A History of Agriculture in the Town of De Kalb
by Bryan Thompson
Osbornville Work Circle ready for a day’s work
C: George Lamica, Clarence Mac Intyre, George Lamica Jr., ? Kelly, Don Thompson, Herbert Thompson, and Stanley Hurlbut prepare to cut corn on the Hurlbut farm. The crew moved throughout the neighborhood cutting corn at each member’s farm until the harvest was finished. August 1940.
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One of the main reasons for early settlers pushing into the undeveloped frontier was the quest for land. Many of De Kalb’s first settlers were within a generation or two of emigrating from Europe. In Europe feudal land holding systems kept most common people from acquiring land. In North America, so-called, “empty” land on the frontier held out the possibility of land ownership for everyone. Owning land was seen as the key to financial stability. The land held the promise of providing sustenance for the family and a legacy to pass down to future generations. Most of the first farms in the town were subsistence farms. There was very little cash circulating. You traded with your neighbors for most of your needs. A key element of early agriculture was the neighborhood work circle. Nobody could raise a house, clear the land or harvest the crops alone. Because of this people moved to the town in groups usually family members or former neighbors. This is why Judge Cooper arrange a settlement party of more than 30 people.
Together they could quickly establish a settlement that was self-supporting.
One example of a family migrating into the town together to support each other was the four Gould sisters of Osbornville. They moved into the town with their families just before the Civil War. Cooperative work circles continued to be a feature of agriculture in De Kalb through the 1950’s.
Examples of Early Farm Tools
Eric Sloane
The Town of De Kalb has unusually detailed early records of farming in the town gathered for the Potter Goff survey in 1814. There were 67 farms in the town in that year. In the ten years since the town was settled, the settlers had cleared 4,691 acres or almost 500 acres per year. Most houses were constructed of logs, while most barns were of the more time-consuming post and beam plank construction. This shows the importance early settlers placed on their farming enterprises. Since De Kalb is a stony place not all land was fit for cultivation. Much was used for pasture.
So what animals were present in 1814? 97% of the farms had at least one cow but few had more than 2. There were only 230 cows in the whole town. Only 58% of farms had horses but 85% had at least one yoke of oxen. When you work with oxen, you walk rather than ride. With the small number of horses, walking from place to place was a common mode of transportation. The most common domestic animal in the town was sheep with 1,010 reported. Pigs were about as common as cows with 261 on farms. In 1814, most of the town was still forested; only 7.3% of the land was cleared.
Eric Sloane
This early settlement period pre-dated the mechanization of agriculture that took hold in the 1850’s. Plows were wooden and cast iron, and easily broken. Harrows were spike tooth or just piles of brush pulled by domestic beasts to smooth the soil. Seed was broadcast by hand. Hay and grain were harvested with scythes. Abraham Fisk’s De Kalb account book from the 1820’s lists the repair and making of snathes (handles for scythes) as his major carpentry tasks performed in the summer months.
Eric Sloane
One of the few tools available then were fanning mills to separate chaff from the grain. Ichabod Arnold’s family was engaged in making fanning mills in the area by the early 1820’s.
Inexpensive mass-produced canning jars were not available until the 1850’s, so the food that was grown had to be dried or salted to preserve it. The winter diet consisted of cabbages, winter squash, turnips, beets, carrots and potatoes which could be stored in a root cellar. Or, as Rhobe Knight noted in a letter from De Kalb, 20 bushels of turnips were stored under a pile of hay in the yard. These items supplemented the salted and smoked meats, dried peas, beans, apples, maple sugar and flour.
In 1825 there were 766 people living in De Kalb. The town was still largely forested. There were 36 asheries in operation in the town. Asheries operated by burning trees and reducing the ashes to pearlash or potash. The settlers continued opening more land for grazing. There were 1,019 cattle in the town and 137 horses, but oxen still outnumbered horses. The number of sheep and hogs remained the same as ten years earlier. 4,449 yards of cloth were woven in the town in 1825.
Maple Ridge Cheese factory.
Farmers gradually abandoned other crops in favor of more lucrative milk production. The neighborhood cheese factories were seasonal operations. Cows were dried off for much of the winter when the factories closed. During the winter, what little milk was produced was used to make butter. Home butter production in the town peaked in the 1890’s. In the winter months, farmers worked in the woods cutting firewood. The wood was transported to villages in the depths of winter when it was easiest to transport heavy loads by sleigh over frozen roads. This provided farmers with a winter cash flow.
Eric Sloane
By 1875, most of the improvable land in the town of De Kalb had been cleared. Improved acres stood at 36,820 acres. Production of crops other than dairy were declining but De Kalb farmers still managed to produce 46,958 bushels of potatoes and over 9,000 bushels of wheat. The oxen were disappearing with only 49 in the town, while horse numbers climbed to 827.
Addie Thompson with her turkeys.
