Winter activities.

Spring activities.

Catt/e in the woods.

Pigs in the woods.

Forest clearance.

Suckers from stumps.

Burning the timber.

CLIMATE AND SEASONS

. though we generally have the deepest snows in these months [January and February], yet in some years we have much bare ground at this time, which is by no means desirable, as it interferes with our winter employments, by preventing the use of sledges on the roads from the want of snow for them to run on, whereby the getting of timber and fire wood out of the woods is much impeded. [p. 102]

It is generally in this month [March] that most of our timber is brought out of the forest, and also a stock of fire wood laid in for the remainder of the year. About the middle of the month the sap begins to rise in the trees, and toward the latter end of it the business of making maple sugar commences. [p. 103]

cattle are seldom regularly housed till the beginning of December, and by many not till the latter end of that month, and some remain out in the forest a great part of the winter, which season they frequently survive when strayed, living like deer by brouzing upon the young wood. [p. 114]

CULTIVATION AND RURAL AFFAIRS [pp. 132-47]

. oxen are used for drawing timber out of the woods more than horses This practice of permitting [cattle] to run in the woods is an evil which time will gradually overcome, by enabling the settlers to get enough of cleared lands within their fences, to maintain their cattle, without being under the necessity of allowing them to roam at large, as is too much the case at present. [pp. 132-33]

Swine run at large in summer feeding on grass and fern roots, in the autumn they go into the woods where they feed on the beech mast, which is in some years so plentiful as to make them completely fat without any other aid, but the pork thus fed is not reckoned good, being soft and oily; the beech mast is however of great use in bringing forward the store pigs that are to be kept over the winter, as it makes them grow very fast and they are easily wintered after a good run in the woods. [p. 1361

Cutting down the woods and putting the land into cultivation is differently performed, some cut down all the wood, pile and burn it, others prefer grubbing up the smaller trees and bushes, and kill all the large trees by girdling them in the beginning of the summer, which prevents their vegetating the following year, this last is the easiest method but as far as my experience goes I prefer the first, as the labour of removing the branches and trunks of the dead trees as they fall is more tedious and expensive in the end than getting rid of all the timber at once. A good axe man will cut down an acre in eight days, pile all the brush, and cut the trunks into ten feet lengths: these must be afterwards rolled together and such of them as are not taken away for other purposes burnt; when the timber is heavy this part of the business will be but slowly performed by one man alone. The months of June and July is the bes; time for clearing land in this way as the leaves are full grown and the stumps of the trees cut at this season decay soon and are not so apt to throw out suckers as those out at other periods: the leaves will not drop from the timber cut down now but remain on all winter, and greatly assist in burning the timber the following year, which is generally done in May: if there has been a considerable proportion of evergreens mixed with the other timber their tops and branches will now be in such a state as to insure the burning of the whole, the larger the piles the better the chance there is for getting what is called a good burn; where there has been few or no evergreens mixed with the timber about to be burned, greater attention will be required in heaping the piles of brush close and rolling the logs together. If the weather has been dry for some time before this operation, care must be taken to prevent the fires