A bearded man in a wide hat on an ox cart behind a yoked pair of oxen, a cornfield behind.

Weston at Work Chapter 1 of 8

The Farm Year

What did a Weston farm do in a year?

Weston was farm country. Season by season, the fields, the animals and the woodlots set the work.

Stone walls and small fields

A farm town

Weston's farms were small, stony and mixed: a few cows and oxen, hay and grain, onions, apples and a woodlot. Clearing the fields left the stone walls that still run through the woods.

Cleora Coley remembered in 1979 that “most of the farms in this section… were onion farms. They raised bushels and bushels of onions. They took them to Westport, Fairfield and Norwalk to be shipped.”

A valley farm: a cluster of barns and a farmhouse among fields divided by stone walls.
The Ebenezer Morehouse farm, 1800s. Weston History & Culture Center.

Spring · Summer · Fall · Winter

A year on a Weston farm

Spring: the ground

Before anything was sown, the ground was ploughed and harrowed. Ebenezer Fitch kept a diary; on Saturday, 30 May 1868, he wrote: “Ploughed all day for E. Beers.” Farmers worked for each other as well as for themselves.

A small diary page with entries for 30 May to 1 June 1868 in pencil.
Ebenezer Fitch's diary, 30 May–1 June 1868.
A young man riding a horse-drawn disc harrow behind a pair of dark horses in a stony field.
Disc-harrowing a stony field on Lyons Plain Road, about 1920.

Summer: hay and grain

Hay fed the animals all winter, and baled hay sold well. A two-horse mower cut it, a dump rake gathered it, and wagons heaped it high for the barn. Grain was still cut by hand with a cradle, a scythe with long wooden fingers that laid the stalks in neat rows. Then came the press →

A man in a straw hat on a horse-drawn sickle-bar mower behind a two-horse team.
Mowing, about 1920.
A white horse pulling a dump hay rake, a man in a straw hat on the seat.
Raking on Lyons Plain Road, about 1920.
Oscar Budd in a straw hat and overalls holding a grain cradle in a field of standing grain.
Oscar Budd with a grain cradle, probably at his farm on what was then Prospect Street (now Kettle Creek Road), about 1920.
A two-horse hay wagon heaped high, a man on top and another with a fork.
Harvesting hay on the Lockwood farm, early 1900s.
Two women on a tractor towing a loaded hay wagon.
Two women on a tractor with a hay wagon, from the Lockwood family photographs (undated).

Fall: onions and apples

Onions were pulled and left in rows to dry, then packed in barrels and hauled to the landings on the coast. Apples went to the cider mill. Read the cider chapter →

No photograph of a Weston onion field has been found. Do you have one? The Onion Barn on Weston's Historic Sites tells more.

The Onion Barn →
A field covered with harvested onions drying in rows, barrels and men standing across it, one in a bowler hat.
Elsewhere in Connecticut: Southport onion workers, Warner Hill, 1880s. Fairfield Museum and History Center.

Winter: wood

Winter was for the woodlot: firewood for the house, logs for the sawmill, railroad ties to sell. Oxen hauled the heavy loads. The Lockwoods' engine in the woodlot →

A yoked pair of oxen pulling a flatbed wagon on a dirt road, two men on the wagon and a teamster at the oxen.
An ox cart on Old Mill Road, about 1920.
Two young women in white sitting on a stack of sawn logs in front of a shingled shed.
The family woodpile, about 1920.

Christmas Day, 1916

Turn it over

Historians date photographs from what's written on the back. This one, from the Coley family next door, says exactly who and when.

A boy in a cap holding two cows on a rope in a straw-strewn barnyard, a calf beside them.
The back of the mount, pencilled: James Sturges Coley, Dec 25, 1916, Weston, Ct. “James Sturges Coley / Dec 25, 1916 / Weston, Ct.” He was eleven. As a man he raised oxen and took prizes with them at the county fairs.

Cows and oxen

Every farm kept a cow or two; some kept a dairy. The Fitch family ran one on Good Hill Road from 1884 until about 1930. Oxen were slower than horses but stronger, and they pulled ploughs, stoneboats and carts.

The Coleys' farm, in the Coley House exhibit →

31 August 1929

The Grange

An outdoor group portrait of about ninety people, men in suits, women in cloche hats and children in front, under a big tree.
The Norfield Grange gathering, 31 August 1929. Select it to open full size. Weston History & Culture Center.

The Grange held Weston's farm families together: meetings, lectures, suppers and contests. Cleora Coley was a member. About ninety people came out for this photograph, and not one of them is named. Do you recognize anyone? Tell us.

See it in the barn

Waiting for you in the Coley Barn

  • The Crops and Production panel
  • The farming implements
  • The rope and pulley: haul a hay bale up yourself
  • The barn itself: built for hay and grain

Open Thursdays and the first and last Sundays of the month, 1–4 pm. $5 adults, $3 ages 5–17; under 5 and members free.

Plan your visit →

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Members visit the barn and the Coley House free, all year.

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