Rose Hill Farm, Sustainable Agriculture, c. 1860

By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information

In May of 1850 Robert and Margaret Swan took up residence at their new property on Seneca Lake. According to several sources, the farm was not in great shape, but had, as we might say today, potential. Certainly Robert knew this from his time living on the Johnston Farm just next door. Rose Hill Farm was comprised of 350 acres and was purchased by Robert's parents as a wedding gift for the young couple. The previous owners, the VanGiesons and their relative, William Strong (builder of the mansion), had not been farmers and probably leased the land out to tenants who farmed it. As a consequence:

"It was then in the ordinary condition of farms in that section of country, and being a wet, tenacious soil, the crops were, except in very favorable seasons, small. The farm was very indifferently fenced—filled with swales and sunken places, where coarse aquatic grasses and noxious weeds had full possession. Here was a work of no ordinary importance for a young man, just entering upon his career, as a farmer." [New York Agricultural Society Transactions, 1857].

Sale notice for Rose Hill farm, 1847

Likely too busy to keep much account of his doings the first year after his marriage, we have no records of his farming during 1850. He probably spent much of that time repairing fences and deciding what he would plant and where. We have both an account book he kept from 1851 to 1862 and a journal of his activities on the farm for 1851 to 1858. These, combined with family letters and articles about farming in the state farm journals, give us a fair idea of how he worked his farm.

Robert, like his mentor and father-in-law John Johnston, grew wheat as his chief crop. He also grew oats, corn and grass for forage (timothy grass and clover) every year. Some years he mentions barley and buckwheat, but it is unclear if he grew these annually. He had sheep, cattle and pigs on the farm, as well as horses for transportation.

In upstate New York farmers plant wheat in the fall and harvest in early July. Robert must have planted in fall of 1850 because he started harvesting 58 acres of wheat on July 19 and wrote it looked to be a "fare [sic] crop." The next year did not go so well, beginning with dry weather in September when he planted the wheat and a cold spring. These conditions were followed by grasshoppers at harvest time. By July he wrote, "My wheat looks miserable enough. I don't think I will Average 10 Bushels an Acre. I Shall only sow 25 or 30 Acres of wheat this Fall. Drain more, manure more, & have more of my farm in grass, & by this means I will by & by make more grass, & by this means I will by & by make more out of it than having so much in crop."

Genesee Farmer, November 1858

And drain he did. Over the next two years he laid over 60 miles of drain tile on 305 of his acreage. He reported that this cost him $0.30 per rod (16.5 feet) or $96.00 per mile. This brought the total cost of drainage to $5,823. He wrote in his application for the State Farm Premium, "This land reclaimed, is now equal to any land upon the farm, and in the field of 60 acres of wheat raised the present year [1857], about fifteen acres of it was land reclaimed; and the wheat upon that portion was equal to the very best of the field." [NYAS Transactions, 1857]. His wheat yields grew from five bushels an acre in 1852 to 20 bushels per acre in 1857, a year when the wheat midge damaged portions of the crop. By 1862, Rose Hill averaged 40 bushels an acre, just short of the modern American average of 46 bushels for a non-irrigated farm.

He followed Johnston's method of farming: raise sheep and cattle for manure, meat, milk and wool; raise grass, corn, and clover for feed and bedding straw; spread rotted straw and manure on the fields to feed the crops; sell livestock and butter for cash; use cash and credit to drain the land. Johnston and Swan also made sure to rotate crops, leaving wheat fields fallow for portions of the year or growing clover on them to restore the soil's fertility. In many ways, this is what we would today call a sustainable system. Swan grew crops to feed livestock, and the livestock fed the land to grow better crops. According to one article about the farm, every crop grown on it was consumed except wheat, which was the most profitable crop to sell.

 

Ad for Albany tile works in 1858 Cultivator magazine

This method relied on a formula of "Dung, Drainage and Credit." The farmer needed to drain and manure. To do both he needed credit until his farm proved profitable. While John Johnston had to invest his profits in draining his land a little at a time, Robert Swan's access to credit (likely due to his father's connections) meant he could drain his entire farm more quickly and profit more quickly. Even the modern farmer would probably say that with credit, nearly anything in farming is possible.

