The factors that come into play - regional and local geography, the available geological substances called "parent '' materials, climatic conditions, drainage, existing vegetation, micro-organic, animal and human inhabitation - are interdependent and bring to light the characteristics of the site relevant to habitat diversification and development.

The geological history of the region in which the Old Field Garden is located - that part of eastern Ontario historically known as the Township of Oxford-on -Rideau but recently amalgamated into the newly formed Township of North Grenville - begins with the Ordovician period, about 450 million years ago. At that time, the area was covered by a sea. As the seabed rose and sank, successive layers of sediment were deposited that eventually hardened into sandstone and limestone. The bedrock which underlies Oxford-on -Rideau is the sedimentary layer known as Beekmantown limestone. At the Garden, it has been found at a depth of about a meter below the surface of the front field.

Massive erosion took place during the millions of years between the Ordovician and the Pleistocene periods. During the latter, the region was covered by successive glacial formations, sometimes over a kilometer in depth. The climate during the Pleistocene, with the possible exception of some warm interglacial spells, was much like that of the present high Arctic : permanent ice and snow. From what is now the Ottawa River Valley to the Saint Lawrence, the weight of the glacial field depressed the Ordovician limestone bed, and the ice scoured the landscape, scraping down the surface and transporting rock debris far from its source. The most recent glacial period lasted for 25,000 years, ending between ten and thirteen thousand years ago.

As the glacier receded with the melt, stones and boulders of various sizes and origins were dropped from the body of ice, and deposits of glacial drift (unconsolidated sand, silt, and clay) and till (boulder - rich clay) were laid down. The ocean invaded the whole low-lying region to form the Gilbert Gulf of the Champlain Sea. Over a period of two or three thousand years, the waters worked upon the glacial deposits, sifting and sorting, and layering their components. Then the land began to rise, eventually attaining its present elevation of about 100 meters (300 feet) above sea level.

As the Champlain Sea withdrew, it left a countryside of rolling hills and undulating plains formed by glacial drift and till distributed in uneven layers over the limestone bedrock. As rivers and streams found their beds, the region's drainage pattern was traced out and the glacial deposits become the parent materials of our local soils.

Because the land is low-lying, drainage throughout the area is generally slow. Extensive swamps have formed at the source or along the course of streams and locations where thick vegetation, beaver dams, or human "improvements" such as roads have blocked the flow of run-off.

Compared with the soils of regions not covered by glaciers during the Pleistocene period, those of North Grenville are very young; even in relatively undisturbed areas, the layers that can be examined in a vertical cut do not usually exhibit the highly differentiated textures and colours developed over long periods of maturation.

With the exception of outwash sand, most of the "parent" geological materials of North Grenville contain many limestone fragments, which seems to indicate that the materials had their main origin in the underlying bedrock. They tend to be fairly alkaline. Because deposits of till and drift emerge irregularly at the surface from place to place, significant changes in soil composition and texture frequently occur over very small areas. Both sandy and clay loams might appear, for example, in one field. It is also common for numerous stones of Precambrain origin, some weighing up to several tons, to be distributed throughout the soil. Repeated freezing and thawing tend to work these stones, called "glacial erratics," upwards through the soil, creating an annual hazard for cultivation. Throughout the region, very fine-grained "blow-sand" has accumulated in knolls or dunes; when laid bare, this powdery yellowish sand lifts easily in the wind and "travels" in the form of dunes. Lower in lime than the clay, most of the sands in the area would seem to be of Precambrian origin, brought down by the glaciers from the Canadian Shield.

At the Old Field Garden, this information explains how "blow-sand" predominates as the surface material in the upper sectors, either as dunes or undulating flats spread out in layers of varying depth over and underlying bed of "hard-pan," a dense mixture of clay and stones. Sand also predominates in the surface layer of the lower deciduous woods. But the surface layers of the meadow and lower field are composed of an 18 to 20cm deep layer of medium brown-red, fine-textured loam till, containing some sand but also enough clay to hold water, slow drainage significantly, and cause problems of aeration and compaction. The loam lies over a bed of hard-pan, and both materials, of greasy, slippery consistency when wet, solidify and contract somewhat when they dry out, becoming relatively impermeable and difficult to work.

