 So hello everybody. My name is Angie Grove. I'm the Executive Director here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum and I welcome you today to our monthly lecture series. So we do a monthly lecture, 11 months of the year open to the public and starting this year we're going to have a December lecture for members only. So that is your opportunity to join our membership if you'd like to come to our December lecture for the members only and this December the lecture is actually going to be me speaking about people who hated Ethan Allen during the so if you're interested in that you'll definitely want to stop at Professor on your way out later today and purchase the membership so you can join in for that fun. And that is Angela right there. She's our membership chair so she can answer any questions about membership as well. So the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum is a small nonprofit community museum and so we do rely on those memberships as well as private donations from our community members as well as corporate sponsorships so you want to direct your attention up to the board so that we can thank the sponsors of our community enrichment programs and so the sponsors this season are North Country Community Credit Union, MNT Bank and AARP Vermont as well as our partnership with Town Meeting TV or CCTV and you can see Kate in the back of the room right there who's recording this program so that people can watch it later as well and we can reach a larger audience. We also have an audience that is on Zoom right now and so hello to all of those people too and so we're at the end of the lecture when we do the Q&A we'll kind of try to go back and forth between live audience members and online members for that portion as well. Okay did I miss anything for logistics? Okay if you need bathrooms they're out that way on the other side of the canoe and there is an emergency exit at the back of the store if we need it as well. Okay safety concerns are dealt with. So I'm going to turn the stage over to one of our board members. I already kind of introduced her as our membership chair Angela Moody. She's also been a board member since 2017 yeah 2017 and she's also her own she's a historical researcher and author and she has written a couple historic fiction books that we do sell in our gift shop so she we'd love to tell you more about those after the talk of your interest in historic fiction novels and she's going to be introducing our speaker today so could you please help me welcome our wonderful board member Angela Moody. Don't clap for me because I'm here to introduce Neils who was doing our talk today. Neils has worked in archaeology in the Northeast and in New England for 25 years in different capacities. He's lived in Vermont since 2012 so he's not quite in Vermont yet but we'll give him some time. He went to work for the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation in lands administration. Let's say that fast. He's now the historic resources director coordinator for the FPR and he's managing the consulting consultation process with the Vermont District I'm sorry with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation which brought him here to the homestead and those are all projects which are off state lands. In this capacity he makes sure that FPR is in compliance with federal and state laws governing historic preservation and he's recently begun work with the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum to help us organize and catalog categorize and catalog the historic artifacts that are in our storage units that they had done when they first started renovating and digging up the artifacts around the home. Neils is also a writer and he enjoys writing essays and short stories and I'm grabbing him when this is over so we can talk stories. Welcome Neils. Thank you. Sorry I'm worried about this right here. I don't want to trip. There I already did it. Shall I go? Oh my apologies. No problem. It's a lot of technology things to juggle. Great thank you. Yeah the green that I chose was not this I don't know what happened I can show you it's actually it's a much the green is more like like the green right there on the frame which is much nicer than this it's kind of lurid but at any rate yeah so so thank you for for for for the opportunity to to come here and speak I do I do have a slight stutter so if that gets in the way just but um yeah so so so the the emphasis here is on unanswered and so so this talk is more sort of of of aspirational in in that sense you know we have we have lots of plans and Angie and I and the board and such but oh I went the wrong way sorry there we go good so before I start I want to give an an acknowledgement to to the people who have lived here for for for uh four thousands of years in in this valley and we are right there in that star and uh April was was new was new was always very uh a special time during during uh the winter people would have spread out throughout the valley in small family groups maybe like one or two families and by April they were you know the uh their their their uh oh thank you okay so yeah so so by April their larder was was getting empty and they're probably getting a little tired of of of each other as well in those small but then at that time all of the the anadromous fish all of the seas you know all all the fish would would would be coming up the river to spawn and so you would have thousands and thousands of fish right right out here just a few hundred yards yards away and so all of the people hundreds and hundreds of people would come to to the lower uh Winooski and and fish and so so they're hungry and they're eager to see family and friends and so on that you know that you know they hadn't seen for months and they'll