New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes

New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes, 2nd edition, 1904

In a previous blog we did a survey of summer lodging in the White Mountains that focused mostly on hotels and inns. We continue our celebration of summer with an item of pure gold... gold lettering on the cover that is. It is a booklet from 1904 entitled New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes.

This recent donation represents the other extreme opposite end of the accommodation spectrum from Grand Hotels to so called "summer cottages." While often rustic on the outside, for example with wooden columns that retained bark and branches on them, these cottages sometimes included large dining rooms, indoor squash courts, music pavilions, astronomical observatories, art studios, bowling alleys, boat houses, ice houses, tennis courts, stables, and quarters for maids, nannies and chauffeurs.

This booklet is part of a series published for the NH Department of Agriculture intended as a sales and promotional tool, now a tool for history. It was designed to capture interest many people who stayed in the Grand Hotels decided to purchase their own piece of paradise.

The Conway Public Library's Henney History Room has an early example from 1891 entitled Lakes and Summer Resorts in New Hampshire.

Lakes and Summer Resorts in New Hampshire, 1891

The author of this, and many of the other booklets, was N. J. (Nahum Josiah) Bachelder, who held the interesting title of New Hampshire Commissioner of Agriculture and Immigration.

The text for this edition was very simple, basically listing the summer resorts, name of the proprietor, post office address and costs per day and per week. Here are the listings for Conway.

One of the few photos included in this booklet is a panoramic pull out view of Lake Winnipesaukee. Here is a photo of Walker's Pond, now Conway Lake.

Here is the caption that went with the photo.

The library also has an 1891 book entitled Adopting an Abandoned Farm.

The book includes chapters on attending auctions, buying a horse, starting a poultry farm, prose, peacocks,and how to deal with ghosts. Part of the fun of old books can be clippings and inscriptions found within the covers (click on images to enlarge them).

The cover of our 1894 edition featured bees and goldenrod flowers.

New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes, 1894

Our 1895 edition features handsome gold lettering and edging on the cover.

New Hampshire Homes, 1895

This edition is fully illustrated. In addition to selling the buildings, you could also buy copies of the photographs suitable for framing.

Here are a couple examples from the book.

Our 1902 and 1904 editions featured an Art Nouveau design.

New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes, 1st edition, 1902

The 1902 above had silver lettering while our 1904 below had gold lettering.

New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes, 2nd edition, 1904

To learn more about summer homes in the area, you can check out this book by Dr. Bryant Tolles.

For more details on this or any other historical subject in the White Mountains, contact us at the Conway Public Library's Henney History Room.

Timothy, Clover and Redtop: More Preserving Summer

In our previous blog we looked at tea and jam as a way of saving a bit of summer to use year round. Now we will look at how what we can do now, in the summer, so we can have a nice breakfast in the winter with a hot cup of tea with milk and butter or cream on blueberry muffins. Sound good? Well historically you had to plan and prepare for that.

The key to that preparation can be seen in the field in the photo above. What follows are some details about the changing nature of preserving summer's harvest of grass for the winter.

I took this photo on the first day of summer, June 21, 2019, from the Saco Valley Overlook. To map the location of the viewpoint click here. To see the street view click here.

The long green stripes seen on the right are known as windrows, hay that has been cut, dried and raked into rows.

The photo below was taken June 29 and shows that right field has been cleared of the cut hay.

The dark stains show that the field has been manured. A photo taken July 5 shows the right field has grown green and the left field has been cut and bailed into round bales.

A closer view shows the round bales on the left of the truck, and a wagon full of square bales in the background.

Mowing hay is an important part of keeping the view open. It is also a way of preserving the food value of grass so livestock can eat it over the winter. The painting below shows the finished product heading towards the barn. It is by the artist Albert Bierstadt. Titled Haying, Conway Meadows, its shows from right to left the southern end of the  Moats, and the Three Sister, and the peak of Chocorua as seen near the old ford near the athletic fields near Kennett High School.

There are remnants of horse powered hay equipment displayed as lawn ornaments all over Conway. Here is a horse powered sickle bar mower.

Here is a photo of a similar machine with the sickle bar lowered and the farmer sitting on the sulky seat. 

At the Hobbs Tavern in West Ossipee is a horse drawn machine known as a tedder that reproduces the hand powered operation of fluffing the hay with a pitchfork to help the hay dry in the sun.

Here is a sketch showing how this one machine does the work of eight men.

