Rural Life in Litchfield County

omposed of a kind of soil more readily cultivated than the rocky areas on the hillsides. After a field was stripped of trees and freed from stones, it was plowed and roughly harrowed. The only plow in use up to the early years of the nineteenth century was the unwieldy, heavy-beamed, wooden plow. It was not of a type suited to lifting boulders in its course through the soil. Perhaps this may account for the thoroughness with which fields on our hills were clearedof loose stones and boulders. There were many traditions of "bees" where men and teams turned in to help a neighbor clear a field of rocks, which were afterwards utilized in making great walls about the fields. After the rude plow, the heavy, wooden, peg-toothed harrow was used for fitting the seed bed, and after seeding, the brush was dragged over to scratch in the seed. These were the only implements of tillage, excepting, of course, the strictly hand tools, in use until after the Revolution. Corn was planted by hand, following the old Indian custom. A child often carried a sack of corn, walking up and down the plowed field and dropping in the traditional five kernels, "One for the bug, One for the crow, One to rot And two to grow." Following the dropper came a stalwart man armed with the heavy, clumsy hoe, who drew the earth over the kernels and gave it three pats to fix the earth about them. The sown crops needed little care till harvest, but progressive farmers, or those having m... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.