Robert Swan Becomes a Farmer

By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information

Robert Swan was born in 1826, the fifth child of New York City merchant Benjamin Swan and his wife Mary. According to a family history written by Robert's youngest brother Fred, he attended a private school in New York City and went to work at about 15 as a clerk in the dry good business. He was promoted to be a salesman and spent several years working in business in the area that is today the Financial District. Due to poor health and under the advice of a doctor, he gave up the mercantile business to become a farmer. He spent two years living and learning with John Johnston, then a farmer well known for his innovative methods.

In 1848, he began his study of farming at the age of 22, writing of his first day at the Johnston farm:

On the 31st day of July 1848 I left home via Albany to go to Mr John Johnston's farm to learn farming of him at which place I arrived on the 2nd of August in the morning. I found Mr J at home and was much pleased with him and his family. In the course of the morning (Mr J's soninlaw) Mr Swabi & his wife came to pay a visit at the house after a little while Mr J. Mr Swabia and myself went over the farm and on this occasion Mr J showed me how to bind wheat.

His second day proved more challenging:

Aug 3rd Thursday. I arrose [sic] this morning at 5, dressed and went down to breakfast at six. After breakfast I went to help thrash [sic] wheat in the upper barn this day we did upward of Fifty Bushels, in an hour which Mr J. said “was great work"

On the 7th he was still threshing and "dirty as a sweep." The threshing continued until August 14th, when they started ploughing for the planting of the next year's crop of wheat.

For several men to thresh 50 bushels of wheat in an hour, they were likely using a horse-powered machine, like this one.

Robert's description of his days over the two years that he lived at Johnston's farm are typical of farming in this period and exhausting sounding to the modern reader. Long days of hard work dictated by the weather and the season, interspersed with time free to write letters, visit with neighbors, attend church and read the Bible, and discuss farming with Mr. Johnston and other farmers. Here is a partial list of the activities he engaged in during his two years at Johnston's farm: fed cattle, fixed fence, helped fill ditches, planted corn, altered lambs, hoed potatoes, shot crows, sheared sheep, helped raise shed, hoed corn, cleaned harness, cultivated fallows, cut clover hay, cleaned Timothy seed, cured clover seed, sowed seed, learned to treat foot-rotted sheep and blow fly, took in corn stalks, loaded and spread manure, threshed barley, hauled in buckwheat, drove steers. He also killed a skunk found in the family well, and on another occasion repeatedly had to chase a strange bull off the farm at three in the morning.

Fields east of Rose Hill, once part of the Swan's farm

Of course, as the son of a wealthy man who was learning from, not working for Mr. Johnston, Robert did not have to work in the same way that the paid farm laborers did. When he had problems with his foot he was laid up for a couple of days, and when his family came to town to visit he had the leisure to spend time with them. This would not be an option for a man who only got paid when he worked, as was the case with most farm laborers. Still, Robert was working hard and getting hands-on experience with one of the best farmers in the state.

Robert's decision to take up farming was apparently not unusual. At one point in his diary he writes: Nov 6th Monday. This morning I went over to Geneva to the post office where I found a letter from Father informing me of Mr Halsteds son Roberts intention of being a farmer.  Robert also mentions Herman Ten Eyck Foster several times in his Johnston period diary. Like Swan, Foster received several premium awards from the New York State Agricultural Society for his Seneca County farm. He too was born the son of a NYC merchant and learned farming from a Mr. Owen near Trumansburg. After establishing his farm, he married and had three children, one of whom, Pauline, married Henry A. DuPont, and was the mother of Henry F. DuPont, the founder of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. The museum has Foster's diary for 1842-43. Based on this document, he spent his time at the Owens' much as Robert did at the Johnston's.

Robert Swan's professional choice agreed with him: Sunday August 13th How unlike the City where all is confusion is the country where every thing seems quiet thus quieting the heart of man. Based on his writings and the letters of his family members, the Swans were well-off, but not ostentatious or overly concerned with society and station. Robert's father Benjamin was very wealthy and prominent, but seems to have been mostly a self-made man (if you take his son Fred's description literally, and that may not be wise), whose primarily concerns were family and religious matters. He took a genuine interest in the farm and was a life member of the New York State Agricultural Society, watching Robert's progress in improving the farm every summer when he and his wife came for a month-long visit.

Next time we'll look more closely at how Robert Swan managed and farmed his own land at Rose Hill.