The field was also enlarged from year to year toward the sides; and much of this work my grandmother did with her digging stick. The garden when completed was the largest ever owned in my family; it was this field whose size I measured off for you on the prairie the other day.
The village gardens varied in size. Some families tilled large fields; others rather small ones. Some families did not work very energetically; and these were often put to it to have food. Other families worked hard, and always had a plenty. Families were not all equally industrious.
There were no watchers’ stages nor booths in these east-side fields. The ground rose in a shelf, or bluff, just north of the gardens; from this shelf the watchers could watch their fields and sing to the growing corn without the trouble of having to build stages.
The soil of the east-side gardens was bottom land and prairie, with little or no timber.
Our fields on the east-side of the village were fenced, as will be seen from the map. The fences were made thus:
Posts were cut of any kind of wood two or three inches in diameter and forked at the top. These were set in holes, at distances about as we now use for corral posts, or twelve feet from post to post. Posts were sunk the length of my forearm and fingers into the ground. Holes were made with digging stick and knife, and the dirt drawn out by hand.
Rails were laid in the forks of the posts and bound down with strips of bark; elm bark was strongest, but other kinds were used. The railing thus made ran about three and a half feet from the ground, the height of the posts that upheld it. All the rails were peeled of bark.
No attempt was made to firm the structure, as we did our drying stages. Our object was but to keep out the horses, and if the fence was strong enough to withstand the winds we thought that enough.
As will be seen from the map, some of the fields were fenced quite around; but this was done only when the field was isolated. When several gardens adjoined, a single fence usually ran around them all, and not around each individual field.
When several gardens were enclosed in a single fence, each owner looked after that part of the fence that bordered her own land, and kept it in repair.