Farming a Sand Dune

As the farms start appearing on both sides, understand what these families were up against, because it reframes everything you're about to see at Port Oneida.

The soil here is sand. Not sandy loam — sand, with a thin skin of topsoil over it that blows away if you leave it bare. It doesn't hold water and it doesn't hold nutrients. The growing season is short and the winters come off the lake with a ferocity that has to be experienced. There was no electricity out here until surprisingly late, and the nearest market was a boat ride or a very long wagon haul.

So what did they actually do? They kept dairy cattle, mostly, because grass will grow where wheat won't, and they shipped cream and cheese. They cut hardwood in winter and sold cordwood to the steamers. They planted orchards on the slopes where the lake effect helped. They kept chickens and pigs and a kitchen garden, and they made most of what they needed.

And they generally did not get rich. A good many of these farms were worked by three generations and then simply ran out of children willing to do it.

That's the honest backdrop to the pretty barns coming up. This was a hard, marginal, stubborn way to live, and the people who did it were tougher than the scenery suggests.