Bethlehem’s Beginnings, Part 2: Working on the Farm – Barns, Bread, Burnside

May 7th, 2020 |

This is part two of a multi-part education blog series dedicated to looking at Bethlehem’s colonial roots. Each of these blog posts will focus on interesting information about what life was like in colonial America and Bethlehem itself. In Part 2 we are going to discover what work was needed to run a colonial farm like Burnside Plantation!

Building Burnside

Barns were extremely important buildings on a colonial farm. A barn provided shelter for the animals on the farm, was used to store straw for animals to eat or sleep on, and was a place to prepare certain crops like wheat. Sometimes a farmer and his family lived in their barn until they were able to finish building their own house!

Check out this activity page to discover special building techniques that a farming families used to build strong barns.

We Need a Horse, of Course!

The first floor of the Johnson Barn at Burnside Plantation was the stable area. Cattle, horses, pigs and sheep were housed there. Many of these animals were important sources of food on the farm, but some helped the family in additional ways.

Horses were able to help the farmer with many tasks that would be difficult to do on his own. Horses helped during the planting season by pulling a plow to get the soil ready, or at the end of the season to pull carts full of harvested crops or to provide power for simple machines used by the farmer. Of course, there were no cars in the 1700s, so horses were also an important form of transportation! 

Sheep were also important animals to have on a colonial farm. Wool was used to make clothing and other goods needed in the home, such as blankets. When a sheep’s fur grew long enough, it was time to give it a nice haircut and get that wool ready for carding (straightening out the hairs so they could be used like thread), spinning, and weaving. The best part is that since a sheep’s wool grows back, the farm family would be able to get more wool again soon! While there are no sheep currently at Burnside Plantation, this video from another historic farm demonstrates how a colonial farmer would sheer their sheep.

The Wheat we Eat

Wheat was the most common crop grown on a colonial farm because it is needed to make flour for bread. The field needed to be plowed in the spring using a horse-drawn plow. Next, seeds would be planted by hand. In the fall, the farmer harvested the wheat by cutting down the tall stalks row by row. Even after all that work, the stalks still had to be brought to the barn. The most important part of the wheat plant is the edible kernels (called wheat berries) which grow at the top of the stalk. Hand tools were used to pound piles of wheat and separate the wheat berries from the rest of the plant. Today farmers use machines to make all of these steps a lot easier, but you can explore how difficult this work was for colonial farmers with this activity page.

Next time we will explore the last step needed to turn our wheat into flour, so join us in Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter for Part 3!

We hope that you enjoyed learning about Burnside Plantation! Please consider supporting content like this at HBMS! https://www.historicbethlehem.org/support/donate/

Keith Sten is the Museum Sites & Education Manager at Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites. You can contact him at ksten@historicbethlehem.org to learn more about our school programs at Burnside Plantation and discover other learning opportunities from Historic Bethlehem!

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