74 THEISLAND ACADIANS

acre, a yield considered to be satisfactory. Célestin Robichaud also reported that Acadians grew flax, corn, peas, string beans and broad beans, cabbage, cucumber and various types of grain and tubers*®. Thanks to Joseph Bouchette we know that at the beginning of the century wheat, barley and potatoes were being produced in Tignish in reasonable quantities*’.

As of 1845 Island farmers were hard-hit by plagues that reduced crop yields. Potatoes were attacked by a blight and wheat was damaged by rust and insects, all of which meant hard times for the population.

LIVESTOCK

The livestock on the Island at the beginning of the British regime was comprised of animals originating mainly from the old Acadian stock®*. In 1764 the surveyor, Samuel Holland, recorded that the approximately thirty Acadian families living on the Island owned about a hundred head of cattle. However, they were not permitted to dispose of them at their will since the British officer in charge at Fort Amherst regarded these escapees of the expulsion as prisoners of war and laid claim to all their belongings®’. John McGregor reported that for several years after the expulsion, a considerable number of horses were roam- ing free on the eastern part of the Island. They were later domesticated again and made good saddle and harness horses®’.

Most of the bloodlines of livestock owned by the Acadian farmers and even by the early British settlers went back to the French regime. In general the animals were of poor stock and badly cared for, especially if the farmers did not manage to store enough hay and oats in order to winter them properly. In this case they were fed straw for part of the winter’.

In the description of his travels, Célestin Robichaud writes that people kept horses, beef, cows, pigs, and two breeds of sheep, one of which produced up to fifteen or sixteen pounds of wool’*. The census carried out on the Island in 1833 indicates that the population, numbering 32,292, owned thirty thousand head of cattle, fifty thousand sheep, twenty thousand pigs, and six thousand horses®’. A careful examination of this census shows that the Acadians favoured horses over oxen—contrary to preferences in some parts of the Is- land‘. Finally, we should add that Acadian farmers who were tenants