Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Good try, but I have yet to see anyone but you, James, jump from an e-mail 
> talking about flour to trying to imply that folks are talking about 
> exotics. 
> 

The Southern Appalachians is definately not what you'd call wheat country for 
a variety of reasons.  Yet in the times we are talking about, no one bought 
flour.  They raised wheat, took it to the local gristmill (and there were 
scores of them at the time still tesitified to by the large number of  
avenues 
called "XXX Mill Road" we still have) and miller took out a toll of the flour 
for 
his cut.

Lynda, I'm going to reference your previous post here rather than send two.

So you mean that you have records that clearly indicate that your family did 
not take on other work, did not engage in the common trades of the day, etc. 
but instead relied entirely on farm products for all their enterprises?  I 
still wonder.   Herself's paternal great-grandfather reclused himself to a 
mountain top in Dickenson Co (VA), a more remote and inaccessible place you 
cannot 
find, and ostensibly raised cattle for the cash needs of his 17 children much 
as 
you describe.

Until recently there had been a great gathering on top that mountian every 
August of all the descendents of said patriarch and people had begun to 
gather 
and share all and sundry papers and artifacts from that period (from about 
1880 
until 1910 or so).  Turns out clan wasn't so reclusive as family stories had 
it.  The patriarch and/or one of his chidren had engaged in all and sundry 
trades and projects as was testified from letters, tools, and items that had 
been 
passed down through various branches of the family.  Journals and ledgers 
don't account for everything.

But, even playing the ball where it lies.  During the time we are talking 
about, as I have pointed out, food made up more than half and often much more 
than half of household budgets at that time.  You actually could raise beef 
cattle with no outside inputs of hay, feed, medicine, etc. and even a cow or 
two 
would be a great sum of money and a great percentage of the cash needs of a 
household at the time.

I can't find the references right now, but this sort of thing came up in 
another forum and someone supplied the price of things in the late 1800's.  
You 
could buy a wagon and two horses with harness for the price of six to eight 
yearling steers buy their reckoning.  The price is hard to pin down with 
fluxuating prices but how well do you think you'd get buying a new pickup 
truck with 
six yearlings?  

Another factor in this is that those times were not a time of specialized 
labor for the most part.  Among the artifacts from my family are cobblers 
tools, 
wheelwrights jigs, all the equipment for processing fiber and weaving cloth 
(alas, none of it still fucntional), and ferrier tools.  I am still using in 
my 
shop the anvils and hammers from the homestead smithy.  I have an old hide 
banjo my great-grandfather carved from a poplar plank and a couple of bits 
and 
pieces of bee hive frames he whittled with a pocket knive.

They didn't buy very much.  And moreover although the homestead smithy 
couldn't make a mowing machine or even a scythe, he could make hinges and 
hasps, 
shape horseshoes, and cut nails from stock.

That is, they didn't buy very much.


Now, if a steer I raised by my own labor and resources sold for 1/6th the 
price of a new pickup truck, that is, the price would be all profit in terms 
of 
cash required, you betcha I'd have a couple out here on the back pasture 
right 
now!   But this is a very, very different proposition than we most hear from 
the modern "homestead" where we calculate that we have $6 in expenses in 
raising a chicken and see if we can meet our cash need by selling it for $10.

THAT is the thing for which I am saying there is not precedent.


James