Human History

Since the Ice Age, a succession of human cultures has taken part in the development of the region's environment. From culture to culture, changes in land usage and technology can be traced out that provide pivotal points for reflecting upon the present situation. If, for example, when thinking of the "wilderness," we understand a region without human inhabitants, then eastern Ontario has not been such a place since the end of the Ice Age. The question of "wilderness" then becomes one of how the land has been transformed by human inhabitation.

As the waters the Gilbert Gulf receded and the climate warmed, pioneering plants, no doubt lichens, mosses, and bracken, began to take hold and animals moved into the region. There is evidence that people moved into the vicinity as soon as practicable. Dart points found at Rideau Lake, not far to the west, suggest that members of the Clovis culture were there at the recession of the waters or soon after, hunting and gathering whatever food was available. They were followed during the next two or three thousand years by the Plano people, whose stone spear-points, found at Lake Saint Francis, seem to have been adapted for hunting new animal species arriving as the climate warmed. Little is known of the Clovis and Plano peoples, except that they were relatively few in number and, hunters and gatherers, would have travelled in small bands, using what they needed and leaving few permanent traces of their passage.

From about 5,000 to 1,000 BC, the area was inhabited by the Laurentian Archaic people, who developed weapons and tools responsive to the conditions of a more temperate climate and the rise of the mixed deciduous and evergreen forest environment known as the Great Lakes - Saint Lawrence forest region. Archeological evidence indicates that these people hunted bear, elk, and deer, fished , and foraged for the plants included in their diet. Polished stone adzes and gouges were used for woodworking. Little has been discovered about their housing.

Following the Laurentian Archaic people, from approximately 700 BC to AD 1000, the Point Peninsula people, more numerous than their predecessors and trading with more distant partners, moved about the region, striking temporary camps along streams and lake shores for seasonal food-gathering and leaving behind fragments of their pottery. Although the Point Peninsula culture began to decline about AD 400, hunting and gathering continued as corn agriculture was gradually introduced. From about AD 1,000 to the arrival of the European explorers, the indigenous peoples' relationship to their environment was keyed to a form of farming which involved temporary land use.

Near Roebuck, a hamlet about 12 km. south-west of the Old Field Garden, are the ruins of a farming village that flourished about 500 years ago. One of several such agglomerations built by a people historians and archeologists have named the Saint Lawrence Iroquois, the village was located on a sandy knoll, elevating it above nearby wet lowlands and facilitating its construction. Encompassed by a double ring of stockades, the village contained about 40 communal longhouses built of cedar poles and bark, each about 6 or 7 meters wide and about 30 meters long, the length depending on the number of families housed. In nearby fields, the people cultivated corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and tobacco. How they did this involves some conjecture.

Although windfall, fire, and dieback frequently create clearings in forested regions, the fields cultivated by the Saint Lawrence Iroquois were opened deliberately. After choosing a suitable location, they probably used a slash-and-burn technique, girding the living trees, leaving them to stand and dry before burning out the area. The resulting ash and charcoal would have added a temporary supplement of phosphates to the usually sandy and nutrient-poor soil. The planting no doubt made the most economical use of the limited sun-lit space, with horizontally trailing squash interspersed with tall corn stalks that provided support for climbing beans. Both corn and sunflowers have nutrient requirements that easily deplete even rich soils, and there is no evidence that these people, unlike the Iroquois on the eastern seabord, did or could even avail themselves of enough fish in the spring , a time of hunger, to plant along with the corn seed as a fertilizer. Despite the ability of beans to fix atmospheric nitrogen in root nodules, the soil was exhausted after a year or two of good production. New fields were opened as old ones were abandoned; when the fields grew too distant from the village, so did the need to move. Every twelve to twenty years, the village was displaced to a new site, leaving behind a ghost town and a regenerating forest.

