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Rural Trades Historic Farmers

Great Hopes Plantation, just behind the Visitor Center.

Horses are used to weed between rows of tobacco.

Plants are tended by hand.

A view of the wheat grown at Great Hopes Plantation.

A hog makes himself at home at the trough.

Rural Trades encompass the life skills of colonial Virginians

Artisans played a vital role on the plantations, farms, and in rural communities surrounding Williamsburg. There they concentrated in the trades most useful to agricultural communities. Carpenters, coopers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors provided goods and services for rural households. Middling farmers worked the land and generally grew cash crops of tobacco, corn, wheat, and some cotton, as well as foodstuff for their consumption. They tended livestock, including cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, plus a few oxen and horses.

Today, Colonial Williamsburg’s Rural Trades represents middling farmers using 18th-century methods at Great Hopes Plantation. Here the Historic Farmers work heirloom-variety crops consisting of corn, tobacco, and wheat. Powerful oxen haul manure and pull plows through the fields, while work horses cultivate the weeds from between the plants. The 21st-century tradesmen also tend poultry, sheep, and hogs—some of which are a part of Colonial Williamsburg’s Rare Breeds program.

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