A Period of Transition 145 
     
    
   
   
    
     Hay also became a very important crop. Production increased 
     
     considerably with the use of mussel mud. The editor of The Summerside 
     
     Progress stated in 1867 that the average yield had quadrupled in the 
     
     space of fifteen years |’. Other important crops of the period included 
     
     turnips and barley. 
     
    

    
     Wheat, on the other hand, did not contribute substantially to 
     
     the Island economy. Crops were destroyed too often by disease to 
     
     make production worthwhile. It will be remembered that before 1840 
     
     wheat production was quite widespread in the province, but since 
     
     that time the crop had diminished considerably since many farmers 
     
     had stopped growing wheat altogether. As a result, the province had 
     
     to import flour and wheat'*®. Only towards the 1870s with the con- 
     
     struction of the railway linking the Maritimes to Ontario was a better 
     
     variety of wheat introduced to the Island and production encour- 
     
     aged'”’. 
     
    

    
     In 1868, a bad agricultural year throughout the Island, farmers 
     
     in the Abram’s Village area met to discuss the situation and to decide 
     
     which crops it would be best to grow at this difficult moment. A 
     
     report of the discussion appeared in The Summerside Progress, providing 
     
     an interesting glimpse of the quandary a group of Acadian farmers 
     
     were facing at the time: 
     
    
   
   
    
     Several gentlemen addressed the meeting and nearly all of them concurred in 
     
     the idea that the poor farmer, who can barely raise enough on his farm to 
     
     support his family, should sow no oats or very little, and advising him to 
     
     cultivate corn, buckwheat, barley, beans and peas, which would yield more 
     
     than oats if the soil were properly tilled. They contended that although the 
     
     poor farmer should raise a large quantity of oats, the best part of it would go 
     
     to market, and he would find himself without bread and without means to 
     
     buy it. To cultivate a large garden was, also in their opinion, a good means of 
     
     living at a small expense. 
     
    

    
     Other parties argued that if oats were not sowed by a large number, the 
     
     farmers would be left without fodder to feed to their cattle. They held that 
     
     what was taken out of the farm should return to it in the shape of manure, 
     
     if no other means of making manure were at hand.'° 
     
    
   
   
    
     The produce that farmers used as payment to rent their church 
     
     pew gives an indication of the importance of the various crops over 
     
     the years. In Cascumpec in 1863 almost all the Acadian farmers paid 
     
     for their pews in bushels of oats. From 1875 onwards potatoes formed