The frequent displacements of the Saint Lawrence Iroquois, combined with their low over-all population, counteracted the long-term negative impact of their farming practices on the soil and enhanced biodiversity. Under the dense canopy of a mature mixed forest, growth is restricted to shade-loving mosses and ferns and to spring ephemerals which sprout, leaf, flower, and begin seed development before the deciduous trees have fully leafed out. Saplings and bushes, after their early development, suspend appreciable growth until the canopy opens to let more light penetrate to the lower levels of the forest. One consequence of this growth pattern is the forest floor does not provide a plentiful food supply for animals and birds that forage for their existence. Foragers thrive on the borders between habitats, in border areas where a mix of sun and shade encourages the growth of fruit trees, berry bushes, summer and fall flowering plants and grasses, all of which attract insects, yet another source of nourishment, while offering diverse possibilities of shelter. Clearing the forest for temporary farming multiplied these edges and contributed to the species mix of the region. The small size of the clearings and the short period of their cultivation assisted regeneration from dormant seed and the spreading of vegetation.

Cartier met members of the Saint Lawrence Iroquois as late as 1543, but by the early seventeenth century they had disappeared, perhaps through assimilation into neighbouring populations. The Ojibway Algonkins, particularly the Mississagua, who moved into the area by 1736, lived more by hunting and gathering than farming. The French, and subsequently the English, presence in the area consisted mainly of military and fur-trading outposts until extensive agricultural settlement began following the American Revolutionary War.

Central to the colonial history of the region was the building of a depot by the French on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence around 1673. Named La Galette after nearby biscuit-shaped islands in the river, the purpose of the depot was to forward supplies upstream to Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario. Later, the English renamed the depot Johnstown, which would later become a launching centre for settlement activities, including the building of roads that would eventually run northwards through new townships towards the settlement that would become Ottawa. In the heat of growing competition between the French and the English, the Saint Lawrence around La Galette was mainly of strategic military importance; a mission named La Presentation was established by the French on the south shore near the present day Ogdensburg as a buffer against the British, and soldiers were garrisoned in the area. Nevertheless, a map drawn by commandant Pouchot in 1760 which located Fort Levis on one of the galettes, also shows farms on the other islands and on both shores. When, on August 25, 1760, Pouchot surrendered Fort Levis to General Amherst, concluding the last battle between the French and the English in North America, an infrastructure for the subsequent European colonization of the land was in place.

Agricultural settlement of what is now the County of Leeds and Grenville began in earnest when governor Haldimand, in need of land to satisfy the Crown's responsibilities to the Loyalists, determined that townships be laid out along the Saint Lawrence. The first surveys began in 1783 using the British measuring system to set up eight townships, each of about 10 square miles. A baseline was established along the river, then successive lines, about one and a quarter miles apart, were drawn, dividing the land into "concessions," each of which was in turn divided every third of a mile into "lots" of about 200 acres. Although circumstances could lead to modifying this plan, the goal was to create ten concessions in each township. The long, narrow shape of the lots provided some river frontage on as many properties as possible, a vital consideration because waterways were the major means of transportation in a landscape thought of as "unbroken" forest.

With the exception of the "front" concessions lying along the river, little was known about variations in the landscape to the "rear" of the new townships until the settlers arrived and began to inspect their allotments. Very little could be discovered from the surveyor's plan which imposed a grid on the landscape, dividing, regulating, and equating parcels of land with little attention to the intrinsic characteristics of the terrain. This pattern of land apportionment was to have serious consequences.

