It required seven farmers to feed ten of the population; surplus production for the colonial farmer was minimal, and crop loss was common in the 1700’s. Deerskins fetched an average of one dollar, offering the enterprising subsistence agronomist a way to supplement his meager existence by harvesting deerskins along with the usual corn, barley, beans, and potatoes.

Although the ground has softened somewhat, we still appreciate a morning fire in the woodstove. In the woods a campfire is comforting and does make the coffee, so come on in, hobble your horses, and sit a spell.

I recently returned from Prickett’s Fort in our gorgeous sister-state, West Virginia, where I attended the annual School of the Longhunter. Through four days of various outdoor seminars, I can honestly attest to the adage that one is never too old to learn. Furthermore, I’ve gained a genuine appreciation for the reality of patience. Farming, and subsistence farming in particular, is a school of patience; you can’t hurry the crops or make an ox in two days. Even in this hi-tech century, we are unable to unlock the enigma of nature and its demands.

Under an ash colored sky and attacked by continuous cloud-bursts throughout the four-day school, our open-face shelters of canvas received more than a little moisture from above. Since most of the dozen or so seminars were outdoors, and raincoats were not in fashion during the era of the longhunters, there were forty-five or fifty damp backwoods scholars attending class. Nevertheless, in our yearning for learning we ignored the weather, and all in attendance hung on every word the instructors offered. We were taught such things as how to make our own gunflints, the lifestyle of the eighteenth century trader, the fine tuning of our colonial-era representation, Indian and American warfare and tactics, arms of the frontier, and period libations consumed by our long-gone ancestors.

All the seminars were interesting and instructive. It was more than a learning experience; it was entertainment of the sort only appreciated by the living historians whose vocation or avocation immerses them in the lives and times of mountain men, fur trappers, hunter-farmers, and frontier settlers of the eastern colonies during that perilous  “powder keg” time in our history.

Especially entertaining was the seminar on Period Libations. Backcountry farms and homesteads were no place for alcoholics considering that most men were never more than a few feet from loaded guns and working constantly at all manner of dangerous jobs from felling trees to making saltpeter and gunpowder.

On a crude four-board table before the class, sat a row of corked antique bottles. The instructor introduced each of us to their individual contents, including wine, rum, whiskey, brandy, mead fermented from honey, metheglin, beer, and an assortment of other brewed and fermented drinks. Apparently, the backcountry farmer-hunter was adept at growing the ingredients and skilled in the home manufacture of such libations. Indeed, the pioneers’ psychological approach was entirely different from the modern one; whiskey was a right, not a luxury. It appears whiskey, in addition to being an article of staple consumption as well as a most important drug, was a source of power, like a boost in horsepower when there was a hard and heavy job to do.

Our gracious, if not foolish, instructor allowed the class to sample his props. We soon realized the truth in what he had taught us: “There was no need to mask the taste of pioneer whiskeys, for in spite of being a drug, a source of power, a necessity of life, and a way of marketing corn, early whiskeys also tasted good.” Fortunately, Period Libations was the last seminar for that day. Nevertheless, most of the students heartily agreed that this seminar should last longer.

Bolstered from the libations seminar, few of the group paid attention to the rain soaking our buckskin attire; some were actually unaware of it. We arrived back in camp somewhat more heavy-footed than when we had left for the day’s last seminar. The previous night had been a mite uncomfortable. The wind and rain, coupled with the cold night air, tested the constitution and hardiness of those huddled under an open-faced canvas lean-to. We didn’t think of these minor hardships as suffering, just another learning experience in this avocation we call living history. In the midst of these like-minded comrades, mountain men and colonial longhunters, Indians and traders, all camped about the perimeter of this grand fortress, I felt an undeniable sense of freedom and contentment rarely experienced in the modern world. Society was far off and out of mind—but never, it seemed, far enough.

Soon the soil of my kitchen-plot will feel the steel of tilling as I plant the promise of once again bringing to life an assortment of seeds destined to mature into lush green rows that will feed our family when winter arrives again. So get outdoors and work your dirt.

You can contact Roy at mountainman@mountainhomemag.com. Someone will walk up into the hills and make sure he gets the message.