all be here in in in in in a huge group right outside here and as as I'll talk a bit later on we have uh evidence here of of occupations going back many thousands of years of people who would come here to take it you know in in the spring to fish so so i want to start here so there there there have been there's there there have been a lot of holes dug here but not a lot of stuff written up and so we have a lot of of of artifacts and so on but this here is is a list of all of the of the archaeological projects that have happened here over a period of about of 20 years and this map here here is is the homestead we are right there this map sort of shows all the work that has been done across uh the the homestead and and so I can't talk about all all of this but I am going to to to highlight a few of of of of the digs that have been done here and so by by the end the map should should all make sense to you so first in uh 79 uh the Winooski Valley Park district hired uh the University of Vermont to do a a project here uh and and the goal was it was just like a small project but the goal was to try to to understand uh oh should I be talking more in the microphone oh oh okay great wow this feels okay okay yeah I can sing now uh so yeah so so so the goals were one to find out like how how did did the landscape change throughout throughout its use as a farm then then also to see if if they could find the evidence for any outbuildings and so on you know across the the the land and then to to to understand uh the to the extent of archaeological um uh remains at at the site so this here is a map of of the work that that they did and I'll explain this more as we go along the black squares here or what we call shoveled test test bits or and I'll talk about those soon now this is is the house right here back then there was still an L on on on the north side of it which was taken down in 86 or 85 I can't remember but it was still here at that at that time so when you think in terms of of a dig this is sort of the you know the image we have this is actually a site in in Illinois called the the costar site it was done in the 70s before Osha ever showed up at at a dig but um but so so so this is sort of the you know you know the image we have of of of a dig this is not what has happened here all right and this is not what the University of Vermont was doing back then it's more of this all right and so so the idea is is is to get you know is is to be quick and and and efficient and essentially you're just trying to ask is there and anything here yes or no that's that's all that you're you're really trying to do and you can see they enjoy doing it but so yeah so so so the holes are maybe like a foot and a half by foot and a half squares and they're dug in in in a grid and again the idea is just you know presence versus absence if you do find anything then you might go on to this you know but first it starts with just this so but I want to first talk about what is is um stratigraphy okay uh so I went online and I just put I put I put the word in because I want I wanted to get an an an image and this is the first thing that showed up but it but but it is but it's right because it's it's layers on top of of of of layers you know but this is actually more what I was trying to find and so this is what you would find this this is a natural profile right so here you have the C horizon and then the B horizon and then the A horizon on on top and so the C horizon is the stuff here in in Vermont almost all of Vermont is covered with till from from from the glaciers you know and it's known as as the parent material and then up here on A you have all of the topsoil this is where you have all of the the organic matter and so on and it leeches down in to the to the B horizon so this is is natural you know you'll find this in most places in Vermont however this here is a site that has been worked and reworked for hundreds of years and not for for for for uh thousands of years so what you'll find is perhaps something more of this sort we have like a wall that has been put in you have the the builders trench and you have like pits and there's garbage and then you have like fill and then there's the topsoil on top so it's a lot more uh more complicated than this right so next thing so this here this this is a map to show the results of of the work from that first project again here is the house and so each of these squares are those small shovel to test bits that they dug and so so so the colors are to try to show to try to generalize the the the results of of of each of these holes in this greenish color here you have you know the a b and c much much more so something that's closer to to the natural uh uh profile in a they found a lot of of of you know like like this soil had been worked a lot it's been changed a lot there's been a lot of dirt that another has been moved and filled that that has been put down you can also see that that the the the artifacts here are much more mixed so they go from the 18th through to the to the to the 20th century in areas see right here it was very complicated again it was mixed a lot but what they found was a a a buried horizon i'll talk more about that uh as as as we as we go along but you see right here in that red what that means is that was an old surface and then you had fill that was put on top of it so it's like capped off it's sealed in this old surface and then in area b here again it was very complicated and it was it was it was mixed and so on but but but you can see in this one hole you have these these pit features right where pits were like dug in perhaps trash was put in there or something so this is only just a tiny sliver right but if you had dug out the hole the like like a whole square here you might see like bell