Creating a Farm

Creating a Farm , The Smiths selected property that featured all the resources of a first-rate farm: a year-round source of water, fertile soil, gentle slopes, and mature sugar maple trees interspersed with beech, oak, and other hardwoods. , They were granted permission to begin clearing the heavily forested acreage just south of their log home as early as 1818. They finalized the arrangements to purchase this one hundred acres of land by mid-1820. , They felled several thousand trees, some of which were up to four feet in diameter and stood more than a hundred feet tall! Some of the tree trunks were hwen for use as construction timbers; mant were split for fence rails or chaopped into firewood. Excess wood was burned to sell the ashes. Before planting crops, they also had to remove the underbrush and large rocks. , We cleared sixty acres of the heaviest timber I ever saw 9trees you could not conveniently cut down). We had a good place. We also had it from twelve to fifteen hundred sugar trees....We worked hard to clear our place. -William Smith