The production of poultry was a new expanding industry. Almost every farm sold eggs and one third sold turkeys. Poultry production steadily rose in the town up to the 1930’s. Egg prices reached the highest price ever seen in 1914 when eggs sold wholesale at the freight dock in De Kalb Junction for $1.50 per dozen in 12 dozen crates. Adjusted for inflation in today’s dollars that would be over $32 per dozen. And we think today’s egg prices are high?
The poultry industry was transformed by the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940’s, allowing large confinement operations. The commercial production of eggs and turkeys gradually fell through the 1950’s until it all but disappeared from the town.
Anna Foster Hurlbut on her way to the barn to milk the cows.
After the land was cleared, the average size of farms in the town began to increase, especially after the introduction of milking machines. Milking by hand, a farm couple could easily milk 20 cows. With the introduction of milking machines, the average number of cows per farm was not limited to 20. Smaller farms were absorbed by larger neighboring farms. Farmers continued to cooperate with their neighbors for major crop harvests up until the period after WW2. The labor shortages of the war quickened the mechanization of farming. Soon inexpensive tractors and harvesting equipment were owned by every farmer not shared within a community.
Milking on the Herbert Thompson Farm. Circa 1955.
By the 1960’s, the average dairy herd had grown to forty some cows. More emphasis was placed on dairying. The production of secondary crops such a poultry and maple syrup declined. The NYS Maple Coop in Gouverneur closed and there were no more local turkey markets. Local milk bottling plants began to vanish. More marginal farmlands were abandoned. By the end of the sixties, the sale of grade B milk in station cans all but vanished. The last operating cheese factory in the town of De Kalb, the Redrock factory, burned while being renovated in March 1970.
Dolph Fluno and one of the Merrithew Boys ready for haying on the Maple Ridge.
Sources:
Blankman, Edgar G Geography of St. Lawrence County Canton, NY 1898.
French, J H Historical and Statistical Gazetteer of New York State 1860.
Goff, Potter and Silas Spencer A Classification of the Town of De Kalb 1814.
New York State Library, New York State Census 1825.
New York State Library, New York State Census 1835.
New York State Library, New York State Census 1845.
New York State Library, New York State Census 1855.
New York State Library, New York State Census 1865.
New York State Library, New York State Census 1875.
Sloane, Eric 1958 The Seasons of America’s Past Wilfred Funk NYC.
Sloane, Eric 1954 American Barns and Covered \Bridges Wilfred Funk NYC.
Mrs. Carney at her Loom.
By 1845 the population of the town had grown to 1,723 people. Much more land was cleared with improved land standing at 10,773 acres. There were only two asheries left in town but there were 7 sawmills in operation and two grist mills. There were 5,268 sheep in the town and over 6,800 yards of cloth were produced domestically. (Production of wool in De Kalb would reach its peak in 1865 with the production of 2,801 pounds of wool. It never returned to this level after the end of the Civil War.)
The number of cattle had grown to 3,165. Home production of butter grew to 81,855 pounds and home production of cheese stood at an astounding 236,195 pounds.
By 1855, more land was cleared and a diverse array of crops were grown. More acres were devoted to oats than any other crop at 644 acres. Second was wheat with 544 acres. Third was corn with 426 acres. Potatoes were fourth at 275 acres. Peas were fifth at 204 acres (that’s a lot of soup). Sixth was barley at 124 acres. Seventh was buckwheat at 118 acres. Eighth was rye at 110 acres. Ninth was turnips at 25 acres and tenth was flax at 9 acres.
By 1855, the number of improved acres of land in the town had doubled to 22,658 acres. The largest number of improved acres were in pasture at 9,507 acres followed by meadow lands at 8,106 acres. 23,876 pounds of maple sugar were produced in De Kalb but only 108 gallons of maple syrup. Maple sugar production peaked around 1860, and as mass-produced bottles became available, maple syrup production soon outstripped maple sugar production.
Jesse Williams invented the factory method of cheese manufacture in 1851. This soon transformed the types of agricultural production throughout New York State. The first cheese factory came to the town of De Kalb in 1863. Soon after, home production of cheese vanished, replaced by a dozen or more neighborhood cheese factories.
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Red Rock Cheese factory.
Consolidation, mechanization, and expansion of the average size of dairy farms continued through the 1970’s and 1980’s. Surplus farmland was taken up by newcomers to town. The largest group of newcomers were the Amish followed by urban transplants. These newcomers led to a rebirth of market gardening, ginseng cultivation, Christmas tree farms, and other specialty crops.
In the 1990’s, the introduction of new techniques in maple production, including vacuum tubing systems, and reverse osmosis led to a resurgence in maple syrup production in De Kalb. By 2020, the number of dairy farms in the town of De Kalb had dwindled to barely a dozen. Yet the three largest dairies in the town milked more cows than the 5,295 cows milked by hundreds of farms in 1875. Agriculture is still an important part of our economy. However, our forebearers would hardly recognize it as it is practiced today. It is truly an industry revolutionized.