"more than you ever want to read about ACW cornfields" Topic

There have been several recent TMP threads about ACW cornfield: the Antietem cornfield and one about modeling corn plants and their height. Being a hobby farmer and interested in horse/oxen powered machinery, I started wondering about what were the practices used in the ACW era and what would soldiers have encountered. As expected, what you see these days from modern corn and machinery is not what was practiced then. Below I have collected several (a bit disjointed, but near chronological ordered) excerpts about the history of corn growing methods.
Most people are familiar with the stories from elementary school about Squnto teaching the Pilgrams about planting corn kernals along with a piece of fish as a fertilizer. Sorry to say, that appears to be a myth and there are no reports of American Indians practicing that at any other time or place. (Does it seem that would be just feeding raccoons?). Remember that Squanto had been kidnapped at an early age from America and was raised in England as a slave/servant, who was returned back to American as per his owner's will. The fishhead practice was a Dutch/English practice in exhausted soils using herring heads left over from the fishing trade- not a native American method.
The American Indians usually practiced a slash and burn type agriculture, where forests were crudely cleared by killing trees by fire girdling and burning. About 6 corn seeds was planted in mounds or hills (1' x 4') using the "three sisters" companion planting method.
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Tips for growing the three sisters:
• To try them in your garden, in spring, prepare the soil by adding fish scraps or wood ash to increase fertility, if desired.
• Make a mound of soil about a foot high and four feet wide.
• When the danger of frost has passed, plant the corn in the mound. Sow six kernels of corn an inch deep and about ten inches apart in a circle of about 2 feet in diameter.
• When the corn is about 5 inches tall, plant four bean seeds, evenly spaced, around each stalk. About a week later, plant six squash seeds, evenly spaced, around the perimeter of the mound.
Each of the sisters contributes something to the planting. Together, the sisters provide a balanced diet from a single planting.
• As older sisters often do, the corn offers the beans needed support.
• The beans, the giving sister, pull nitrogen from the air and bring it to the soil for the benefit of all three.
• As the beans grow through the tangle of squash vines and wind their way up the cornstalks into the sunlight, they hold the sisters close together.
• The large leaves of the sprawling squash protect the threesome by creating living mulch that shades the soil, keeping it cool and moist and preventing weeds.
• The prickly squash leaves also keep away raccoons, which don't like to step on them.
By the time European settlers arrived in America in the early 1600s, the Iroquois had been growing the "three sisters" for over three centuries. The vegetable trio sustained the Native Americans both physically and spiritually. In legend, the plants were a gift from the gods, always to be grown together, eaten together, and celebrated together.

When the soil was exhausted (corn is a heavy feeder) the field would be abandoned and a new area would be used. This worked fine if there was a low population density. Used up fields would regrow and supply habitat for deer, become reforested and be reused in ? 50 to 100 years. Note that in some of the poorer soils in the south coastal plains, (Virginia) fields might be used for 2-3 years and then let lay fallow for 6-10 years to rejuvenate.
The intercropping method was effective for small fields but was very labor intensive and required a lot of hand labour. Okay for pioneering farms but not well suited for permanent farms and it did not take advantage of domesticated horses and oxen, which multiplied the power available to the farmer, nor did it take advantage of iron/steel mechanical equipement.
A first iteration beyond the wooden hoe methd might have been for the farmer to horse/ox plow the soil to break up weeds. Fields would be plowed in two directions to form mounds at the intersections and corn would be planted there with a pointed stick (dibble) to make the hole. Plant in the hollow in dry land or in the raised bed to increase the warm growing season. About 1850, the hand corn planted began in use and many were patented. These looked like a post-hole digger and poled the hole, and dropped in the corn seeds. So you could plant several acres a day.
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For hundreds of years, Euro-American farmers planted corn using Native American techniques. Corn was planted by one person digging a hole with a hoe — or a dibble — followed by another farmer who dropped two, three, or four seeds into the hole before covering them with soil. About 1 acre of corn could be planted per day with this method. In 1856, a patent was granted for a hoe equipped with a seed canister on its shank. One man dug the hole, pulled a string that released the seed and then covered the hole with soil in a couple of motions. Another 1856 patent was for a foot-operated, dibble-type planter. Seed corn was carried in a backpack connected to the dibble by a tube. The dibble was strapped to the side of the operator's foot and, when the foot was stamped sharply on the ground, the point gouged a hole and the seeds were released. A quick kick or shuffle of the foot covered the seed, and the sower stepped forward to the next hill.
…………Bill pick operators had to know where to stab the gadget in the ground to make nice, straight checkrows. Since most farmers took pride in arrow-straight furrows and rows, proper placement was an important consideration. As a result, row markers were patented to aid with the task. Some were the sled — or runner — type, while other row markers used wheels. Horses usually pulled markers across an entire field in one direction, and then again at right angles to the first pass. The sled's runners — or wheels in some cases — left a checkerboard pattern of lines in the soil as the marker passed across the field. Then the farmer planted hills where each line intersected. Many farmers used a homemade wooden two-, three-, or four-row frame that they pulled across the field by hand or behind a horse to mark hill location.