shaped things right so uh you know they also dug a a a unit that measured about three by five feet up here in in in the corner and remember then there was the l on on the back there so this here shows the the profiles to that trench that that they dug and you can see there's a lot that's that is going on here you have the wall right here and this is the builders trench from from that wall then you also have these pits that were dug and the pits were dug before that l was was was put in because you can see how how how the trenches like dug in to to the pits right and then on the other side of that same hole is it just three by five feet like the size of that desk right there and there's a lot going on you also had the you know the remains of a septic tank they said it was very wet so i don't know but at any rate so this is now you know in thinking in thinking about these pits right here i want to uh you know this is our idea of of garbage today right so this old guy here he's got a bag that probably goes back to me maybe like the last week or two of of of his trash or maybe he had like big party the night before and it's just like the like the one night or something but it's in that bag he's got this like sealed context right he's got one event that's all held in that one bag in the same way these pits are sort of like a sealed context you know whereas this right here is all mixed up these things here are these sort of these like intact packages of time that might go back or maybe over a year or three years or something of that sort you know so just keep that in mind when you as we talk about this now i want to also talk about in in talking about the work that uh that the university of of uh uh uh firm mont had here to talk about ceramics as you can see uh our archaeologists love to talk about these you know and why are these so important like why are they so obsessed with these so i wanted to talk about that just real quickly now throughout most of you know in in in the 18th and into the to the 19th century you know simple earthenware bowls as you can see in like the bottom corner there this was like the standard thing that was used all all of this stuff was made locally you know it was cheap and you know but uh this is what we especially like to find a nice tea sets and so on as you can see up there now this might seem a bit sort of uh in congress why are there all these tea sets at a farm that you know in in the 18th century so on was on you know it was on uh the the frontier and you can see because tea was very important you know and and you see here in this painting here what what are they doing they're holding the cups up in front you say you see what we got you know what i mean and so it was very important to them i don't know if that's how the alans dressed or looked in their house but but but tea was still important to to them and so on you know and uh i forgot what the next thing was oh yeah this is actually in my house and so this is the hutch in our house all right and i have this this you know this image here to show that you know our house would if we were to move i better would take like an 18 wheeler truck we have a huge amount of stuff right and uh when i first met i met my wife i could fit everything in the trunk of a car and 25 years later it would take a truck but at any rate but we have this you know this hutch here all right and this is this would probably fit in just like a couple of of boxes and but we never really used this stuff but we have it up there in in our dining room via crystal here and i can never wall door waterford that's it right yeah so i'd never heard of before but when we got married my wife was like well we have to have it on our registry i was like well why but she didn't i don't want to like actually she isn't here but she might see this all i think right but at any rate so and i swear i don't think i've used these in like a quarter of a century i don't think i've ever actually used these but so my point is just is that is that archaeologists put a lot of effort and focus onto these things right but how much were these things actually used right but how important were they we have these out in front in our house you can all see them but we don't really use them you know i mean so it's just something to keep in mind when you look at these at these objects here this is the stuff that was used you know not not that so so oh there's more about this ceramic sorry so um yeah so there are a lot of types there are so many types and many of these were made within a very tight sort of time frame and so they get used a lot to date sites you know i mean because they're they're they're they're very uh and so what i have here is like these are some of like the the domain types right now within cream wear and pearl wear there are numerous like subtypes but these are like the domain types this is sort of the spread of when they they were being made right um oh and here that's a cream wear you see it's got like a bit a bit of a tinge of yellow that's pearl wear there's a little blue from from the cobalt and then that is is is is white wear now i have this up here to show you this now remember the uh you know the the buried horizon that i showed you so that has cream wear and pearl wear in it which means it probably dates to around the time that you know that the alans were were here and that pit that i showed you in the profile there also dates you know has cream wear and pearl wear in it so it probably also dates that same time period as well to like the late 18th and the earlier 19th centuries so oh yeah one last thing about ceramics you see like we love this stuff it's about archaeologists spent a lot of time on this stuff so this here is a chart there was a study that that that that was done to try