Here is a photo of a farmer using the tedder.

The tedder can toss the hay as high as three feet in the air before it returns to the ground.

The next step is to rake the dried hay into windrows. The Hobbs Tavern "open air museum" features a slide delivery rake used to roll the cut hay into windrows.

Here is an example of a farmer using a side delivery rake.

This photo shows the complicated gears involved in making it work.

The next step is to pick up the hay from the windrows and to put it in the wagon. Here is a view of it being done by a horse powered machine known as a hay loader...

... with a team of horses pulling the wagon and loader over the windrows.

Again, the idea behind the machine was to use gears and gizmos to reproduce the action of hand powered, man powered pitch fork to toss it up on the wagon. 

Each of the six wooden bars are fitted with mechanical fingers and the gears pull the hay from the windrow up the loader ramp before cascading over the top onto the wagon.

The hay is then dumped over the loader onto the top of the load on the wagon. At the barn a hay fork is set into the hay on the wagon.

Then through a set of pulleys, ropes and trolley rails a large amount of hay can be lifted high into the air, pulled sideways along the ridge of the barn and dropped onto the hayloft.

The final step was to spread manure to fertilize the field for the next crop of hay.

Again, the idea was to mechanize the use of a pitchfork to spread the manure onto the fields.

Here is an example of a manure spreader displayed along the side of the road in the Mount Washington Valley.

For more details on this or any other historical subject in the White Mountains, contact us at the Conway Public Library's Henney History Room.

Preserving Summer

Tomorrow is the July 4th holiday when we celebrate our declaration of independence from Britain, so it is appropriate to begin now, as we did then, with a tea party.

We start our blog near the end of a song by singer, songwriter, baker, and farmer's market founder, Peg Loughran of Wonalancet New Hampshire. For me, the key moment in the song, Harvest Equinox, is a haunting and evocative phrase "Into a cup of tea." It represents the culmination of many actions and thoughts. This moment is preceded by listing some of the many elements of this cup of tea.

Wrapped up tight with Market Spice

Sweet smell of orange trees blooming

Cayenne pepper, cardamon

Nutmeg, clove and cinnamon

Pouring out the porcelain spout

Into a cup of tea

The Conway Public Library's Henney History Room offers a free outreach program on the history of tea as well as over a dozen other programs on topics such as Redstone granite, Conway's Abenaki Intervale site, White Mountain Art, maple sugaring, nature through history, and a variety of walking and driving tours.

Here are the complete lyrics of that song so you can explore its deeper significance and meanings. (click on images to enlarge them).

The lyrics come from her 1996 year album

So why are we talking about the harvest equinox and a cup of tea in the middle of summer? It has to do with the farmer's traditional obsession, strategies and planning involved in preserving the summer harvest to survive the winter. As the saying goes, it is how "plenty prepares for want."

In her song, Loughran expains that... 

The taste of summer sealed with sun

Protected from the cold to come

It is a lot of work to preserve all of the items that can be saved for later.

Wild mint, sage and rosemary

Cattails, basil, parsley

Hung to dry in the storage shed 

Winter squash of green and red

Jars of peaches, plums and peas

Beans and blackberries

(Note: today is also national "eat your beans day" but back to tea.)

Tea itself is preserved through fermentation and drying. All the hundreds of varieties of tea are from a single plant - camellia sinensis. As Loughran's song indicates tea can be flavored with many things -  spices, flowers and of course fruit.

Summer fruits were both farmed and harvested wild. Blueberry picking in Conway's Green Hills is featured in a painting now at the Currier Museum in Manchester. Mount Washington can be seen in the background.

Here is a detail of the folks near the center of the painting.

The fermenting and drying of tea is one of many ways of preserving. One of my favorite ways of saving summer to savor later is through jams and jellies.

The history, science and techniques of canning can be found in the library under the Dewey decimal number 641.4. I especially recommend Pickled, Potted and Canned by Sue Shephard. According to Shephard the earliest kind of jam making dates back to pre-Roman times when fruit pulp was mixed with honey and spices and dried in the sun. Quince, found in the garden of the Conway Public Library, has a long history detailed in the book. It has a high pectin content so that when cooked, it can be made into a preserve with a solid texture. 

So this weekend, have some tea, jams and jellies, and scones to remember our nation's British origins and then grill some hot dogs and serve up New England baked beans to celebrate our independence.


For more details on this or any other historical subject in the White Mountains, contact us at the Conway Public Library's Henney History Room.