At Alderlea on a night like this, when a wind blows wildly in the treetops and blusters gustily about the eaves, it is good to come abroad to the barns with James, and follow as he settles away his last chores. These are of course, shared with the younger farmer and it is always interesting for us to see how perfectly the two work together to complete the set pattern.

The stables are never cozier than when high winds blow, warmed as they are by breaths and bodies of the animals, so comfortably sheltered within. And reflecting on this, we could heartily agree with James when shaking another flake of straw on the youngest’s calf’s bed, he offered “I often think Ellen that if a traveller were to be bewildered in a snowstorm, a stable would be a right good shelter to come to”

Outside the wind blew, not one seasonally edged with frost, nevertheless of Fall cool and gusty, making the indoors seem an oasis of safety and content.

There is a saying that a farmer’s goodness, indeed his religion we have heard and old minister say, is reflected favorably or otherwise but most obviously in the appearance and attitude of his cats. A pair of ours, silken coated, black as ebon except for the white of their vests emerged softly from the shadows of the group and pressed against James’ overalled legs for a word of attention, during a moment’s halt there.

“You haven’t seen the summer calves lately, have you, Ellen?” he said, preceding us down steps and along a corridor to their stall, where in a company they were cleaning up their supper of hay.

“Why, they’re done well!” we said

“Not bad, are they” he smiled. “These are only cross-breds, but they’re fair-good in shape, and growthy I’d say. When they get  a spell on the grass” he nodded, thinking ahead to the June time.

We like to follow him to that last rite of his round, which takes him to open one after another the shutters in front of the horses and drop handfuls of grain to the mangers. Not hurriedly but taking time to smooth a forelock. Or pet a velvet muzzle and chat with each one in turn. And tonight, names of remembered horses came back to our lips- Old Cleveland… the old-mare-of-all… the young mare, a comely animal we lost, of whom all, like the years flown, have now vanished into the past.

We came then from a world of animals, none anywhere we may say better tended, to the quiet house that is ours. Back to the old clock’s tick and the scent of maple sticks’ burning, to the peace and serenity of a work-day’s close… when a wind blows wildly in the treetops and blusters gustily about the eaves it is good to come abroad to the barns with James and follow as he settles away his last chores.

                                                                                –  Ellen’s Diary, January 23, 1958

Source: Islandnewspapers.ca

By Joshua MacFadyen and Nolan Kressin*, University of Prince Edward Island

For the full lesson on the historical GIS methods and tools described in this post, see the new tutorial in the Geospatial Historian Methods of Visualizing Temporal Data, by Nolan Kressin and Joshua MacFadyen.

The movement of commodities has been an important study within Canadian scholarship since Harold Innis wrote The Fur Trade in Canada (1930), but many forget that in his earlier thesis on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Innis also focused on the goods that these lines carried to market each year. By examining the records of the CPR, Innis painstakingly summarized the freight capacity and the market conditions that shaped this chapter in Canadian environmental history. Innis was well-known as a “dirt” researcher, digging into archival collections and often cutting-and-pasting his notes across manuscripts (literally, with scissors) to organize the enormous amounts of information he collected. As historians turn to more focused studies of individual commodities, we can parse large historical datasets with tools beyond scissors and glue. In this piece we discuss new ways to take some of the same historical railway data and focus on resources like firewood and lumber in their natural environments. In theory, we could even use the railway locations to focus on forest types (softwood) or even species. Perhaps if he had these digital tools, Innis’s first book after the CPR study might have been called the “Fir Trade in Canada.”

“There is no crop on your farm which can so ill bear delay at this time as your turnips, and unless you can afford to throw away the labour you have expended, and to forgo the benefit of a good supply of turnips for your stock, do this when it should be done, and do it well. If you are shorthanded, get every man woman and child who can lift a hoe, or pull a weed, go to work in earnest, and the job will soon be accomplished; and what is more your children will become expert at turnip culture on which all successful farming in this island will before long depend: and remember that a good turnip hoer never takes his eyes from the ground until called to dinner; recollect this yourselves, and impress it on the children, and there will be no stopping to talk, nor ceasing work to gaze at every passerby, by which so much time is often lost.“

Source: James Horsefield Peters, Hints to the Farmers of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown: JJ Pippy, 1851), p32.