to price ceramics at the time when when they were when they're first coming out when they're first when when like these new types were were no no were being made in the 18th and and in the uh in the 19th century and then they made an index to try to like chart how how how expensive each of these things were and so the green are plates the red are like tea cups and the black are are bowls but what but in this study here they're they're comparing you got tenant farmers through these leads according to to google and then there's also this is from a log cabin from from from uh a uh frontier home this is a glass factory and here is a a tavern and so these are each of the types that that that are mapped here so what the shows is you see like the the uh you know like the tea sets and the plates and so on they had were not that expensive as opposed to the tavern where they had much more expensive wares right and but what what it also shows is is is is is is the function so that they were poor but the tea sets are still very important to them right up here at the tavern the tea sets were not that important but the plates were important you know what i mean and as you can see i like this picture here because it has the plates up like the plates are up there and like the plates and so on were up in in in the hutch in in in in our house oh why don't oh yeah now i remember i why why put this up actually i left my notes at home so it's like on the way over house so at any rate um so the uh so this again is our hutch and you see there you see how none of these match right now i know that that's because my wife likes to collect tea cups you know but i know but if you were to find this in in an archaeological context you've got all this mixture why is it all mixed you know and i've worked at sites remember like i worked at a farmstead way up in in in mountains in uh in uh new hampshire and the homestead was dated like like in the in the 1840s or so but the the cups were all mismatched and they dated to the end of the of the 18th century so what did you have you had a poor household they still had to have you know they're they're another t sets right but it was much older and it didn't match they were just trying to find a cup here a cup here saucer there and so on like that so you can use that the the the mixture to try to interpret what might have been happening in that in that household so again these are all things that we can think about as we look at the the the the assemblage from here at ethan alan now i've talked a lot i've used the word mixture a lot right what what does mixture mean in in terms of of archaeology now the ideal for an archaeologist this is from pompe this is is uh is uh from from king tut's tomb these are sites that happened in a day right maybe it was a few hours and these guys went and they put all the stuff in here this was buried under ash in like in in a day so these are sealed intact sort of context they're not mixed this right here is mixture right all these cars are mixed this right here is a dealership for honda they're all from to 2018 it's not mixed now when you think of mixture in terms of archaeology you're like we all want this it's it's really fun and neat and so on but but with me with with with mixture though you ask like why are all the cars mixed you know so you can ask like how come the the the the the profiles the stratigraphy and so on at ethan alan why did it become so mixed and so we so so we need to try to to to unscramble and unravel the story of like why the stuff how how did it become mixed so that it's this and not that you know i mean so that we can then tell the the you know the story and the history of of uh the landscape here um all right so in summary then this again you know this is is a picture of the house i think about from 1900 or so and you can see it's got a porch here on the side of the house here's the porch right here again here is the l and here are all the holes that that they dug and what they found is there there uh the the interpretation is that you got a door right here and people would go and throw their trash out the door from so you know like fanny alan and so on like throw her trash out out the door and then about the porch was built about 1830 18 to 20 or so so what that meant is all of that stuff there was capped it was sealed off right and the porch was then taken down about 1950 or so all right so that means perhaps that the stuff in here was more intact you know um in terms of trying to find something from that time period um now this is just i was just i saw this this and i was thinking like this here is fanny alan as she throws the stuff out of her back door i just like this image here you know so you throw throwing garbage because then you know ideas of trash whoops sorry so ideas of trash were were quite different back then it was just put put it out out out out in the yard so at any rate so that now the next dig i wanted to talk about was it was again the wnuski valley park district asked the university of vermont to to come out here in 88 and they did a lot of work uh there there was all all of this all of uh this development was proposed for this property here so you can see was a long list of things and the idea was to have the university of vermont out here to like test and to see if these if if if uh this proposed work might have an adverse impact on on on on on any intact uh you know parts of the of the archaeological site so this here is a map and i'll explain this all as we go along this this is a map that that's in the the in the report and uh like their main goal was again to to try to to better understand the history of of the landscape here and they use again uh stp's as i talked about they also did a surface collection in here and i'll talk about