The Loyalist settlers began to arrive at Johnstown in 1784. The amount of land families and single men were entitled to was scaled to their military rank or their particular service to the Crown, ranging from 1,000 acres for a field officer to 50 acres for a single man. Because lots with river frontage were more valuable than those located inland, the granting of property was done by drawing lots to ensure fairness. In the presence of the surveyor and his map, lot concessions and numbers were placed in a hat, then drawn by the entitled persons. A location ticket was then given to the appropriate persons and their names were inscribed on the map. It remained for the settlers to find their lot, discover what chance had given them, and begin a new life. According to Eileen Woodhead, a local historian, the native trees on a site were used to evaluate its worth. Walnut, chestnut, hickory, and basswood indicated the best soils; maple, beech, and cherry signaled second-rate land; pine, hemlock, and cedar were symptoms of soil so poor that it was "hardly worth accepting as a present."

Settling into what some perceived as a "howling wilderness" and others, more prosaically, "the bush," was a battle in which the first basic strategy was to clear open areas in the "uninterrupted" forest. Clearing trimmed the land, prepared it for cultivation, held the wilderness at bay, and opened the way to further improvements. Central not only to the individual settler's survival and success, but also indispensable for the harmonious development and prosperity of the whole community, the promptness with which clearing was undertaken was a matter of pride and reputation.

Although differences in terrain and type of bush would have had an impact on the task of clearing, some generalizations can be made about the basic procedures employed. The principal steps were:

• 1) Cutting away and stacking brush. All low woody growth, no doubt including any branches that would impede easy movement on the site, was cut away with a small axe or a brush-hook, an instrument designed for this purpose. The brushwood was piled directly on the ground in fairly large, well-distributed stacks to facilitate the burn. Also, for a good burn, care was taken not to pile the brush on uncut logs or treetops still bearing their branches.
• 2) Felling saplings and small trees. The tops of these trees were placed on top of the brush heaps, and the trunks cut in a length - probably about 4 meters - for convenient manipulation by two men.
• 3) Dropping and cutting the large trees. Of the several methods that could be used to fell large trees, the best seems to have been to chop through each tree individually about a meter above the ground, the height of the stump making future removal with chain and oxen easier. The chopping was best done in early fall, after the sap descended but before the leaves were off the trees, as this was said to hasten both the drying of the wood and the rotting of the stumps, and the leaves helped the burn. Once debranched, the trunks were cut into lengths no longer than 4 meters, a size suitable to be drawn by one yoke of oxen, and placed together for burning. Chopping methods not recommended were toppling one tree onto others to force them down, and working in a line to form windrows. A clearing badly chopped could double the subsequent work.
• 4) The burn. If possible, this was done in two stages on a dry and windy day. The fire, set first on the upwind brush piles, ran with the help of dry leaves to the others, ideally burning the whole area. The piles heavy logs then needed some tending to encourage or reset the burn, and the work could continue all night. the quality of future crops depended on the burn, which provided important nutrients to the soil.
• 5) Spreading or collecting the ashes. These activities were accomplished before the first rainfall, or the ashes became worthless for fertilizer or for making potash.
• 6) Stump removal. Large, freshly cut stumps were virtually impossible to remove; they were left in place to rot from eight to twelve years, depending on the species of tree, when they could be pulled out with hand tools or oxen. in the interim, the soil around the stumps was cultivated and planted, an awkward task.

Given that one able man would be hard put to clear at most three acres of bush in a year, initial clearing in the front concessions of the Saint Lawrence townships was accomplished quickly. By 1812, an estimated 16,000 acres, about 8 per cent of the assessed land, were being farmed. Meanwhile, immediately to the north, new townships were being opened to settlement, among them Oxford-on-Rideau.

In 1788, new regulations made additional land grants available to certain classes of settlers already on homesteads. To provide the land, new territory had to be opened. It was for this purpose that, according to the Oxford-Pennoyer survey Diary, the Surveyor General instructed Jesse Pennoyer to "engage ten chain bearers and Ax men...and immediately proceed with all diligence...to the River Rideau in the District of Luneberg and there survey and mark out the Lines of a Township, of ten miles square agreeable to the plan of an Inland Township, prescribed by the general Rules and Regulations, which is to be named OXFORD and to be situated between the South and West branches of the River Rideau." The work the survey team was completed by the 22nd of November.