Planting and Cultivating
Corn was first planted by hand, like other grains. After the corn began to grow, it needed cultivation (stirring the soil to kill the weeds). Because straight rows made cultivation easier, farmers marked out their field rows before planting. They drew lines across the field lengthwise and crosswise, making a checkerboard pattern. Corn seed was planted where the lines crossed. The field could then be cultivated either crosswise or lengthwise.

Corn planters
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Before the planters of the 1850s, farmers carried a sack of seed corn on their shoulder and used a stick to poke a hole in the soil where they then dropped seed. Hand-held planters evolved rapidly during the roughly 60-year period before large mechanical planters became commonplace. The hollow stick used by early farmers gave way to a one-hand unit with a trigger-release hopper. Next came units with two hoppers on the handle: one for seed and the other for fertilizer (some even planted corn and pumpkin seeds in one pass). Ultimately, the hand-held unit was relegated to garden use or to "fill in" gaps in fields.

Corn seed was placed in the box of the hand corn planter. The tip of the planter was pushed into the ground. The handles were opened and closed, dropping a few seeds into the ground.

Some horse-drawn planters (post 1870's) were operated by two workers—one who drove the horses and an extra helper who pulled the seed planting handle as the machine came to each cross. A paddle behind the seed planter pushed dirt over the seed, then the wheel rolled over, patting the dirt firmly down.

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After a farmer had planted seeds, the battle against the weeds began. For years hand-power was used to cultivate the land to wipe out seeds. To do this, farmers used hoes usually made of iron by the village blacksmith. Corn farmers usually needed to hoe their crops four times each season. At the rate of Ύ to one acre per day, as much as six days labor per acre might be spent killing weeds.
Soon inventors helped farmers cultivate. In about 1820 farmers were using single-row horse-drawn equipment. Its purpose was to loosen the soil and kill weeds. Various types of cultivators quickly followed. Some used the "shovel-plow" which fit easily between corn rows, killed the weeds, stirred the soil, and tilled the plants by throwing more earth around the newly sprouted corn. In fact, the shovel plow remained the common cultivating tool until the 1850's in Iowa and Illinois. By the late 1860's, horse-drawn two-row cultivators with a seat for the farmer, also called a sulky, were being used in the Midwest

So the picture is now coming into view. We expect most any cornfield in the ACW to be cross plowed to prepare the seedbed and kill weeks, forming some sort of checkerboard. It is planted at the intersections. But now it has to be cultivated to keep the weeds from choking out the corn shoots and later cultivated to keep the weeks from stealing moisture and nutriants from the corn. Choices are horse cultivator or hand hoe (very small poor farms only).
One row walking cultivator
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The picture on page 100 shows a typical field arrangement with about 2.5 foot between corn in rows 3-3.5 feet apart.

