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News from Bird Bottom Farm
Living in History
By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury
The Sheep's Nose apples still glow yellow high in the ancient tree. Every day there are fewer apples, but the deer come down at night to check what apples have fallen and see what they can find to eat, even in winter, of one of their favorite foods. We used to have Pound Sweet apples, but that tree, almost dead, had to be cut down.
My theory about the ancient apple trees around Bird Bottom Farm is that they were planted some 200 years ago (the tree men's estimate of their age) for the school children to play under. The center of the present house was the Weatogue Schoolhouse, which was raised by neighbors in 1743, two years after the town of Salisbury was founded. Fourteen schoolhouses were raised that year, and in our attic you can still see the Roman numerals carved into the beams so that matching beams would easily be identified. No doubt some of the neighbors helping in the raising couldn't read—but they could easily match III with III, or IV with IV, so that putting matching beams together was not that difficult. The framing was set out on the ground, and the matching beams and even the finish lumber were done before the building was raised.
Think of the pride the Weatogue Valley people felt on raising their own schoolhouse for their children! The schoolhouse became a symbol of truly settling this valley, and all the schoolhouses made the participating inhabitants of the school districts very proud. I don't know how many of the original schoolhouses are extant as separate buildings or incorporated into other buildings at this point.
I have met people who came here as pupils—they are very old now, as the Weatogue School closed in 1929 in favor of a central school. The one-room schoolhouse (which Weatogue School was) has gradually become the ideal of many educators today as each student, no matter what grade, could "sit in" on more elementary studies or more advanced ones depending on his or her abilities. No wonder there were so many good writers, good mathematicians and good geographers in the early 1800s and 1900s. Yes, the world has changed in many ways, but the oceans and land masses have remained relatively unchanged except for a few little islands that have popped up here and there, like the ones off Iceland.
How fortunate I am to live in history, which the center of the house of Bird Bottom Farm is. We even had a "three-holer" (outhouse) when we moved here in 1955. Sadly, we had to take it down, as the wasps liked it as a home and would not be driven out by any known spray. Except for "ground pollution," the outhouse certainly could help solve any water shortage!
A few ancient apple trees and a very ancient, battered pine tree still hang on as reminders of the days when school children romped in the school yard. There were no school buses to raise taxes and puff diesel smoke, as every child could walk to school. There were no school cafeterias, as each pupil could carry lunch in a bandana and then walk home at the end of the school day. School books were relatively rare, as much of the school work was through memorizing, something almost unheard of in today's schools.
Memorizing, especially now that the computer has vanquished the need for "learning by heart," is gone. But maybe, like the old and now unknown apple varieties, memorizing will return. In my young days, we had slide rules which need only to ride in a pocket and needed no electricity or batteries, no laptop, no complicated set-up, just an agile hand to come up with all the mathematical answers. When we throw away the tried and true like the apple varieties and the one-room schoolhouses, we do "throw the baby out with the bath water."
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