Smith Farm

In just twelve years, the Smiths turned their hundred acres of forest into a farm that provided for their needs and reflected family unity, thrift, and exemplary work habits. Forty acres of wood lot supplied fuel, building materials, and staves for barrel making, and the family tapped 1,200 to 1,500 sugar maples to produce 1,000 pounds of sugar annually. Fields of wheat, barley, rye, corn, buckwheat, and oats fed the family and livestock, while potatoes, turnips, beets, pumpkins, squash, and flax were also raised. Meadows were generally reserved for winter grazing, and hay was mowed there once or twice each season. Crooked Creek, originating near the Hill Cumorah, provided a year-round supply of water and fresh fish. The Smiths also planted an apple orchard of about three dozen trees with a variety of apples, trapped small game in the swamp for pelts to barter or sell in town, gathered cattails for gasket materials used in barrel lids made in the cooper shop, and used Stafford Road, a rutted, ungraded wagon trail, to travel north to Palmyra village and south to Manchester village.

Manchester, New York · United States