief detour from our chronological dive into farming in the Talbot Settlement to talk about a farming practice called “wheat mining”. 

I came across wheat mining in my research while writing the second blog post and thought a single sentence just would not do it justice. 

Though our series as a whole focuses on the Talbot Settlement, I would like to clarify that I have not found any concrete evidence that any Talbot settlers were wheat miners. This post is not pointing fingers at any farmers in particular, it is instead only to highlight one of many potential dangers facing farmers in Ontario. 

So, what is wheat mining? Well, as you might already know, managing the nutrients in soil by cycling out different kinds of crops was and is essential to maintaining a farm over a long-term period of time. For example, buckwheat was grown by settlers to prepare the soil for future wheat crops, as wheat yields would be greater after that particular plant was grown. 

Wheat mining completely ignores this aspect of farming, planting exclusively wheat for many years in a row. A farmer would plant wheat consecutively until the soil was exhausted, reaping the short-term benefits of a large wheat yield at the expense of long-term longevity.  

At first glance, wheat mining seems pretty standard, just a risky practice with the potential to capitalize off of rapidly fluctuating wheat prices. But a particularly opportunistic farmer could reap the rewards without the risk if they were willing to do it at someone else’s expense. 

To an untrained farmer, like many who would have been given land in Ontario, a field that had been used to wheat mined would be indistinguishable from regular farmland. Because of this, a farmer could wheat mine until their soil was exhausted, then sell off their land to an unsuspecting settler and repeat the process. 

Of course, wheat mining was looked down upon in the farming community, since it was a fairly low effort practice and usually came at someone else’s expense. In the 19th century, many British farmers looking for work would have moved to Ontario, especially during the northern expansion that required extra workers. 

 

Kind of sneaky eh? Tomorrow will be our last stretch of time leading into the 20th century, I just wanted to give one last example to illustrate how many difficulties farmers had to manage if they wanted to be successful in 19th century Ontario.  

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. 

 

Ontario Agriculture Week: The Early 1800s

 Welcome back everyone! Did you like yesterday’s post? I thought it was pretty fun, but we covered a lot, so today let’s take it a little slower. My name is Stephen McLachlin, and I’m from the Backus-Page House Museum. This series is going to cover farming from the founding of the Talbot Settlement in 1803 all the way to the early 20th century, all from the comfort of your own home!  

In the early 19th century, the settlers brave enough to live in Ontario found an abundance of challenges standing between them and a prosperous farm.  

Traditionally, less adventurous farmers in that time period would have been able to plough their fields, but this was not the case with farmers in Ontario, whose fields were covered in tree stumps and large rocks. 

This meant that farmers would have had to rake the entire field by hand or get their work animals to pull the top of a fallen tree, that they called a “rough drag”, over the soil. Either way, the difficult terrain made even the most basic farming extremely uninviting. 

Removing stumps from a field was no easy task either, the roots of the felled tree would eventually rot away, but farmers could expect to wait seven years before the stump could be removed. 

 

Even after all the physical obstacles were removed, Ontario fieldwork was far from a pleasant undertaking. Swarms of biting insects, ranging in size from gadflies to horseflies terrorized both animals and farmers alike. 

To combat the pests, farmers wore netted headgear, layers of grease, and used smoke, which all served as makeshift bug repellant. 

The difficulties didn’t end once the crops were planted, however. Frost was a constant threat to farmers, as was excessive heat or humidity, which would also destroy crops.  

Harvesting was hardly easier than planting, the sickles used by farmers were essentially the same tools as the ancient Egyptians used 4000 years ago for the same purpose, though they were made of sturdier material than their archaic counterparts. 

Farmers would have had to bend over and grab the stalks of wheat, then cut them with their sickle, laying the crops to the side to be collected by other workers. Most farmers could not afford to hire extra hands, so family members and neighbors were often called upon to help. This process was strenuous and slow, adjectives that neatly summarize the farming industry in that time. 

Starting a farm in the early 1800s was a daunting task, but Canadian settlers overcame all obstacles with impressive resourcefulness and ingenuity to make a living.  

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.