Farming In The Thirteen American Colonies

Have you even have been to the ocean? Felt the sand between your toes? Seen the different types of plants that grow there? Now what are some things you don’t see? Gardens, large farms? The reason you don’t see these types of things is because the soil along the ocean is anything but perfect for growing plants and fields. This is what it was like for many of the farmer’s thirteen American colonies. These farmers faced challenges in growing crop, getting them to market for trade as well as earning enough to pay their bills. Most farmers in the thirteen colonies grew cash crops such as tobacco and wheat, as well as a variety of other food and fiber crops like corn, oats, cotton, flax, and hemp. They also raised livestock, including beef, dairy

One of the most popular crops was tobacco. In fact the production of tobacco was so large that by 1640 London was importing nearly a million and a half pounds of tobacco annually from Virginia. Although tobacco may have made the smoker carefree it certainly was responsible for creating a wrinkle on the brow of a planter. Tobacco was a finicky crop which required a large work force, an experienced overseer with excellent judgment, a sizable acreage and a certain amount of just good luck. Even though it took an ample piece of land for a good crop, by the middle of the seventeenth century many farmers could successfully grow a small crop every season for their own use to take to market. Another crop that was grown in the colonial era was hemp. Hemp was a fibrous material obtained from the inner bark of the hemp plant and used to manufacture ship rigging. Farmers were encouraged to raise hemp as a crop and various incentives were offered to its production during Colonial times. Hemp was best grown in the Chesapeake area. However, hemp had to go through a painstaking process of cutting, rotting and drying which collided with the busiest period in the tobacco season. Employing people in the tobacco

The war had disrupted much of the American economy. The British navy had great superiority and destroyed most of Americans ships, crippling the flow of trade. On land, where both armies regularly stole from local farms in order to find food, farmers suffered tremendously and often found themselves in debt. Unlike the twelve other colonies Massachusetts had no debtor’s laws and farmers in debt had no way of keeping their farms as the ones in the twelve other colonies had. Because Massachusetts hadn’t passed any debtors laws thousands of farmers faced loss of their lands. Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms. Daniel Shays, a Pelham, Massachusetts farmer rallied other farmers to resist foreclose and led armed rebellions and closed the Massachusetts courts. This rebellion would later be called Shay’s Rebellion. Because of this uprising it caused many important leaders to attend a meeting that was going to be held in Philadelphia. The purpose of this meeting was to revise the Articles of the Confederation but in the end, even though it was not agreed by all, the Constitution was