Bâti en 1875, le Potton Springs Hotel et ses célèbres sources sulfureuses attireront des milliers de visiteurs en provenance de l’est de l’Amérique du Nord. Les curistes arrivaient par train – le Missisquoi and Black Rivers Valley Railway qui deviendra ensuite l’Orford Mountain Railway et, finalement, le Canadien Pacifique.
PRESERVING MEAT
Canada is often called the land of the maple. Indeed, the maple leaf is our national emblem. The Eastern Townships is one of the areas in Canada best suited for maple syrup production. In fact, over half of the North American crop was, and still is, produced in the Province of Quebec.
The 19th century saw the growth of agricultural societies all over the Eastern Townships.
Cows were milked in the morning and evening. Before the advent of electricity and milking machines, the chore had to be done by hand. It took about an hour for two or three people to milk twenty cows.
During the winter, when the ground was frozen and covered with snow, the men and boys of the farm would take their axes and cross cut saws and drive their teams of horses into the woods. Since the foliage was all gone, the underbrush was not thick, so the teams could move about with relative ease in the forest.
Apples have been cultivated for the past four thousand years. They were introduced to North America from Europe by the early colonists in both New England and Canada. It has been recorded that the first apples in North America were grown in Acadia in 1635.
Richard Baldwin Jr. (1808-1877), who is considered the founder of Coaticook, settled on what is now Child Street in Coaticook in the early 1800s.
Before the invention of modern refrigeration techniques, cutting blocks of ice from frozen lakes and streams was an important wintertime task for local farmers.
A good hay crop was vital for the survival of any farm. It was hay that fed the animals over the long winter, when the fields were covered in a deep layer of snow.