How neighbors helped each other in the farming villages of 1820's New England

Topics include quilting bee, corn husking, haying, rock clearing, tree chopping, and snow plowing.

In every farming village throughout the planet, and through the last 10,000 years, community members exchange assistance in many ways on a daily basis. These are examples of the still-innate behavior that created the first, primate social system and continues today. We innately exchange assistance on any task deemed to be larger than one person can do alone. The number of ways we exchange help decreased as we switched from being farmers to factory workers, but we are still the same social creatures. (photo by Frank Dalling)