With only an apprentice as
an assistant, the rural artisan provided the neighborhood with common goods from furniture
to shoes to farm equipment in exchange for cash or for “goods in kind” from the customer’s
field, pasture, or dairy. Sometimes artisans transformed material provided by the customer
wove cloth of yam spun at the farm from the wool of the family sheep; made chairs or tables
(10) from wood cut in the customer’s own woodlot; produced shoes or leather breeches from
cow, deer, or sheepskin tanned on the farm.