The Lost Code

The Risk of a Poor Harvest

Haymaking in 1914, photograph

Musée de la civilisation, collection du Séminaire de Québec, fonds Rosario Benoît. Les foins. Rosario Benoît. 1914. N° Ph2000-12610

Farmers earned just enough to get by from one year to the next. A few bad harvests in a row was all it took to plunge them into destitution. After 1800, bad years were many. In 1813, 1816, 1826, and 1833, poor weather ruined harvests. In 1836 and 1837, wheat fly invasions wreaked havoc. As a result, habitants had to go into debt to buy the seeds needed to sow the fields the following spring.