Earl Sherwood and his
wife Laura truly lived and raised their family off the land. They lived with their five children—Fred,
Julia, Wallace, Robert, and Henrietta—on the northeastern end of what is now
Sherwood Street in Oswayo. They had a
few acres on the side hill where they always had a large garden that they
worked together, growing, harvesting, and canning or drying the produce. There was no freezer, so they needed to
preserve food in this way. They picked
all kinds of berries, apples, nuts, etc. that grew wild in the countryside. The
family ate leeks, dandelions, and other weeds such as red root, milkweed,
pigweed, mustard, and cowslips that grew everywhere. Earl also dug wild ginseng root which brought
a good price when he sold it for medicine.
Earl kept 40 to 50
hives of honeybees and sold the honey.
Many of the hives had been taken from bee trees in the woods. He would find a bee tree and keep watch all
summer. Then he would cut it in the fall
to take the honey and sell it. If he saw
a honeybee in the wild, Earl would use a little honey in a small box and when
the bee entered the box in his hand, he would place a small amount of flour on
the bee and let it loose. He would follow
it as far as he could see, sit down and wait until the bee returned for more
honey, then follow it again until he located the bee tree. Later he would cut the tree and gather the
bees and honey. As you can imagine, this
was time-consuming and took great patience.
Earl usually had a horse which he used to work and fit the ground to plant, cultivate, etc. He would cut trees and skid them, cutting them
up by hand for firewood. They got milk
and butter from a cow he would keep. For
meat, he raised a calf, as well as a pig or two each year. He would also keep a flock of chickens for
eggs and meat.
Besides raising his
meat, Earl was a great hunter, trapper, and fisherman. The family was known to eat squirrel, grouse,
woodchuck, pheasant, raccoon, and venison.
Earl always had a
foxhound, and sometimes a coon hound. One year when I was in the 7th
or 8th grade, his foxhound died.
Since he didn’t have money or time to buy and train a foxhound, he used
three of his children as foxhounds. He’d
take one at a time out of school to track foxes, having the child stay on the
trail “barking” while he positioned himself ahead where he figured the fox
would come through. He hunted fox to sell
the hides.
I never knew Earl to
have a car. He always walked or hired
someone to take him to Olean. He would
always walk to other towns or bum rides.
The family members were good neighbors and honest. Laura was active in the United Brethren
Church in Christ at Oswayo, always attending the Ladies Aide the first and
third Thursday of each month. All of the
family that I knew have been dead for many years, but I still remember how they
lived off the land with such resourcefulness.
--Darell