Kitchen gardens like the one kept by Tapping Reeve and his family were reliable sources of food for Litchfield families and held a central place in the household economy of 18th-century America. Smaller and closer to home than agricultural fields, they were planted with an assortment of crops that added variety to the family diet and also supplied seasonings, medicinal ingredients, and natural materials for making homespun cloth. Linen cloth was made from fibers inside flax stalks, which were cut, dried, broken apart, and combed through a hetchel to separate long usable fibers from short fibers and impurities before the long fibers were spun into yarn, dyed, and woven into cloth. In both World War I and World War II, victory garden programs encouraged Americans to grow produce and preserve surplus food through canning, making more food and materials available to the military while giving civilians a way to contribute to the war effort; at least 20 million households kept victory gardens during World War II and produced nearly 40% of the nation's fresh produce by the war's end. The local economy also relied on trade in goods and services in addition to cash, and Tapping Reeve paid local cabinetmaker Silas Cheney with agricultural products including bushels of quince fruit and a three-year-old horse.