Men’s Skills
- Overseer
- Shoemaker
- Sawyer
- Carpentry
- Miller
- Cooper
- Blacksmith
- Gardener
- House servant
- Ferryman
- Carter/wagonner
- Bake and lay brick
- Winter work
- Work on mill race
- Ditching
- Cut rails, posts, timber
- Cut firewood
- Haul timber
- Kill hogs
- Help fill ice house
- Maul rails
- Make fences
- Saw timber
- Build roads
- Work in new ground
- Frame barn
- Make faggots
Spring/summer work
- Plowing
- Harrowing
- Rolling
- Sow barley, oats, wheat, clover
- Plant potatoes and jerusalem artichokes
- Seine fishing
- Make corn hills and weed corn
- Plant corn, pumpkins, peas and replant
- Sow carrots and cabbage
- Sow flax
- Cut hay and clover
- Weed peas
- Weed and hill corn
- Cradlers at harvest of wheat and rye
- Binders at harvest
- Shock wheat and oats
- Tie and heap hemp
Fall work
- Harvest corn
- Make livestock pens and feed racks
- Thresh peas
- Plowing
- Harrowing
- Sowing winter grain
Women’s Skills
- Milking
- Spinning
- Weaving
- Washing
- Ironing
- Cooking
- Scullery
- House servant
Winter work
- Help at ice house
- Husk corn
- Grub swamp (Dec)
- Thin trees in swamp (Jan)
- Clean out stable
- Heap dung
- Carry fence rails
- Build fences
- Grub woods
Spring/summer work
- Cut sprouts from tree stumps in field
- Load dung in carts
- Spread dung
- Gather and spread fish offal
- Fill gullies in fields
- Clean field
- Clear new ground
- Level ditch
- Clean hedge rows
- Make hills for sweet potatoes and plant them
- Make holes for corn and plant
- Make pumpkin hills
- Hill for peas
- Pile grass tussocks
- Chop plowed ground
- Chop after harrows
- Hoe rough or wet ground
- Grub before plows
- Prepare meadow for oats & timothy
- Grub meadow
- Plant and replant melons
- Plant cabbages, sow carrots
- Weed peas
- Weed pumpkins (old women and women with young children)
- Hoe corn ground
- Stack wheat and rye at harvest
- Bind oats at harvest
- Pick up apples
Fall work
- Break and swingle flax
- Chop in flax
- Make livestock pens
- Harvest corn
- Dig carrots
- Thresh rye, clover seed, peas, wheat, oats
- Clean oat, wheat seed
- Cut down corn stalks
- Pile corn stalks
Source: The extract from George Washington’s diary is reprinted in Carr, Lois Green and Lorena S. Walsh. “Economic Diversification and Labor Organization in the Chesapeake, 1650-1820,” in Work and Labor in Early America, Stephen Innes, Ed.
Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1988.