The Garden

The Garden. . , Kitchen gardens, like the one kept by Tapping Reeve and his family, provided reliable sources of food for Litchfield families and occupied a central role in the household economy of 18th-century America. Compared to agricultural fields, kitchen gardens were smaller and closer to home, and were planted with an assortment of crops. Transporting fresh produce was difficult and the family relied on the kitchen garden for adding variety to their diet, as well as providing seasoning, medicinal ingredients, and natural materials for making cloth (homemade cloth is often referred to as homespun).,

"Our cucumbers, corn and beans look extremely well and are forward, but a beet, carrot, onion &c &c you can scarcely find in the garden, tho' seed enough have been planted to stock half my farm…" , - Frederick Wolcott, 1806

, "Growing" Fabric , Linen cloth is made from fibers found inside the stalk of the flax plant. The flax was cut, dried, and broken apart to separate the woody parts of the stalk from the fibers, which were then combed through a hetchel (the tool seen below) to separate the long usable fibers from the short fibers and other impurities. The long fibers could then be spun into yarn, dyed, and woven into cloth., Victory Gardens , In both World War I and World War II, victory garden programs encouraged Americans to grow their own produce and preserve surplus food through canning. As much as a symbolic effort as a practical one, victory gardens made more food and materials available to the American military and allowed all Americans to contribute to the war effort., At least twenty million households kept victory gardens during World War II, producing nearly 40% of the nation's fresh produce by war's end., [Caption:] , The local economy relied on the trade of goods and services in addition to cash. Tapping Reeve, founder of Litchfield Law School, paid local cabinetmaker Silas Cheney in agricultural products such as bushels of quince fruit and a three-year-old horse. Reeve was one of Silas Cheney's frequent customers; you can see furniture made by Cheney inside the Tapping Reeve Home.