Salt Haying

Salt Haying. from 1650-1938. , Salt hay was one of the many resources a marsh had to offer to the early farmer, if he could manage to drag it out of the marsh over soft peat and mud. One innovation in the harvest of salt hay simply involved stacking the hay on a staddle, a platform above the reach of high tide. When the marsh froze over in winter, the hay could be safely hauled away over the ice on sleds. When working in the marsh, oxen and horses wore "bog shoes," which prevented them from sinking into the mud. An alternative to the staddle was to load hay onto gundalows (shown above), flat bottom boats narrow enough to be poled up tidal creeks. Today boards lying in the mud indicate where a corduroy dock might have been built out of cedar logs to transfer produce from a farm cart to a scow, a flat bottom barge., Such innovations were made unnecessary when in 1815 tide gates were built downstream at "Cook's Point" preventing the tide from coming into the marsh during haymaking., To your right, posts of red cedar can be seen extending around the perimeter of the marsh. These posts were probably put in place during the late 1800s and strung with barbed wire to keep cows from wandering into the marsh. To avoid digging holes for the posts, farmers carved one end of the post into a point and hammered it into the soft peat of the marsh., Text and Illustration by Edward Henrey