that in a minute and they did what's called a plowed furrow in here and i'll i'll explain that as well so what they also did is they looked at a lot of historic maps you know going back as far as as as um as they could these are maps i don't know if you if you all know about the walling and beer's maps they're they're excellent maps they were done throughout uh the northeast and they map in like every like home they have like a name of the home you'll see it'll say like if it's a school or if it's like a blacksmith shop or all that stuff they're great maps there's nothing on here about the euthan island homestead it's blank there isn't even a road there which is odd you know why because i mean we know the house was here and so in in in the report they say well perhaps because it was tenant farmers so you didn't count i don't know maybe the house was was abandoned at that time i don't i don't know but uh but uh i forgot what i was going to say yeah but it would be good to know more about like what was the methodology that beers and walling used such that it might be blank here you know now this here is again is a map of of the work they did they found some barn foundations here i don't know why they're on the slope the map might be off a bit i i don't know um and again these are the stp's the that they dug and uh this is where they did the the surface collection here is the furrow trench now what is the surface collection so you plow the field which i don't think they did here which is a little weird but anyway but so so you plow the field you would only use this this this technique if it was in a field that that that was plowed right you know that that that had been plowed for for years you then go and you would plow it what that means it churns up all of the artifacts and so on that that are in there and then you walk in like a you know like you keep like a a pace apart and you go out there and you just serve can plot out what's on on the ground um and uh you find with plows it'll move things vertically but they don't move that far in terms of of uh horizontally but maybe only a few feet and this uh they're they're they're also doing a sort of a cloud i was actually once doing a surface collection in a field and we looked over and there's a whole herd of turkeys in a neat row we're like look they're also doing one too so anyways and this is is is a plowed furrowed technique and so it is when so so when you plow there's like a trench that is dug in on one side and it goes down to the bottom of the plow zone and the idea is that it will reveal stains in the soil surface there and so one can then go and you know in this little little row right here see if there's stains from like post molds or pits or things of that sort and and then and then uh and then and then uh you explore them so they did that to try to see if there are any features there from from from structures and so on and what they found was they did find uh some foundations here and here they also found a pit feature in here as well and so here are are now they so so they found about about a thousand or so artifacts but they never did and and and analysis of them i don't i don't know why um i think they ran out of money but at any rate so so that's all i think that this that the collection here is all sitting and in the in the university of of of uh Vermont but it hasn't ever been analyzed so these here are the the conclusions from their work in in 88 again it's a lot of what they found out in 79 which is that there's a wide range of artifacts here like spread out there's there's a lot of mixture here but there are some intact areas as well with with artifacts a date from the late 18th through to the 20th century and i should add also going back over over 5 000 years ago as well but and so they're spread out throughout the the property with with the most dense areas being like around the house you know closest to the house but there's been a but but the the landscape has been heavily reworked as you would expect on on the farm that has been worked but they say that we need a lot more history done to to understand you know a lot a lot more searching in in in the records and such so i want to talk a bit about where like where where where we might go from here right and i'm going to start with this idea of sheet middens right so a midden is you know a pile of trash right a sheet midden is just a pile of trash that's been spread out in the sheet is is the idea you know this this is a farm uh he in Kentucky and uh historic farm as you can see it's really neat the grass is nicely cut i don't think it looked anything like this in the in the 18th and the 19th century it was muddy i'm sure there's there was what we would call garbage everywhere there were sheet middens just spread out all over here in the back here there was you know trash right but this of course is is the image that we have of a nice wholesome homestead you know um so but so what are are are the possible or origins of of of a sheet midden and i bring bring this up because what what you know what we have out there is largely a sheet midden you know spread out throughout the the uh the uh the property um one thing again is Fanny Allen throwing the trash out her back door that's one way in which in which it happens and this is probably the way that most of the garbage here came from which is who was spread out it was thrown out and so on and over time it gets plowed in animals pet pet got it it gets spread out and so on like that another thing which is is is interesting a lot i don't know if it happened here but um is the night soil man i don't know if you've ever heard of these guys they don't exist anymore thankfully but what what would happen is you know you have a you have these uh these these privies and this