The one row walking cultivator is easily pulled by one horse and they are almost always about 44 inches wide. This sets the size and spacing of the cornrows. Most always the corn was grown in intersecting rows so that mechanical and horse drawn weeding could be done in two directions. If only one direction, then hand hoeing would have to be done down that row, which was physically exhausting and too labour intensive.

Note that the current industrial practice is "no-till" where the corn plants are thickly sown (4" spacing?) in single rows and herbicides are used to kill off weeds. Don't use this as your model for what the ACW soldiers had to deal with. Hobby farmers now will either use a spaced hill model (see American Indians above) or plant thickly in a row. The row might be weeked with a walk-behind man powered cultivator, just like used small garden plots from the 1800's, combined with hand hoe weeding within the row.

Hope this has been some help. Note also that there is nothing magic with "modern hybrid corn being so much taller than corn back then". Typical heights were about the same then and there has always been a lot of variation in different land races.

Great stuff. I have been stymied in making corn fields in 15mm that would look right. I am not that impressed with the astro turf corn fields. Besides looking like, well, an astro turf mat, they seem way too uniform and thick.
Thanks,
Mark

This was a great discourse. Thanks,

Jim

Soldiers of Corn, lend me your ears!

Billsfan, love it!

Only problem we will have now is dealing with all the uninformed comments on how our tabletop fields don't look right from all the people who have only seen modern farming!

Oh well…….

Thanks for the information billsfan. It sounds similar to how I used to grow corn in my backyard.

@Trajanus-I thought the goal of features on a wargame table was to REPRESENT the actual terrain, and not reproduce it in scale.

I have never been able to understand the lack of effort to make the terrain look like something that comes close to what the actual battleground resembles. And yet people will go to a great deal of effort to make sure their toy soldiers have the right lapels, head gear, shade of crimson, bayonet scabbard,…
The most prominent feature of any game is the table. And museum quality figures sitting on a piece of green felt with two plastic trees-like items seems to be quite acceptable to many.
Information like this is great-and a really a great deal more useful than the coat length of Hood's Texans. Especially if those minis are obscured in a nicely created corn field.
Thanks again, Billsfan.

What I find interesting is that a man could very easily walk down the same row that was clear enough to let a horse, plow and man walk down. I guess a line of battle advancing down a row direction might resemble double spaced files of 4 than two rows because that would be the easy way of walking.

Modern plowing is done along contour lines to lessen erosion. Most of the time, horse plowing was also done along least slopes as well. It would be hard to get a plow to bite downing downhill and going uphill would be too slow and tiring. Note that in the picture in link , the two sets of rows are not at right angles and are also not directly down and cross slope. I think that the farmers of the era would not necessarily stick with a strict right-angle grid regardless of the changes in the slope of the land, but would follow contours to some extent and plow less deeply when going more up-hill to avoid creating local ravines that would be hard to plow in future visits. (If you are older, when milk-cows were allowed to free range during the day, you might remember the meandering paths that the cows beat across the fields. It uses the least energy and wear-and-tear on the feet to stay on the same contour).

I wonder what the effect of the direction of the corn rows would have on units who entered a very high corn field with the intent of moving directly across it. A slight curvature might put them out of the field at the wrong place and headed in the wrong direction- or completely lost (Its happened to me). If their direction was not exactly down a row which was straight in the right direction, they would have to "move over a row" every certain number of steps. Not likely. Maybe there should be a random result of direction change when marching into a tall cornfield? But I'm sure that every officer who was fooled and lost his direction, carefully remarked on it in his reports and memoirs.

Yes, this was more than I wanted to know…

@Micro-I guess it is a matter of personal preference. In my model RR days I strove to produce scenery as accurately as possible. When it comes to war gaming though, I don't want scenery which interferes with the mechanics of moving the troops around, especially when we're talking about a number of figures on a tray or base. A felt table or even a floor with suitable terrain markers will quite often be far more functional than a more accurate model of the battlefield.

