AY Honors/Rivers and Streams/Requirements

c. Food

The first priority of a pioneer family when arriving in a new area was to build a house and a barn. If possible, they would also set out a garden, however, that depended on their season of arrival. Before crops on a large scale could be planted, land had to be cleared. It was usually not completed during the first year of settling. First the settlers needed to clear the property of trees and stumps. In many areas (notably New England) clearing the trees and stumps would reveal a field full of large rocks which would also have to be cleared. They would build large bon fires over the largest rocks so that the heat would crack them. Then they could extend the fractures by hand to render the boulders into smaller rocks that could be dragged out by horses. The rocks cleared from fields were generally used to construct stone walls along the borders of fields and to mark property boundaries. Clearing fields was a highly laborious process, requiring hours of back-breaking work over an extended period of time.