The lots in Oxford were of about 210 acres, slightly larger than those in the Saint Lawrence townships; the concession numbering ran down from 1 to 10 beginning at the Rideau rather than up from the south. This meant that Concession 10 of Edwardsburgh, its "rear" and more slowly settled area, and Concession 10 of Oxford, the most distant from the Rideau and least desirable for settlement, were set back to back. On the Oxford plan, what is now the Old Field Garden was located in the south-east corner of the township as part of Lot 29, Concession 10, and was set aside as part of a Crown Reserve.

At the beginning, settlement in Oxford was comparatively slow. Much of the land, granted to reduced officers already established in the Saint Lawrence townships or set aside as Crown or Clergy Reserves (the Clergy Reserve Act of 1791 set aside one-seventh of unsurveyed lands for the support of a Protestant clergy), remained "wild" as it was unworked by its absentee owners or speculators. Although a map dated by local historian Robert Graham's research to around 1795, shows that the large corner Crown Reserves had been broken up and redistributed, much of the newly reserved land fell in as yet unclaimed lots in the higher numbered concessions, and this directly affected the pattern, speed, and difficulty of these concessions' settlement. For the residents of the area, these "wild" properties, unlike their own cleared fields and managed woodlots, were soon seen to be worse than non-productive. Dispersed throughout the area, they interfered with the spatial continuity of the community, isolating neighbours in need of each other's assistance, increased the burden of road building and maintenance - ten done through a system of statute labour by the residents themselves - and provided, moreover, a refuge for dangerous animals.

An 1846 military map of strategic clearings and roads which includes the south-east corner of Oxford-on-Rideau, does not indicate clearing on Lot 29 nor even a bush-road serving the immediate area. This does not mean, of course, that nothing had happened on Lot 29, but merely that whatever had happened was not considered strategically important enough to include. Positive information appears on a county map dating from 1861 - 2 and a township map probably of the same period. On these, a road from the Johnstown-Prescott area on the Saint Lawrence enters Oxford-on-rideau in Lot 26 of Concession 10 and, apparently to avoid a swamp, angles north-eastwards to a junction called "Christie's Corners" on Lot 27. There a spur running north to Kemptville originates, while the main road continues to cut or "force" its way across Lots 27 to 30. It then turns north up the South Gower township line for about 1km and then proceeds east to the Hamlet of Heckston. What these maps establish is that the section of this route, now known as Porter Road and on which the Old field Garden is located, was at that time part of a major highway between Bytown (later renamed Ottawa) and the Saint Lawrence.

When the Christie's Corner-Kemptville spur became part of a new highway to Ottawa, Porter Road was reduced to the status of a gravelled township road. But its impact on Lot 29 has been important. While facilitating agricultural development, it also dipped slightly in front of the present site of the Garden, cutting directly across the natural drainage slope, effectively blocking much of the surface run-off and perhaps even modifying the pattern of sub-surface flow through compaction. The presence of large, rotted maple stumps on raised hummocks along the north side of the road suggests that the effects of obstructed drainage were cumulative or perhaps accentuated in more recent years by poor culvert installation.

The patent for Lot 29 was issued to James Mundle in 1866. However, according to the township assessment and collection rolls, he already resided on the property in 1853. Aged 55 or 56, his family status is not clear, but he had two horses, no cattle, and was responsible for seven days of statute labour per year. In 1865 - 66, the period in which the patent was granted, the property was split equally between James and William Mundle in what seems to have been an informal arrangement without passage of title. Whatever the case, the 1869 records show seven people in the family, and 15 cattle, 15 sheep, 5 hogs, and 4 horses. 60 acres of cleared land on James's part of the property and 40 on William's were used for cultivation and pasture for the livestock. Although the distribution of the clearings is somewhat confused in the 1870 entries, the division of the original 200 acres giving William, now 21, the west half, with only 30 acres cleared, and the east half to James, with 70 acres cleared, the continuity of some wooded acreage can be established with a high degree of probability.

