Clearing the Way

One of the first thing an early farmer had to do was clear the land. This wasn't an easy task, even if they were lucky enough to have an ox, mule, or work horse. Much of the land was virgin forest - lush, green, and teeming with old growth and vegetation. He would try to clear one or two acres a year for fields or pastures. By the end of his life, he would not likely to have cleared 100 acres.

The colonials learned to gird trees from the Indians. A man would cut a hand-wide notched band around a tree. The tree would no longer sprout and all the small limbs would die. This would let the sunlight filter in better. The farmer might eventually chop down some of the trees and let the stumps rot in the fields, unless he had a team of oxen to pull them out.

In "Voices from Colonial America" (National Geographic, 2003) Lisa Trumbauer shares one farmer's account: "This spring we planted about an acre of potatoes and a small piece of corn. Did all the work with hoe. Had no plough and oxen strayed. Had not a book or scrap of printed paper. Every night wolves howled and owls hooted."

Clearing land remained a problem as settlers moved into the Appalachians and pushed west. In the prairie states, the farmers might not have to battle trees and undergrowth to have their fields, but they had to fight the tenacious grasses and their hefty root systems.

Cleared for Planting gets its name from this struggle in the Appalachians. Emma's family and Edgar's family are farmers. At one point Emma writes, "Papa and Uncle Roy have cleared an extra field and are planting corn there. I guess we will have plenty of cornmeal, grits, and hominy come fall. I see what you were talking about in clearing land for planting. Life is like that too, I think. There are always problems to be cleared so we can plant better things."

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