This region was rich in natural resources, including wild turkeys, bears, deer, elk and dove in large numbers, and with large herds of buffalo. The buffalo population declined as settlement increased, but hunting continued in southeast Ohio until 1792. In 1785, Richard Butler detailed a dinner that included “roast buffalo beef, buffalo beef and turkey soup, roast turkeys, roast catfish, freshly caught, roast ducks, good punch, madera, claret, grog and toddy. “The fine venison, bear meat, turkeys, and catfish” that Butler’s group ate were all obtained by hunting and fishing, or, in Butler’s words, “obtained by themselves at their own pleasure.”
Venison and turkey were the most popular game. and fish such as pike, catfish, sturgeon, pickerel, perch and bass They were plentiful. In lean times you could eat raccoons, squirrels, possums and other less desirable game. One writer in the Revolutionary era wrote that a hunter could kill six to eight deer each day.
Wheat was not used in the rich soils around Ohio, so wheat bread remained a rare luxury. and many crops were difficult to grow in the early years. When Marietta was settled in the spring of 1788, they planted potatoes , turnips , pumpkins , corn , zucchini , melons , beans and cucumbers . Unexpectedly severe weather in 1789 destroyed that year’s crops, leading to a serious food shortage in a year that was called the “year of famine.” Pork was usually canned in various ways, the most common being salted in a pork barrel , but there were few pigs and the salt had to be carried across the Allegheny Mountains to get to the Ohio Company settlement. By the end of winter, many families ran out of cornmeal, and even the richest families had few potatoes left. At the first signs of spring the pioneers harvested nettles and portulacas , but it was not until July that new corn, beans and zucchinis were harvested early and turned into soup.
In 1792 described the growing of corn, barley , potatoes, turnips, oats, millet and wheat in Cincinnati , and although the settlement in the area was still small, a garrison of 200 men at Fort Washington planted “very good” vegetable gardens. Buckwheat cakes were common, and Francis Bailey’s 1797 travel journal notes that settlers extracted syrup from sugar maples and relied on game meat, such as wild turkey and venison, during the winter months.