In 1886, William Mundle appears in the township roles for the first time as a "merchant," and in the following year Peter and Sidney Spero are named as joint owners of the whole 200 acres. With them is one child between the ages of 16 and 21; they have 20 cattle, 14 sheep, 2 hogs, 4 horses. 160 acres of the property are cleared and 40 acres are woodland. This proportion of clear to wooded land continues through the 1930's, when the owner Minnie Spero, perhaps the child listed half a century earlier, takes on Samuel Gilmer as tenant, and on into the 1940's when Samuel and Etta Gilmer, along with their daughter Freda, assume ownership.

A slightly blurry print of an aerial photograph taken by the Canadian Ministry of Energy, Mines and Resources offers a topographical overview of the terrain adjacent to Porter Road from Lot 28 to Lot 30. The image confirms the existence of a dense woodlot in the south portion of Lot 29and additional wooded areas scattered throughout the north-eastern portion. Interspersed with the latter and showing on the print as bright, reflective surfaces with shaded edges are drifts of exposed sand. When asked about the woods, Carmen Norton, who has farmed in the Porter Road area since before the Second World War, explained that they have been there since he was young and that the local practice with woodlots was to cut out old dead wood but leave healthy trees in place. At least some of these would have had to be mature in the 1940's since, according to Freda and her sister Lila Gilmer, their father wanted to tap the maples but found it impracticable because of the swampy area between the house and the bush. Freda and Lila also remember that in the 1940's the dunes to the north were still in movement, advancing noticeably to the south.

The state of the soil and vegetation on the 15 acre portion of Lot 29 when it was purchased to establish the Old Field Garden is clarified by this short history. The mix of sand, silt, and hard-pan overlying a limestone bed is a consequence of the region's geological background; the lack of humus over much of the area is due to deforestation, cultivation, and, at least since the time of Samuel Gilmer and most probably earlier, its use as a pasture for livestock. One of the main problems with drainage is due to the manner in which Porter Road interrupts the natural slope of the site. Sometime in the late 1930's or the early 1940's, the Garden's portion of Lot 29 was more or less abandoned. Eastern white cedar, interspersed with some poplar, ash and elm, began the process of reforestation. When the property was acquired in 1984, it was covered for the most part by a dense growth of cedar. The first task at the Garden was to assist the diversification of the young bush, relying to a great extent on the proximity of old woodlots and dormant seed.

Philip Fry, July, 1999

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Freda and Lila Gilmer, Robert Graham, Jean Newans, Carmen Norton, James Pendergast and the staff of the office of the Township of Oxford - on - Rideau for the time they so generously spent helping me put together the information in this brief regional history. I would also like to thank Donald Pistolesi for his generous and painstaking editing of the rough draft.

Selected Bibliography

• Graham, Robert and Newans, Jean. Notes on Oxford - on - Rideau Survey and Maps. A publication by the Oxford - on - Rideau Historical Society, various dates.
• Leavitt, Thad.W.H. History of Leeds and Grenville. Republication. Belleville, Ont., Mika Publishing, 1980.
• McKenzie, Ruth. Leeds and Grenville:their first two hundred years. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1984.
• Paget, Rene. "The French Period" in Edwardsburgh Township History. Edited by the Edwardsburgh Historians, 1995.
• Pendergast, James F. "Before Written Record" in Edwardsburgh township History. Edited by the Edwardsburgh Historians, 1995.
• Traill, Catherine Parr. The Backwoods of Canada. Republication. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996.
• Woodhead, Eileen. "The geography of Edwardsburg Township" in Edwardsburgh Township History. Edited by the Edwardsburgh Historians, 1995.
• Wright, J.V. A History of the Native People of Canada, Vol.1. Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper 152. Hull, The Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1995.