Year 1, clear an acre for the basic shelter, then clear 2 more acres before the end of May and plant potatoes.
In clearing the land, the straight lengths of timber is cut into lengths to be used in log construction, for heating and cooking, or set aside to take to a sawmill to make into planks for home use, but all the brush and useless wood is burned for making potash. Once the potash is ready it can be delivered to the trader to go on account for food and tools.
Once you've cleared the land there are a lot of stumps and you can't remove the stumps until five or more years have passed, and the roots are rotted enough that a team of oxen can pull them out, so the hand plow has to be maneuvered around the stumps, then the crops are planted around the stumps.
After the potatoes are planted, the settler should spend the rest of the summer and fall trimming out and undercutting 6 to 8 more acres for clearing the following year. Plus cut up lots and lots of wood for heating and cooking, and harvest the potatoes and store them away.
When winter starts to set in, in the early years, before having animals to take care of, one could go to work at one of the many nearby lumber camps. Work at the camps was hard work and rough, but it provided food, shelter and income. After spring thaw and the run off once the logs have gone down the rivers, head back home to start working the land again.
Year 2, plant your 2 acres again, and get some helpers in for a work bee to clear the 6 to 8 acres that you've prepared the previous year. With a good work bee, the clearing can be done in a day, leaving a lot of wood to burn. A married man would have his wife and maybe children to help with the burning and potash making, a single man will have a lot of small fires to tend to get the brush all burned. Once the fires were burned out, the ash was collected to boil down for the potash. Now the 6 to 8 acres can be planted in wheat for bread, and maybe some corn. Next on the list is a barn, using your own lumber, round up the neighbors for a barn raising. With a barn, even though there are no animals yet, you'll have a place for threshing your grain on the barn floor. Undercut and prepare 6 to 8 more acres for clearing in year 3. Get the potatoes, wheat and corn harvested, store the potatoes, trading excess to the trader, bin the corn for grinding for porridge, thresh the wheat, and take it to the mill for flour. No animals means the single settler can head off to the lumber camps for the winter again. After year 2 the settler now has gone beyond potatoes, to potatoes, wheat and corn, so they don't have to get as much from the trader. Next year it'll be time to start getting animals, a cow for milk and butter, sheep for wool, pigs for pork, some chickens for eggs, and maybe an ox or two to help with the heavy work, hauling goods to market, wood to the sawmill, wheat to the flour mill, excess to the trader.
Year 3, start crop rotation so you don't wear out the soil, clear more land and set some aside for pasture and get it seeded for the animals to graze. Now the workload increases even more with a cow to milk and the other animals to tend on top of everything else. Maybe this is the year you build the log house and upgrade from the shanty, then the shanty can be used for storage, or any of many different uses needed on a farm. The workload has increased and with animals to tend and wheat to thresh and other jobs that can be done in the winter months there is no more time to go to the lumber camps to work for the winter.
Repeat and repeat and repeat. This is why farmers needed such big families, to help with all the workload.
In a few years time, the land is producing wheat, rye, oat, peas, potatoes, corn, hay, wool, maple syrup, butter, cheese, turnips, and pork, lots and lots of pork, plus vegetables from the vegetable garden, and maybe some apples from apple trees. The typical diet in the early days is salted pork, pork for breakfast, pork for lunch and pork for dinner and maybe some porridge made from ground up corn. Cut a piece of pork and throw it into the frying pan, boil a few potatoes, that with a little bread, baked in the dutch oven over the fire, is breakfast, lunch and dinner for several years. This is what I meant about meals being easy, there was nothing to decide, it's always the same. Hey honey, what's for lunch...pork! What do you want for dinner...we have pork! Any variation, fresh berries, fresh vegetables, fresh fish from the river, a little venison, are a wonderful addition and a welcome change from salted pork. Establishing a vegetable garden was crucial, and once you had a cow, then you had the addition of milk and butter. The workload has also increased, with having to sugar off the maple syrup, churning butter, salting the pork, spinning wool, maybe even weaving the wool, making clothes, making moccasins, coring and stringing apples to dry, knitting socks and mittens, repairing tools, making furniture, and more.
For our James who arrived in 1816, his brother William has arrived the year later in 1817, so James has help with all the chores; Alexander arrived the year after that in 1818, and many hands make light work. From my research it seems like William and Alex stayed with James in his log cabin at least until James married in 1822, and maybe even after that. I imagine Alex would have gotten his sawmill up and running pretty quickly, as they'd have needed lumber, plus milling lumber for others would be a source of income. The early sawmills were pretty basic and as soon as the lumber ran out in the area, the mill would be dismantled. The grist and flour mill though was another story altogether, it was built to last (and still stands today in 2020, though it's been altered quite a bit). The mill was 4 stories tall, made of hand hewn, massive log beams with wooden pegs, and clad with yellow brick. Williams grist and flour mill was across the river from Alexanders sawmill, and when one of the brothers needed more power they'd yell across the river and the other brother would cooperate and shut down his water wheel for a greater surge of water across the river.
James ran a distillery about which we know nothing, but it would have been small scale and possibly in the building that was across the road from his farm just up the hill from William and Alex. Running a distillery made good practical sense, as wheat and other grains that were inferior for grinding for flour, could make good whiskey. According to my grandfather, Harold Gray's notes, the brothers all worked together building their homes and their businesses. They were hard working men and got a lot accomplished in just a few years.
John would arrive in 1819 along with a sister Janet Ellen. There is a record of a birth of a son for sister Janet Ellen and her husband William Sylvester at Grays Mills in York in 1824, so the mill was in operation at that time. William Sylvester joined the fold and worked at the mill as well as his own farm nearby.
George would be the last come in 1823 with a wife and child, and their mother Janet.
In time, the brothers would own 860 acres on what is now the Don Mills Road, and their mills and a few other mills near by, including the nearby woolen mill owned by the Milne family, and the hub that developed around them with a school, post office, a store and an inn would give the area it's name.
By 1825, they along with neighbors started building the Don Independent Road which would make it easier for them to get their goods to market.
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