“Yes, the old lady an’ I have done our share of clearin’ land. She was also born an’ brought up on a Charlotteville farm, an’ when she was a girl at home she used to pick up roots an’ brush an’ work in the ‘foller’; an’ after we settled up here in the woods she picked up chunks an’ fired many a log-heap in these old front fields. She did all the milkin’, too, mind ye, an’ spun, an’ wove, an’ knit socks to sell to the storekeepers; which is more than girls do nowadays, I tell ye. “When I commenced here I laid out to clear about ten acres a year, an’ I guess I averaged about that much. There was pine timber scattered all over the hull lot. In some places it was ‘sap-pine’ an’ stood thick on the ground, an’ in other places it was big white pine, some of which was four feet, or over, in diameter. No man who never had any experience in clearin’ pine land forty or fifty years ago, knows anything about the amount of labor involved in the undertaking. There was no market for pine logs, an’ what the settler didn’t need for fence rails or lumber for buildin’ purposes, was an expensive obstacle in the way of clearin’ the land. It was chopped down an’ cut up into log-heap lengths, an’ the logs were rolled up in big heaps. Several yokes of oxen an’ a good supply of hands were needed to log up a pine ‘foller,’ and this was accomplished by makin’ loggin’ bees. At these bees whiskey was as free as water, an’ when the work was over at night, the men would be as black as ‘niggers.’ When the ‘foller’ was fired the hull neighborhood was lit up, but after burning all the ‘chunkin’ out of the heaps the fires would die out, an’ then the charred and slightly reduced logs would have to be snaked together and rebuilt into new an’ fewer heaps, an’ fired ‘agin’; and this would have to be repeated ‘til all the log-heaps in the ‘foller’ had been reduced to one or two, an’ what was left of these would be snaked off into the joining choppin’ to be used as chunkin’ in the next ‘foller.’ My! I have tugged away in this slavish manner, trying to get rid of pine logs that would make a thousand feet of clear white-pine lumber worth, to-day, thirty dollors; an’ there were hundreds of trees burned up on this farm from each of which three such logs might have been taken. This would amount to $90 a tree, an’ some of ‘em had enough common lumber in their tops to bring the value up to $100, were they standing to-day. Why, a whole acre of the land where these trees stood, wouldn’t sell for as much, to-day, as one o’ them logs.

“When the first settlers came to Long Point it was a question of gettin’ something to eat as quickly as possible. They brought their families with ‘em, an’ they had no base of supplies to draw on for the first year, as their sons had when they, later on, became pioneers in the back, unsettled portions of the county. The hardships suffered by the original pioneers for the first year or two, were far more severe than any suffered by those who came after them. The land was underbrushed an’ grubbed, the large timber girdled an’ seed scratched in among the roots; an’ until a little food crop of some kind was produced, it was ‘nip-an-tuck’ to keep soul an’ body together.

“But when I came here in the woods sixty-years ago, as one of the pioneers of this portion of the township, it was different. We came out from near-by comfortable homes, which were accessible to us for supplies while engaged in choppin’ our first ‘follers,’ buildin’ our log cabins an’ gettin’ ready for the first crop.

“A large portion of this lot was covered with oak grubs, an’ it would break the heart of any young feller now-a-days to even think of the number o’ back-achin’ days I put in swingin’ that heavy old grub-hoe.

“We grubbed in the day-time an’ picked up and burned at night, an’ many a night the old lady helped pick up and burn grubs ‘till after ten o’clock. A quarter of an acre was considered a fair, average day’s work at grubbin’. The soil was full o’ small roots, an’ after the crop was put in an’ the old three-cornered drag had done its duty, these roots and vines had to be gathered into heaps, which looked like haycocks in the distance.

“After the loggin’ and grubbin’ we considered the land ready for cultivation. Fire an’ rot consumed the hardwood stumps in a few years, but it seemed as though the big black pine stumps would last till the crack o’ doomsday. When I stumped a patch for my first little orchard the diggin’ of the big stumps cost me seventy-five cents each, an’ then it cost me ‘bout as much to get rid of ‘em an’ fill up the holes. The pine stumps averaged about twenty-five to the acre, an’ it cost about forty cents each, on an average, to have ‘em pulled. Diggin’ stumps by hand was a slow, tedious job. It was enough to break a feller’s heart who was trying his level best to clear up 200 acres o’ pine land. Diggin’ stumps by hand was expensive, too, as it took a pretty good crop to pay for diggin’ out the stumps on a given piece o’ land; an’ then the ground was left full o’ roots, an’ you had the stumps to burn off an’ the holes to fill up besides. Stump fence? Why, the stump fence is a modern institution; it hadn’t been invented when I was in my prime. I guess the young folks in my day didn’t lie ‘wake nights crackin’ their brains tryin’ to study up labor savin’ schemes, like they do now-a-days.

“A man named Nelson Colt came over from Rochester an’ helped me construct the first stump machine ever seen in these parts. It was built on a claw-hammer principle an’ worked with a set o’ pulleys. I used this machine till it killed a good ox for me, an’ then I threw it aside. When the lever machine made its appearance I built a large one at a cost of $170. Next came the screw machine, an’ I paid $80 for a set of irons alone; an’ at a sale the other day a similar set of irons, as good as new an’ all complete, sold for ten York shillings. The screw machine had served its day an’ nobody wanted it. Now, the powerful steelyard machine is doin’ the work, an’ I guess it’s come to stay. Years ago, when I was havin’ my land stumped as fast as I could afford it, three men an’ a yoke of oxen made up the usual outfit with the old lever machine. They went about stumpin’ at five dollars a day, includin’ board. This meant a [a] cost of gettin’ the land stumped of from $5 to $30 per acre. In addition to this it took two men an’ a yoke of oxen two days to dispose of the stumps on an average acre, after they were pulled.

“Why, there are fields on this old farm that cost me fully $40 an acre to clear ‘em, an’ the land isn’t worth $20 an acre to-day. If I had built my first cabin somewhere among the beeches and sugar maples, my life’s work would have been a play spell in comparison with what it has been; an’ to-day I would have rich and productive fields, an’ the old lady an’ I would have much more to leave to our children than we now have.”