Thanks! This is good info. I have yet to make any cornfields for my AWI/ACW battlefields, this will help.

I have never been able to understand the lack of effort to make the terrain look like something that comes close to what the actual battleground resembles.

In my experience, most miniatures gamers love nice looking terrain, but making it is a lot of time and money, and it's already pretty hard (or costly) to build a collection of toy soldiers. Personally, I put as much work into my landscapes as I do the armies (and navies). I love good looking miniature landscapes and find they assist my suspension of disbelief and draw gamers in like moths to a light. I'm always exploring creative ways to make terrain that looks nice but doesn't cost much and is easy to transport, set up and tear down.

Occasionally someone will make fun of me for having "too much terrain", to which my standard snark is something like "Too much? But I left the 15mm scale squirrels in the box!". :-) Everybody has his own threshold past which the terrain loses interest and becomes annoying. For my part, I had a very good time making & collecting all the hills, buildings, trees, fields, fences, streams, bridges, and other countryside detritus, so you can bet I'm gonna use them.

- Ix

A felt table or even a floor with suitable terrain markers will quite often be far more functional than a more accurate model of the battlefield.

That's an excellent point, and I agree. However, I find that with some creativity it's still possible to make very nice looking tables without interfering with the mechanics of moving miniatures around on it. The paradigm that's evolved on my miniature battlefields is that most of the 3D impedimenta are declared "moveable decorations", and an appropriately colored/decorated shape of cloth (felt, faux fur, corduroy) is used on the table to delineate the boundaries of the area of terrain effect. This works really well for towns, woods, swamps, farm fields, muddy or rocky fields, etc. that occupy tactically significant areas. When the troops move in, the buildings and trees just move off the table (or into a different town/field/wood/swamp), and all that's left is the flat surface of the cloth.

There's no good reason not to use nice looking roads, streams and rivers. They're flat, so don't really interfere with the mechanics of moving miniatures.

Fences can be tricky. In more tactical games (unit=battalion or smaller) I declare all fences to be "real", i.e. they can't be moved and impact movement/shooting as linear obstacles. In higher level games (F&F, V&B, etc.) only the stone fences are "real", the wood fences are just decorations to be moved out of the way – my thinking being that a wood fence is tactically insignificant to a multi-battalion body of troops spanning a large fraction of a mile.

I continue to use 3D hills with sloped sides because I just never liked the look of stacked contours. That's a personal preference with some known costs (disrupted formations, tumbling miniatures), but such are the vicissitudes of war…

Having said all that, you know you really do have "too much terrain" when the table setup takes longer than the battle. That's no good, especially at conventions and club game days where time is limited. To get around this problem, a few years back I started laying out all the flat cloth and roads/streams on a big piece of felt, at home the night before. When I'm done, I roll it up and pack it in the car. At the destination, I unroll the cloth, set out the hills, and decorate all the pre-marked areas with nice-looking 3D detritus. In 30-60 mins it's ready for a fight, and it looks better than a plain, flat, cloth-covered table. Gamers enjoy helping set out the trees, buildings, fences, etc. so the setup becomes a nice pre-game social event. Beer makes it even better.

I plan to add rows of corn to my selection of countryside decorations.

- Ix

"Only problem we will have now is dealing with all the uninformed comments on how our tabletop fields don't look right from all the people who have only seen modern farming!"

Exactly.

"Modern plowing is done along contour lines to lessen erosion."

and here is what happens when you don't – this formation is less than 200 years old

link

@Microbiggie,I agree 100%

Yellow Admiral

I guess my wife and I are old foggies but I have observed that in making dresses and clothing at home with patterns and a sewing machine, the following is SOP. A thin paper pattern is attached to the cloth with pins and then cut out with scissors. I think you could help speed your game table layout by doing a similar techinque of pinning the terrain marker features to the gametable cloth ahead of time.

More posts like the OP would herald a new Golden Age for TMP.

Many thanks.

I agree with Microbiggie also!

That's very interesting, not stuff I'd ever thought about but interesting to know.