Aboiteau farming on reclaimed

marsh In ecology, a marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous plants rather than by woody plants.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p More in genera ...

land is a labour-intensive method in which earthen dikes are constructed to stop high tides from inundating marshland. A wooden sluice or aboiteau (plural aboiteaux) is built into the dike, with a hinged door (clapper valve) that swings open at low tide to allow fresh water to drain from the farmland, but swings shut at high tide to prevent salt water from inundating the fields. After several years, the rainwater drained from the marsh eliminates the soil's salinity, making it suitable for farming. Aboiteau farming is intimately linked with the story of French Acadian colonization of the shores of Canada's

Bay of Fundy The Bay of Fundy () is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its tidal range is the highest in the world. The bay was ...

in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Acadians constructed earthen dikes to isolate areas of

salt marsh A salt marsh, saltmarsh or salting, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. I ...

from repeated inundation by the tides. Noted Acadian dikes include the diking of the tidal marshes at Grand-Pré (in contemporary

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...

) in the early 1680s. Around 1755, of salt marsh were reclaimed using this dike for pasturage and intensive agricultural production. In the Kamouraska region of the St. Lawrence Valley of

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, aboiteau diking of salt marshes was closely tied to the modernization of agriculture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A rare original aboiteau is the jewel of the West Pubnico Acadian Museums' artifacts. In 1990, local residents found a couple of boards sticking out of an eroding beach on Double Island, West Pubnico. They returned to the site in 1996 to remove the aboiteau, to preserve and display it at the museum.Musée des Acadiens des Pubnicos et Centre de recherche In summer 2023, during record-breaking wildfires, the government of Nova Scotia ordered the closing of an aboiteau at the Windsor causeway "to maximize the water supply available in the event of wildfires". The aboiteau's opening in March 2021 had caused nearby Lake Pisiquid to drain.

References

{{Reflist Agricultural terminology Acadian history