1850s Farm - John Johnson house, "The Retreat" William Arthur Johnson. 1847. Watercolour. 16.9 x 23.9 cm TPL (TRL) 969-1-7 This Ontario farm is typical of farms found along the railway line in the 1850s. At first, settlers would build a log house from trees found on the property. Later on, lumber would be taken to a nearby sawmill and used to construct a new home, with the old log house becoming a pigpen or hen house. Farms were self-sufficient with a mixture of crops and animals. Stumps would gradually be removed from the fields. Farmers near a railway line could earn extra money by supplying cords of wood used to fuel the steam engines until coal came to used as fuel in the 1870s.