the country . Daytrippers and weekenders would ride up from the city oped . Orchards began appearing
suitable for the area were devel-
as far as Boyds to new resort hotels all around the upcounty — Lewis and “ rooms for rent .” Drummers , Orchard being one of the earliest , or traveling salesmen , would get founded in 1888 . Peach trees filled off the train and hire a buggy at the a ready market vacated by a fruit local livery stable and take off to the tree blight on the Eastern Shore , countryside to peddle their wares . while apple trees took a little
But the biggest change came longer to produce fruit after the when some up-county farmers who had been growing wheat
In 1879 , just six years after the
seedlings were planted .
and corn primarily , began turning coming of the railroad , Thomas their fields into peach and apple H . S . Boyd of Clarksburg published orchards and producing milk and The History of Montgomery County perishable products that could be from Its Earliest Settlement in 1650 delivered to the city markets via to 1879 in which he describes the the train . New varieties of fertilizer County ’ s agricultural transformation . About 162,000 acres of its could be brought in from Baltimore by train as well to replenish the 240,000 acres were farmland at the depleted land . time , many more acres than had
Soon more farmers began to been planted before the advent follow suit as they saw the profits of the railroad . He also describes being made and as fruit varieties 3,450 pounds of honey produced
By 1912 there were an estimated 12,000 dairy cows on County farms and more than half of the farmers within three miles of the railroad were in the dairy business .
King Barn Dairy Mooseum , courtesy of the Mooseum . and the need for bees to pollinate the fruit trees . Boyd also counted 5,212 “ milch ” cows and the production of 210,000 pounds of butter in his treatise , listing the following six dairies : James A . Boyd , Basil Burdette and R . H . Burdette in Boyds ; Rufus A . Bowie and J . W . Holland in Dickerson ; Greenville Farquhar in Olney . As more and more farmers turned to milking cows , new “ milk stops ” appeared on the northwestern part of the railroad line by 1893 , often at places where the steam engines already had to halt for refueling with water , and coal — Brown ’ s , Cloppers ’ s , Waring ’ s , Bucklodge and Barnesville . In 1906 the B & O Railroad created “ milk sheds ” designed for dairy farmers to be able to load their milk cans directly onto freight cars . These designs can be seen today in the waiting sheds at Germantown , lower to the ground and further away from the tracks .
By 1912 there were an estimated
12,000 dairy cows on County farms and more than half of the farmers within three miles of the railroad were in the dairy business . According to the records collected by the King Barn Dairy Mooseum in Boyds there have been 567 dairy farms in Montgomery County over the years .
An offshoot of the dairy industry was the exporting of spent cows and bull calves to the beef markets in Chicago . Herman Rabbitt a legendary
22 plenty I spring sowing 2023