guy here is is is is a night soil man in england in about 1880 and can you see him sorry and so these guys would go around they would empty out the privies at night they would put them in into trucks and they would cart them out to farms outside of of of cities and they had spread out all of the waste that was in the privies across the fields right now that that can lead to to to to sheetmen because of what people put in there it wasn't just you know human waste they'd also throw glass and shards of pots and cups and so on like that in there now i don't really know the uh you know um the the physics involved in in in uh human waste but in general what happens is that if you put like glass and so on in there it'll help it to to percolate down more i don't know whoever did the the study in this but but so that's why so they would throw stuff in there and it would make the pit last longer essentially but so so so it might happen then is that he would go put all that waste in into his truck go out to to a farm outside of of london or something like that and then throw that waste in the fields then it would get spread out there so you'd have a sheetmen of waste that actually came from from somewhere in in in uh in uh london or philly or or whatever i don't know if that happened here it's just something to think about you know i don't know if you know you know burlington is small i don't know if it was the same type of of issue but it's but it's a neat story and it's and he's he needs quite a character there i i i know i don't know how far the the photographer had to stand away from anyways um yeah i know so the other thing i wanted to talk to talk about again is the idea of of of garbage you know so we're talking about sheet mittens and so on and so again like this actually looks a lot like a house nearby where i live uh in in jericho and i see this and i i see trash you know i'm like it's an eyesore you know but perhaps to him there's a lot of spare parts in those cars there's a lot of you know spare stuff nuts bolts i i don't know i think this is actually trash but anyway but but but my point is that is that we see trash but but to them you know 100 to 200 years ago there might have been a lot of of of things to use in that in that trash however so so we talked about fanny ellen like throwing her trash out the out the back door and that is the way things weren't you know were done however by like the middle of the 19th century you saw that in uh farming was was being taught now in schools there are a lot of ag journals that that you know and and a lot of books and so on that that were being written to teach people this is how you are supposed to farm this is the right way to do it you don't want to look like that you know you want a nice clean farm here's how to do it i've read some of them if i was a farmer and i read that book or i was i would probably not be very you know i wouldn't like to hear it i'm sure i'd have some choice words but they had this idea that you had what what was called farmer thrifty and you see he's got everything is neat all the animals are fat and they're shiny and it's just a nice place right and then you've got farmer slack right and you can see how everything is a mess and it's broken down and so it's on like that so the idea is you know be like farmer thrifty you know and so so there was a lot of of um resentment and so on about these ideas however things did change and you do find that farming that things are cleaner you know they are neater you know the way the way in which trash and such is is is dealt with it does change during the course of of the 19th century um so so so the next project i wanted to talk about was a project that was led by by by grad student from boston u from 89 to 93 and actually i met somebody who was there was any was anybody else here there right right yeah she was there so i i have to talk to you afterwards that's okay but uh so she dug here for four years as part of her grad program however she never finished the uh her her her her degree and so there's about 60 boxes i think i think 70 boxes upstairs in in the attic of all the stuff that so we have all of her notes i'm sorry it is a lot it is a lot and you can see a lot i think all the stuff here is from there and you can see there there are four pictures over there from her her project and so so what so what we're trying to do now is well we're we're we're we're we're not trying we are doing it we're going through the the uh i bought the first box of bags and so we're going to go through all of them and bag them all and and make a a digital database and then we're going to submit them to the uh to the uh to to the heritage center in berry and then perhaps make like an and and an exhibit or something here that would he incorporate these finds and so so that's the goal it's going to take a long time it's a lot of work and uh uh angel's gonna help help help out there so as i said i bought the first box of bags to start the process and sure as you begin oh sure yeah yeah that'll be you wouldn't know what it'll well a little bit but you just did you know oh yeah yeah no we well a lot of that work has has been been done it's just not it's not it's all it's all on on paper and so so we want to have it in in a digital uh database but yeah that is the idea and then to try to uh to like reduce all all all of that to to a story you know to to a report that can't can be used and and accessed and so on so that that's the idea but yeah so so that we can then have it up so others can learn from the work that you are uh he involved in and so on but these here these are where she she dug this is correct right this is where where it was yeah yeah because i had it was hard to find the map but i was able to find the map but anyway so she