Amber Waves of Grain

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Amber Waves of Grain
9.25.09

When I gaze out the window of my rural home in Auglaize County, I see a field of golden leaved soy beans. On another side of the house is a field of corn curling up and toasty brown. We are surrounded by agriculture. Farmscapes are everywhere in West Central Ohio. It hasn’t always looked like this. When our forefathers arrived in Ohio it was much different.

"...Right up to our doorsill reaches the huge, somber and vaulted forest. There are no openings to break up the overshadowy wolf-haunted woodland...The sunlight cannot get through the arches of the murmuring leaves. Through the grayish shadow and down the pathways in the forest men walk, continually in a kind of midday gloom..."
Livvat Boke, memoirs 1834

How did our landscape change so dramatically from the vaulted forest of the past to the current vast agricultural fields? We get insight from the journals that Mrs. Boke wrote when she emigrated from Germany to Mercer County in 1834 at the age of 28.

An educated woman, she described, in great detail, her surroundings and life in words and drawings using quill pen and ink. Her descriptions of our region give us insight into how our area looked prior to European settlement.
One clue to the vanished woodlands is, “ The forest is a vast, attractive, wonderful site to see and enjoy, but that one cannot eat or wear.” The people coming to our region had few possessions or money to buy the things they needed. What they did have was farming experience and willingness to work and create a life in this new land. What to wear, what to eat and shelter, the necessities of life, brought down the timber. The forest floor was then tilled to make room for crops.
Livvat describes the labor that went into daily life. The men worked outdoors every day cutting timber, building home, school and church. The women made clothes, gathered, prepared and cooked foods. Together they build everything they needed from plows to furniture.
In the early years she writes that the hides her family wore and the meat they ate came from the forest environment. “Much fresh game for the catching in the forest…plenty of deer, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, turkeys, bears, beavers, quail, pheasants and other animals, and fish, nuts, berries, cherries in the summer.” She also mentions wolves, mosquitoes, bees, horseflies, houseflies, muskrats, weasels, sturgeon, catfish, pigeons, skunk, doves and pheasants.

The forest was not productive for grain used to feed livestock and family. With the woodlands cut and the ground worked agriculture took hold in our region. The loss of woodland habitat has forever changed the composition of the flora and fauna around us. Come and learn, from firsthand accounts, how pioneers describe Ohio in the frontier days.

Join us for “The Landscape & Wildlife of Frontier Ohio” on Thursday, October 1, at 7 p.m. presented by speaker and expert Robert Glotzhober from the Ohio Historical Society, at the library in Waynesfield on East Wapakoneta Street. The presentation is free and open to the public. The Auglaize County Historical Society and Heritage Trails Park District are hosting this program. For more information call 419.202.6053.

Allison Brady, Executive Director
Heritage Trails Park District
Your partner for parks in Auglaize County