Farms in New England were very small during Colonial America, what might be the reason behind that?

Question

Other than the fact that New England was a fishing port, what else could be a reason?

Answer 1

The soil and climate did not support large-scale farming.

Answer 2

The major reason was it was very difficult to get the soil ready for planting.  The soil was very rocky.  If you will note, there are many stone fences in the New England states.  That wasn't because they liked them.  It was because they had lots of rocks in the soil and no place to put them.  So they stacked them around a perimeter, creating fences.

Just clearing the rocks was a tough job and it had to be done every year, because the rocks worked their way up slowly through the soil.  What that means is the land was tough to plow as well, as many rocks lay just below the surface.  The rocks broke many a plow.

Being that it was so difficult to get the soil ready, and with all the rocks it meant the topsoil was thin as well, farming was a very difficult livelihood there.  It took too long to clear large plots and so the people tried other things to earn a living if they could.  They tried to create small gardens just for their own use, not to sell.  Actually, orchards did better.  Tree roots work around rocks.

Scientists believe the soil was rocky because the previous ice age left the rocks as the ice receded.  As to climate, the climate is a lot like the northern Midwest in the summer and they grow lots of food.  So I would say it is due to bad soil, not bad climate.

Answer 3

It was very difficult to take the land, clear it, know what to plant and when and then there were the weather conditions and premature death.

Death and disease kept the work force at a minimum and there were no farm bureaus or weather forecasts.

Answer 4

The land's not geared for farming, and the economy wasn't geared that way.

New England is at the end of Appalachian mountain range.  The land is thus greatly broken up into small pieces by large, rocky hills; so few large expanses of land exist.  Small land areas make it difficult to plow using horses - all the hard work would have to be done by human effort.  The high rain level makes the soil very acidic, highly limiting the kind of crops that could be grown there.  Some fruits could prosper there (eg, cranberries), but these don't provide much nutrition per square acre, neither are they high-profit crops.

Partly because of the above, the economy wasn't good for farming.  Fishing was very lucrative, (unlike today!) and the rocky hills were good for timber, so the economy centered on fishing, ship-building, and commercial services in the cities. Nothing else paid nearly as well.  Farms were very often just to produce food for one's own family.

.

Answer 5

The soil was poor, so farming was very labor intensive.  Large scale crops (ie, cotton, wheat) would have been too difficult to manage, even if the soil conditions could have supported them.

Answer 6

Because it would be what they were used to.  In England prior to the Industrial Revolution, most people farmed smallholdings, where they grew enough crops to feed themselves, and sold the surplus.  Animals were grazed on common land.  the farmers' wives would rear the poultry, milk the cows and make their own butter and cheese, selling their surplus chickens, eggs and dairy produce at market.

When they went to the New world, they farmed in the same way they had been farming for many centuries in England.  Most people were self-sufficient, and the non-farming population was relatively small and could be supported quite easily by the surplus produced by small farmers.  it was the Industrial Revolution that led to a massive shift in how the population lived, with an enormous expansion of non-farming people who needed to be fed, which led to a radical change in farming practices.