dug about 49 square meters but not she was her and her helpers yeah yeah and uh i bet she like stood and told you all what to do and you you all did the actual digging yeah you have any directions yes that's that's what and what and what happens so anyway so that's um so the next thing the so the last thing here i wanted to talk about was uh where where was more about where we might go in in uh in the future now this here here is is is the homestead all of these red dots are known sites uh what what what we call like pre-contact sites so sites meaning before white settlements so there's a lot here and uh and you can see like the the river has moved around a great deal you see all the oxbows and so on so i bet that there were more sites here in the past but they've been like you know taken away by by the river some of these were were were probably on the river when when when when there were people there but now it's moved and so i think it would be a great opportunity to to um you know to to tell the story of uh did this site within the context of the whole low lower um Wenuski Valley you know uh since you know there were people here for you know for for thousands of years um now the other thing to talk about here is that over the course of this of the use of this farmstead farming evolved the great deal in in vermont so when so when when the alans were here this is you know and i don't know where that's from but but but you know so the idea is that it was um you know you had you had a smaller farm they they were they were more uh subsistence farming they're more attached like to to to the local economy they're probably involved much more in barter and trade as opposed to like buying things and selling things so so the market that they were attached to was much more local right and then throughout the course of the of the 19th century your sheep farming like we've all heard i guess about the sheep craze right and so in during during the first half of of the of the 19th century you know the whole state was covered with sheep all like all the woods were taken down it was just sheep everywhere and so and then but then that evolved towards the end of the of the 19th century into into dairy farming and then you had trains and you had trains which had refrigerated cars so they're able to sell you know milk cheese and butter and butter and so into markets you know in in in boston and stuff and so that meant that that farms here in vermont were were then attached to a much wider you know to to to a nationwide uh uh market so you had that whole kind of change over the course of like a hundred years you know so so the story of the farm here might present an opportunity to serve to to track and see that that that that evolution over time there's also there's been a lot of work done on farmsteads throughout in in vermont and in in uh new hampshire and in new york and so the farm said here i've read somewhere that this is actually the another largest ceramic uh assemblage from any farmstead site in in in the state but it does present a lot of opportunity for comparison with with with other farmstead sites um and then also i want to find out why it's not on these maps i think that that's uh an interesting question as well i was talking to to to my wife about this she's like well you should find out before you give the talk i'm like i don't got the time right now i can't do this you know whatever but uh so and then also i think that that we have an opportunity here to talk about the about the the changing uh landscape here now when we think of like the pre contact world we tend to tend to think of old growth forests right so you see these big white white pines here and stuff but actually i don't know if that's how things would would have been in in in the valley here this here is a map of the connecticut river a river where cuts through in massachusetts and you see just about every town here has the word field at the end of it now why now why is that when the english first came up here in in the middle of the uh 17th century everywhere they came it was open fields and it was open fields because people for that for thousands of years had shaped that whole you know the the landscape there into fields and they had a number of of reasons and so on but i think it would you know like here you know we you might have an opportunity to see about that you know to tell that story here as well um now this is from from a book from about 1850 and it shows the the evolution of a farmstead i think this is supposed to be in massachusetts but this is a lot like what i bet happened here and so it would be and and opportunity to to to like tell to to tell that story here so this might have been you know when when the alums first came here and then and then you know it sort of expands they clear more to 10 years later they've cleared a lot more it's looking clean and so on and then by by half a century later everything is cleared off you know and uh one i love these right here this is from from the harvard forest from the museum for the harvard forest and these are from from from die or ramas that they have and you know it shows the same thing so you can see the area here when it's first being cleared then when you know when it's all cleared and it all would have been sheep and such and here they to talk about the farm having been abandoned by the middle of the 19th century but but but i think that you know we have and and opportunity here to like do the same sort of thing to like track the you know you know the history of the landscape here both like the broad sense but also in in the very specific sense of just this one hope that you know the one homestead here so anyway that's i'm right on 45 minutes that's perfect wow i'm good that's great okay so thank you thanks