Wintering the Homestead/ August 28th, 2021

In the early years of a new homestead, winters were brutal. Even nowadays the winters can be harsh and detrimental, but the settlers did not have the technology we have today.

It was not all bad, settlers did find ways to have fun during the winter. Activities like this, however, were only practiced as the community began to grow. When your homestead was the only one for hundreds of kilometers, travel was limited. There is a reason why the term “cabin fever” exists. Many families didn’t dare travel during the winter and would be stuck at home, even inside, for weeks on end. Winter travel was not something to be taken lightly and it was only considered in emergency situations.

When the family did travel, it was normally life or death. Either somebody was terribly ill and needed a doctor, or the family had run out of food and would starve. To help assist with travel, some technologies were developed to ease the troubles of winter travel.

Horseshoes

A modern advancement to help deal with icy roads would be snow tires with extra traction, and even snow chains that dig into the ice. Early settlers did not have cars, but they had horses and carriages. Carriage wheels were completely smooth and would slide all over the ice, so traction relied solely on the horses. As a result of this, horseshoes with ice picks were developed to help the horses keep their footing. This was not an end-all solution though and sometimes the carriage would be too heavy and the carriage/horse(s) would move uncontrollably resulting in injury and even death.

Snowshoes

Settlers gained much of their technology and knowledge from the indigenous residents who lived nearby. One of these being snowshoes! Snowshoes redistribute the weight so that the wearer does not sink through the snow. This was extremely helpful when the livestock needed to be checked on after a snowstorm, or if you needed to visit a close neighbour that didn’t warrant hooking up the horses.

At O’Hara, we also have an interesting set of HORSE snowshoes! The same principle applies: the weight is redistributed so that the horse doesn’t sink through the snow and consume more energy.

Carriages

The settlers also had different carriages and sleighs they used throughout the winter. For families that didn’t have more than one carriage, they could replace the wheels with skis! Simple, but effective! To read about our family bobsleigh, click the link to read another one of our blogs about the different types of carriages: https://www.oharamill.ca/summer-student-blog-2021/y3naoe5e4t423dl9yq3pg7an764ewd

As always, the settlers found ways to overcome the obstacles that were set in front of them!

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 & 𝓜𝓲𝓪