Three Centuries of Farming in New Milford:  Our Agricultural Heritage

            In the first decades of the 18^th century, the earliest farming efforts of the New Milford settlement consisted of creating meadow lands by clearing swamps and marshes to provide areas of grazing for cattle.

Commercial grass seed being unavailable and the sowing of seeds for grass not widely practiced, the cattle, as they wandered mostly unfenced through wold and vale, fed on the natural and indigenous grasses that were allowed to grow back in these cleared spaces.

A general paucity of grazing land spurred the General Court to declare that every able citizen should dedicate a prescribed amount of time each year to clearing forest undergrowth to provide further grazing opportunities for their peripatetic herds. 

The meadow lands of New Milford were divided, numbered and shared out by lottery, the lot numbers literally drawn from a hat, overseen by the committee of Zachariah Ferris, Daniel Boardman and Stephen Noble. Additional lots were soon thereafter established to the north of the town proper.

Subsistence Farming

            The era of subsistence farming in New Milford was not unlike that of other regions. Few things were purchased in mercantile stores for there were not many in the area; a rare bar of scented soap, white sugar, brass candlesticks and other little luxuries may have been procured in small country stores.

But it was the land that provided all things life-sustaining from which farmers and their families fashioned their needs, trading and borrowing with their neighbors in times of want. Fresh meat was rare, but butchering, salting and smoke curing was an organized community task.

Cheese, sometimes flavored with sage, was made at home. Corn, pumpkins, rye, potatoes were some of their staple crops. In addition to crops and livestock for food, tallow for candles, wool and flax for a blend of cloth called linsey-woolsey, herbs and other plants for dyes and medicine are just a few examples of the raw materials and products made from them by the early families of New Milford.

Their fundamental needs were so intimately connected to their land and its resources that it is humbling to imagine today the daily lives of these early families.

            New Milford farms played a role in our early American history, as in 1780 the town voted to donate ten bushels of wheat per month for each man who would enlist in the Continental Battalions for four months.

            Farms provided wheat, rye, barley and Indian corn for milling at John Griswold’s grist mill on Still River, possibly the town’s very first industry. Agriculture maintained a significant role amid New Milford’s various other industries that have come and gone or have endured such as paper and pottery mills, furniture makers, a gas-light factory, and marble quarries to name just a few.

Even the early decades of the 20^th century saw farms as the principal industry, milk, poultry, tobacco, fruit and livestock being the chief products.

Tobacco Production

            Tobacco production became a major commercial industry in New Milford. Its genesis lies with a man named George McMahon who planted his first small crop in 1848 on the area now occupied by Stop and Shop on route 7. Neighboring farmers Seely Richmond and Elijah Hall soon followed McMahon’s lead and together these three men pioneered tobacco farming not only in New Milford but throughout the Housatonic Valley.

The newly constructed Housatonic Railroad, laid down by 1840 in New Milford, afforded easy transport of the tobacco and tobacco products, greatly expanding commerce for the town. For the second half of the 19^th century tobacco farming flourished nicely, but after about 1910 it swelled five-fold.

Farmers expanded their planting from 10 to 30, 40 or 50 acres to keep up with the growing demand of tobacco products, rationed to soldiers in World War I and marketed to women of the Suffrage movement. Lump-sum payments for tobacco crops allowed farmers to treat themselves to occasional luxuries. Some farmers bought the town’s first automobiles or made improvements to their farms.

Tobacco prices vacillated with the Depression and World War II, climbing again in the 1940’s. By 1948 the demand began to diminish. The last major commercial tobacco crop in New Milford was grown in 1953.

Although farmland steadily diminished throughout the second half of the 20^th century, being replaced by industries, retail enterprises along Route 7 and, above all, residential development, dairy production with Guernsey, Jersey and Brown Swiss breeds, poultry and egg production and beef cattle continued.  Today, a small amount of dairy farming, some haying and vegetable production, especially corn, pumpkins and tomatoes, have survived.  Efforts are now underway to protect and preserve our few surviving working farms

As the ineluctable tide of progress surges on, our farms and farmers continue to adapt. In a time when so much of our food comes from sources far away and is so radically processed, our New Milford farms can offer the delight and healthfulness of locally grown victuals. Some of them offer educational experiences for children that are certain to kindle new appreciation and interest in agriculture.

The bucolic loveliness of rolling fields and sequestered meadows preserve niches for indigenous flora and fauna, as well as sooth our senses. Our New Milford farms continue to provide for us body, mind and soul.