In the 18th and 19th centuries, winter was the ideal time for many tasks not directly related to the planting, cultivating and harvesting of crops that took up all available time during the more temperate months. One of these tasks was the production of fencing materials.
Fencing changed considerably over those two centuries. Fences were essentially unknown to the Germanic immigrants to southeastern Pennsylvania. There wasn’t even a word for fence in the dialects they spoke so they borrowed the English word giving us the present day Pennsylvania Dutch: fens.
In colonial America, fences were used to keep animals, both wild and domestic, out of selected areas, not contained within fenced enclosures, as is the present custom. Livestock of all kinds was driven (on foot, not in vehicles) along the roadways and byways of the colonies and it was the adjoining landowner’s responsibility to erect fences or walls along roadways to keep animals from wandering onto their property.
On the farmstead, animals were kept out of kitchen gardens with perimeter fencing, complete with latching gates. Rooting pigs and scratching chickens, two animals that could be found in abundance around farmsteads, could destroy a newly planted seedbed or just germinated seedlings in the blink of an eye. Much effort went into making sure that didn’t happen.
In the 1700s, garden fences were generally constructed of rived pales nailed vertically onto top and bottom rails held by posts placed 10 to 12 feet apart. American chestnut, white oak and black locust were the preferred woods for fencing material due to their durability. Locust, the most durable, is also the hardest to work, while the chestnut was not only durable but easy to work and, at least in the early years, was readily available. By the dawn of the 20th Century, American chestnut had been almost completely eliminated by blight.
Whenever possible, the wood was worked green, when it was far easier to split and rive. The random-width pales, 4 to 5 feet in height and sometimes no more than split saplings, were placed closely enough together to prevent young chicks and other small critters from getting into the garden. Small rodents, then as now, were a constant annoyance kept largely in check by semi-domestic cats and dogs.
An excellent example of such a fence surrounds the Antes’ kitchen garden. Members of the Goschenhoppen Historians produced all the white oak posts and split rails, and the red oak pales, on-site over a period of two Folk Festivals. To prevent entry under the fence, the larger gaps have been filled by building-grade fieldstone embedded into the earth below the base of the pales, supplemented by the stone that seems to be constantly unearthed in the garden. As organic material is regularly being added to the raised-perimeter beds, the interior level has been raised above the ground level outside the garden, further preventing entry along the base of the fence. We have had few problems with small animals treating the garden as a personal cafeteria.
By the end of the 18th Century, sawn rails and pickets began to replace the split rails and rived pales of garden fences. The tops of the palings were initially unadorned but as time went on were shaped, probably in the beginning to reduce the exposure of end grain to water penetration, but as pickets became more prevalent their tops often took on a decorative quality. Throughout the 1800s, garden fences became more and more decorative, culminating in overly elaborate Victorian examples. Not often found on farmsteads, such fancy fencing was more common in small towns and urban areas.
It was also during this period that garden fences began to be regularly painted or whitewashed, a custom that continues today. Reflecting the mid-18th Century period that the Antes garden so effectively demonstrates, the fence is not painted, and posts, rails and pales are replaced in kind as the need arises.
March is the month when early cabbages must be started in cold frames and hot boxes so they can be set out in the garden as soon in April as conditions permit. By next month we will be eager to start preparing the garden beds to receive these earliest of the plantings and the first of the onion sets. As we write this column, we are in the coldest spell of the winter, yet spring and its promise of renewal cannot be far ahead. Next month we want to look forward to new plant varieties that we would like to try in this year’s kitchen garden.
Enjoy the last weeks of winter as you plan your gardening activities for the coming season.
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.