This small but detailed watercolour by the naturalist Philip Henry Gosse illustrates part of his farm in 1837. It gives a good indication of the rolling nature of the land in Compton Township, the most fertile area in the county. Even though this township had been first settled thirty-five years earlier, Gosse's farm was not at a very advanced stage of cultivation. His journal for 1836 reveals that he spent a good deal of his time that fall hauling stones from the "loghouse field", shown here on the right side with several stumps still unremoved. Gosse had separated this field from the pasture with a post and rail fence, considered to be far superior to the old snake rail variety seen here beside the road. The characteristic maple woods or "sugar bush" can be seen in the right background, and a tree-lined stone wall acts as a divider between fields.
Gosse found ploughing a fifth of a hectare a day with his single horse very difficult so he finally engaged a neighbour to do the job. His other fall tasks included harvesting the hay in late August, the buckwheat in early September, the oats later in the month, the barley and wheat in early October and finally the potatoes just before the ground froze in late October. After this he put up fences, repaired his barn and fertilized his fields with manure, leached ashes and maple leaves. From December 12 to March 4 Gosse taught school in a neighbouring township for sixteen dollars a month plus board. Early spring found him splitting rails as well as threshing and winnowing wheat, barley and hayseed. Then came more fertilizing, ploughing and spring planting, as well as churning butter from the milk his single cow had begun to give. In July and August Gosse spent much of his time hoeing his potatoes and turnips. Apart from smaller chores and some carpentry work, this completed Gosse's yearly round.
Gosse's middle-class English background clearly set him apart from his neighbours. He had arrived in Compton with friends intending to establish a communal farm where, in his words, they would "entomologize together in the noble forest, and, in the peaceful and happy pursuits of agriculture, forget the toils and anxieties of commerce." Gosse's preoccupation with fertilizing the soil and the pains he took to grow turnips were more typical of the "improving" British farmer than of the early American settler. But quarrels with his friends and the arduous and monotonous farm labour soon turned his utopian dream into "a nightmare of profitless drudgery." In fact Gosse had no wife or children to lighten his work load, forcing him to depend on his New York brother's assistance from May until September. Not surprisingly, he gave up on the Compton farm after only a couple of years.
