There was plenty of work on a farm even for little children; they sowed various seeds in early spring; they weeded flax fields, walking barefoot among the tender plants; they hetchelled flax and combed wool.
All the work on the flax after the breaking was done in olden times by women and children. It is said there are in all twenty different occupations in flax manufacture, of which half can be easily done by children. Much of the work in domestic wool spinning and weaving was done by little girls. They could spin on "the great wheel" when they were so small that they had to stand on a foot-stool to reach up. They skeined the yarn on a clock-reel. They easily filled the "quills" with the woollen yarn used in weaving bedspreads and set the quills in the middle of the great pointed wooden shuttles. They wound the white warp on the spools, and set the spools on the scarne. They might, if very deft and attentive, help "set the piece," that is, wind the warp threads on the great yarn-beam, pass them through the eyes of the heddles or harness, and the spans of the reed. Girls of six could spin flax. Anna Green Winslow, when twelve years old, speaks often in her diary of spinning; and when disabled from sewing by a painful whitlow on her finger, wrote that "it is a nice opportunity if I do but improve it, to perfect myself in learning to spin flax."
The Good Girl and her Wheel
In the Memoirs of the missionaries, David and John Brainerd, a boy's busy life on a Connecticut farm is thus described:—
"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly home to do "chores" at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up with some service, such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected never to be reluctant and not often tired."
This constant employment of a farm boy's time lasted till our own day; but now conditions have changed in Eastern farm life. The work still is hard and incessant, but not so varied as of yore. Many crops are obsolete; no flax is raised, and but little wool, and that sold as soon as sheared. Little grain is raised and no threshing is done by the flail. Vast itinerant threshing machines go from farm to farm. Few farmers make cider, which gave so much work to the boys in autumn. There is no potash or soap boiling. One of the most delightful chronicles of obsolete farm industry is written by Hon. George Sheldon and entitled The Passing of the Stall-Fed Ox and the Farmer's Boy.
