The Stone Bridge in the salt marshes
New England farmers knew the value of hay, and selected land with a keen eye for meadows, often acquiring more than they could use. The availability of coastal salt marsh enticed settlers into founding towns in that proximity. Land prices can testify to the priority colonist placed on livestock sustenance. In some places fresh and salt meadow was assessed at twice the value of arable land.
"Native grasses were ample in supply but low in nutrients. Salt hay provided 10 to 20 percent less food value than the equivalent amount of English hay, with the result that cattle fed on it grew slowly and produced less milk."1
Yet, the salt marsh hay had trace minerals that were lacking in other herbage.
John L. Davis loading hay in August,
1928
Early settlers ' cattle were the unwitting transporters of alien plants, as they were fed English fodder during transportation. "William Wood noticed that as early as 1634, 'in such places where the cattle use to graze, the ground is much improved in the woods, growing more grassy and less woody.' A few years later Edmund Browne reported that 'in some places our E[nglish] clover is found' and it 'feedeth the cattle very well.' ...Because these plants evolved in a world where livestock were commonplace, they flourished better than native grasses."2
Colonists planted clover and hay seed. They also planted oats, mostly to feed the horses. "They grew an abundance of turnips, which mostly ended up in the feeding troughs. Farmers saved anything their animals might eat, straw left over from threshing grain; turnip and parsnip tops, and chopped cornstalks."3
The long cold New England winters were the greatest danger for livestock, which could not forage on frozen ground. In 1635-36, Many of Connecticut settlers' cattle perished from starvation. So foddering at home, rather than carrying fodder to distant pastures during the winter became the custom. Some farmers put their cattle to graze into fenced cornfields to graze on the stubble, before actually breaking into the winter's supply of fodder.4 This served two purposes: it cleared the fields, and supplied a fresh supply of manure for the next crop.
The Continental Marsh (salt marsh)
in autumn
During the American Revolution, that Stanton-Davis farm was a "provision farm", supplying the Continental Army. Among the many items sent to our troops was salt marsh hay to feed the cattle in the winter.
Today salt marsh hay is still being harvested and dried by the Davis family, and is sold for fodder and mulch. This salt marsh is one the few that were not cut up into squares and sprayed with DDT back in the 1930s, in the State of Connecticut's attempt to eradicate the mosquitoes that carried malaria and worse. So it looks much as it did when Thomas Stanton first looked over his property in the 1650s.
The marshes are an important habitat for blue crabs, ducks and other creatures. The mud flats harbor quahogs and soft-shelled clams. As marsh grass dies, it decomposes into nutrients that feed plankton; and the plankton is consumed by a myriad of tiny fish, that grow into the many species inhabiting Long Island Sound. Today we have less than half of the original tidal lands the settlers found upon our shores when they arrived. With climate change and the rising of the water, the ocean will push further inland. At Barn Island Marsh, a neighboring property, there is a stone wall built by a colonist to border a corn field which now stands out in the middle of the marsh, sunken to the top layer of stones.
1 Creatures of Empire. Virginia DeJohn Anderson. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. page 154.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid, page 155
4 Ibid, page 156.
